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Sulla
11-28-2007, 05:17 PM
Hi I have been thinking about an idea to combine cutout animation with 3Ds Max to creat a hybrid. The characters would be basicly designed like highly detalied cut out characters but maped onto a curved shape. Very much like camera mapping technics. That way you could move the camera a little bit and get some sense of depth.

The backgrounds would be rendered and illustrated then placed on several layers like they do with glass plates for cutout art etc.


The reason I am thinking of doing this is I am trying to work out the exact technic for a 42 minute short I am working on. And one of the main things is to try and keep rendering and animation times down so the project does not take 3 years to creat. Also I like the look of some of the really good cut out art for example by some of the famous Russian animators.

Any way the reason I bring this all up is becouse I am looking for examples of what others have done. I am sure I cant be the first person to think about doing this.
steveblake
12-04-2007, 02:50 PM
...south park's done it:

http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=139009

Tho I've not done any 2d animation for years, I took a quick look at Celaction a few years ago, which is a 2d digital cut-out-style animation system used here in the uk for many kids programs like the ever glorious pepper pig.

The thing I liked, and an idea that you may be able to use, is that the each seperate element of the character (ie head, limbs, faceshapes etc) we're rigged with IK etc but whilest they were selected you could scroll through the alternative shapes via the arrow keys.

So lets say you had a hand selected, you could then scroll through various pre-drawn poses shapes (open, close, point etc) or maybe a selection of rotated views. Fantastically fast way of accessing the full range of shapes.

You could set this up very easily in maya with SDK for example, you'd have to set up some simple scripts to to carefully key the object visibilities on/off perhaps via stepped keys.

I'd almost start with a "normal" biped type skeleton rig and have your characters elements attached with a simple look at camera constraint. Be helpful to have some sort of simple shader to add slight drop shadow to each element too (tho you might be able to do this with light rig).

:)
Sulla
12-04-2007, 07:30 PM
Thanks for the reply steveblake. I think you are right setting up something in a good 3D program is the way to go. Max in my case. Any way still working on the best way to do it. Might break down and go full 3D full the characters in the end.

As a side note look at some of Yuri Norstein work if you have not seen it. I had not seen it until I started researching cut out work.
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