Vehicle 360: 1927 Model T

[drumlug13]

This is a cartoon 1927 Ford Tudor Model T that will be in my Harry Trigger: Discount Private Eye cartoon... if I ever finish it.

It's a Smart Bone vehicle 360

Instead of making a long, boring, tedious and extremely drawn out tutorial on a vehicle turnaround, I thought I would put together some clips of how the car looked during different parts of the process. You should be able to pause & play the video to pick apart how it was done. And, besides, I don't have screen capture software.

The basic process was to think of the car as a cube, and work on each side of the car independently as it rotated around the 360. Even if it wasn't visible for the back side of the turn.

- Set default key interpolation to Linear
- Create a 360 Smart Bone action 8 seconds long.
- Holding the Shift Key, Rotate and key the 360 bone 1/8 turn every 24 frames, completing the 360 on frame 192.
- Start with very basic shapes. (The passenger side panel started out as a simple rectangle)
- Freeze points every 24 frames as the perspective changes. (The passenger side panel should be a line when the car is turned forward)
- Copy your points from frame 1. Paste them on frame 192
- Jump back into the Mainline to add points. (Only add 1 or 2 points at a time !!!!)
- (Back in 360 Smart Bone) Continue to adjust your new points at every 24th frame of the 360 action
- Rinse & repeat ... over and over and over and over ... until all of your basic artwork is completed
- Do the same thing for the other sides of the cube/car.
- Tip- You can see in the video that I sometimes added a bright highlight color to certain shapes to help keep track of them as the car turned.
- Set Animated Layer Order (Don't bother doing this earlier in the process... Trust me.)
- Set new keyframes every 12th frame. Adjust the parts that are drifting. Freeze all points.
- Do this at every 12th frame on every layer. That's right. Every point, every layer... every 12 frames. (Again don't bother doing this any earlier. Shapes will be drifting all over the place, just let them)
- Some spots will need to have more in between frames added 6 frames apart.


That's my basic approach to the 360. Still needs more tweening in spots to correct some drifting parts, but for the most part, keys every 12th frame, with a few 6's looks pretty good.

This Smart Bone action was made with a specific scene in mind and the first clips have an up & down perspective movement that will probably not make sense until the road is added in the last clip. (My marvelous, wonderful masterpiece of a road). The extra up & down perspective movement made this more difficult than it otherwise would have been. I would say that I will never do that part again, except that I have to do it again for a car that will be chasing Harry.

So, since I have to do it all over again with another car I'd love to hear your thoughts on improving the process.

[synthsin75]

Very nice. If you have AS11, it may be easier to use animated shape sorting on a single layer instead of layer ordering, since animated shapes can have connected vectors in a single layer. Another option is to have all the vector art in one layer and then reference layers that have both animated shape sorting and are layer ordered, so you could layer order the four sides and shape sort the individual shapes on each side.

[drumlug13]

I didn't even think about trying to use reference layers in this. I'll try that on the next one.

I do have some animated shape sorting going on in the fenders and tires. This whole thing would have been a lot easier if I was working with an era of cars that didn't have the running boards and fenders sticking out.

[Hoptoad]

The car spinning around and around was funny! And technically impressive. Please finish your cartoon!

Thanks for explaining your process.