How can I smooth out my animation?

[ienrdna]

I think there is problem with camera motion, how is it animated?

[Citizen-Insane]

The camera is path constrained to a circular curve. That's it for camera motion. Maybe I just need to slow down the whole animation.

Also, there are some GI artifacts in the ear pads. Anyone have any suggestions for how to eliminate these (brute force / LC system?) without making my render time spike really badly? Right now I'm at about 22 min a frame (3ghz Quad core, 4gb of Ram), using Irradiance map (High) and Lightcache (1000 samples).

[Cannysage]

make a habbit of checking the motion curve in the graph editor. all the flaws will be visible.

[uiron]

do you keep your FPS same everywhere? render at 30 fps, interpret footage as 30 fps, composition settings 30 fps?

[Citizen-Insane]

Hm, don't see anything funky in my graphs. The camera is the only thing animated and it's position graph looks fine (z=const, x=sin(t), y = sin(t)+90*).

My FPS doesn't change either, it's 30 all the way through (well in AE the rate is 29.97fps, that's the default for HDTV 720P).

[uiron]

The camera is the only thing animated and it's position graph looks fine (z=const, x=sin(t), y = sin(t)+90*).

i hope you didn't just animate with expressions, because those you posted are wrong. (should be sin(t), cos(t) )

anyway, what you really need to do is just to put a locator at the "rotate around" axis in the scene, parent camera (and it's lookat, if any) to that locator, then just animate locator's rotateY from 0 to 360 with linear keys.

[Citizen-Insane]

No, I don't program w/ expressions, that's just what the graph was (also, this expression is correct, sin(t) = cos(t) - pi/2 = cos(t) -90 degrees, it's plus in mine since the camera rotates counter clockwise).

Not sure what you mean by your second part. Why is it better to use a locator than a path constrained movement of the camera?

Here's an updated version, much smoother when I changed from 29.97 to 30fps. Duno why AE defaulted to 29.97.

flash:
http://vimeo.com/1981805

720P HD:
http://www.filedropper.com/test30fps2

[uiron]

sin(t) = cos(t) - pi/2

wrong again:] sin(t) = cos(t+pi/2) is what you wanted to say i guess.

locator vs path constrain... dunno, locator is much simplier solution and easier to track bugs.

switching FPS to exact same rate helped you not to skip any frames, that's why animation runs smooth now.

if you want to keep the 29,999 fps (or whatever that was), set the same fps in compo settings and imported sequence ("interpret footage..." dialog).

[Respawned]

Also, there are some GI artifacts in the ear pads. Anyone have any suggestions for how to eliminate these (brute force / LC system?) without making my render time spike really badly? Right now I'm at about 22 min a frame (3ghz Quad core, 4gb of Ram), using Irradiance map (High) and Lightcache (1000 samples).

You can try render the first, middle and last frame with 'multi frame incremental' mode enabled, make sure you set it to save. Then you can render the final animation using 'from file' mode, just choose the file that you saved.

Edit: Looking at your animation you may need more than three frames, you can always do more renders by choosing add to current map. Download imapviewer.exe to view the saved light information.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.