How to achieve the stopmotion look in 3d animation

#1

I have a question about how you can achieve the stop motion look in your animation

We’re just starting a bachelor project.
the 3d is quite stylised and and has a dirty and gritty look to it, so a perfectly clean and smooth polished animation would fit at all (stopmotion looking style would be a lot better)

-Does anyone know about a plugin that let’s you easily animate on 2s?
Maybe a graph editor plugin of some sort

The 3D film"Underground Psycho" seems to be done on 2s
http://www.gobelins.fr/galerie/animation/index2008.htm

Or is there any other plugins for maya you know about? One that “breaks up”
the clean look of a regular smooth 3d animation.

#2

What if you change your frame rate on whatever software your compositing in?

Hope this helps
-Gavino

#3

Aha, Thanks MOZIONE=) That’s quite a good idea.

But I guess that also will let the entire movie be on 12 frames per second.
So the camera moves might get a bit too jerky. So I wondering if there’s a solution were you can animate the 3d camera moves on 24 fps while having your animation on 2s (12 fps)

#4

If you’re using Maya,

In the animation time slider…

-Highlight your keyframes using Shift+clickdrag
-Right click on the time slider.
-In the menu, you will see “Tangents”
-Set your tangent to “Stepped”

…This will change all smooth curves in the graph editor to flat ones making them act like exposures for as long as the pose remains the same.

You can now animate on 2s :smiley:

#5

Thanks thatonejondude =)

Yes, we’re using Maya. This is the solution we’re thinking of going with if we coulden’t find any other options. Although we have to get used to a new workflow were everything needs to be keyed on 4s forexample, then on 2s. So it might be a bit slower process since most of us are more comfertable animating on the layering method (flat tangents/copy pairs method)

I guess you will now get a better 2d quality to it since you really have to focus on every single pose now. it would be cool if there are other solution too. Just incase we might get short on time animating this way

#6

Interesting question, the only thing I could suggest is animating how you normally would keeping in mind to keep all your keyframes to either odds or evens.

Then once you are happy with the animation then go back and keyframe everything on every second frame and then go set the curves to stepped.

Hope this makes sense! :wink:

#7

I haven’t tested this but it should work just fine.

Animate everything in 24frames. Then in your render settings render only 1 out of 2 frames (you will end up with 12 fps for the chars) Then in your compositing app, just retime the whole thing to 200% and you’ll be back on 24, with every frame lasting twice they should, then animation should be a little more “blocky”.

#8

That would work fine too, but not if you want a smooth camera move, the camera needs to be animated on ones.

Cheers!

#9

Yeah, I realized that when I red about camera movements. That wouldn’t work then.

I think the most direct way would be to bake all curves every 2 frames, and convert them to stepped instead of splines, of course after you’re quite happy with your animation.

#10

A little late but I just wrote an article on this topic as I’ve recently done several jobs that required the stop motion treatment: http://bit.ly/aBfEE9

#11

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