CGTalk - Newbie Question

foxwolfen

12-23-2006, 06:47 PM

(EDIT: I have answered my own questions and provided the details below, I will add more to the post as I learn more.)

Hi all,

I am new to the forums. I have some questions that I hope some of you might be able to answer.

I have created a 2D illistration in Photoshop. It is for all intents and purposes the first frame of a scene of a RAF Pilot running down a path as part of some concept and stopryboard art.

It is also the background matt for the scene and will have part of it greenscreen for the sky so that realtime Machima animation can be blended in (flight simulator).

At this time I recognize there are many many different approaches to this, but for now, I simply want to do it 2D and hand draw the 100 frame changes for the character animation. (I will be using Maya and Motion Builder as a posing template). But I recognize this is going to be labour intensive.

I guess the question I have is what do I do to actually build an animation out of perhaps 100 PSD files that can then be imported into an AVID and processed? Is using Photoshop the best way to do this, or would there be a better and faster way using some other tools?

I realize this is very vague, so if it helps you can view the project progress and workflow as I have been doing it here:

The 2D art thread
http://www.aerodynamika.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1164939153

The animation thread
http://www.aerodynamika.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1166496616/15

Here is the 2D hand painted (no vectors or brushes/tubes or poser cheats - just pencil, color and shading and some post in PSP 10) "first frame" concept artwork I created (in reality he will run "out of the camera")

Any tips or pointers you may have would be most welcome.

Cheers
Shad

http://21cb.ascendant-online.net/images/Storyboard/storyboard002-sketch-a35.jpg

foxwolfen

12-24-2006, 04:54 PM

Answering my own question I discovered that what I need is an BMP (or other image format) to AVI converter/sequencer.

There are not too many free ones and even the non-free versions I would not spend any money on as they are all pretty darned poor.

Depending on the animation and what I intend to do with the final result the next tool required is a compositor. There are of course the expensive commercial versions, but there is also a half-decent open-source version called Jahshaka.

http://www.jahshaka.org/

Prior to the final edit, the avi can then be cleaned up with a touch up tool such as CinePaint (also open source). While CinePaint is an industry standard tool, it and many other industry animation tools work best (or only) in Linux (scalability and extensibility). (For me this is not a problem as I have about an equal distribution of both Windows and Linux machines here)

Lastly of course is a decent DV editor. For this there are plenty of tools (even Windows Movie Maker can do a decent job of it for web use) but I already have an AVID Liquid.

This for now is the brute force way and perhaps not the most elegent, but I just want to get the job done with out spending a fortune (I do not have a corporate sugar-daddy to pay my bills).

foxwolfen

12-24-2006, 08:44 PM

Following up on this post a bit further, I created a fast clip (15frames) using photoshop to output a set of jpgs and then using a freeware program I found called PhotoLapse to create the AVI (30fps max). This is a 1 second super fast box character animation using the above tools and Photoshop (without the AVID).

http://21cb.ascendant-online.net/movies/run.avi (350K)

A bit about PhotoLapse: While the author claims a 640x480 max size, the true AVI is full sized (same as the original jpg) at 1190x800 or so so it seems that limit is not enforced or really checked for in the source. Its free and can be found here:

http://home.hccnet.nl/s.vd.palen/index.html

Sadly, the output seems to fail using anything but uncompressed AVI (Using XP X64). So once compiled it needs to be resampled to somethign smaller in file size (35meg for 15frames).

For this I used VirtualDub to examine then compress the raw AVI.

http://www.virtualdub.org/

VirtualDub is necessary because the actual AVI is not only very large when it comes from the sequencer, it is also not in a format usable in the AVID (being broadcast standard, it has strict codec standards conformance rules) and needs to be converted to a format that the movie editor or compositor (think "greenscreen") will use.

Once output by VirtualDub the file size is about 100 times smaller and conforms to DV standards. At this point its ready for editing in an editor like WMM or AVID, or import into a compositor or touch-up tool.

I hope this helps someone, and I will add to it as I learn more.

Cheers
Shad

foxwolfen

12-24-2006, 09:41 PM

So to sum up the process.

Create your images and export each cell (frame) as a JPG.

Use PhotoLapse to generate a raw uncompressed AVI

Use VirtualDub to convert and compress the AVI to a standars based AVI.

Touch up in a program like CinePaint

Composit (bluescreen/greenscreen) in a program like Jahshaka

Edit it (add transitions and clip effects, join multiple clips) in a program like Windows Movie Maker (many commercial editors also composit)

And export to your prefered format (WMV, QT, RM, Flash, MPEG or DivX)

This is the cheapest way I know how to get the results I desire with out spending yet more money on "art supplies" that are never ending.

If you do not have photoshop, there is a very powerful raster/verctor editor that is open source (free) called The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program). Is is very powerful, but assumes some graphical editor knowledge. You can create your drawing using it, and then use the process above to make your AVI.

Hope this helps someone, and if I find a better way, I will update this thread.

Cheers
Shad

foxwolfen

12-25-2006, 12:02 AM

The video link above has now been updated with longer length (2 sec) and a background ready for chroma-keying (RGB 0/255/0 - necessary for compositing) (750k now)

http://21cb.ascendant-online.net/movies/run.avi

foxwolfen

12-25-2006, 07:24 AM

2 sec run with background and color in runner (for vis)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aKfvG18SCM

or download the mp4 - 1280x720 (only 591k - powerful comp needed however)
http://21cb.ascendant-online.net/movies/runtest-2.mp4

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