Making final render less smooth

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striker2311
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Making final render less smooth

Post by striker2311 »

Hey everyone,
Final render that's coming out of moho is smooth there's no doubt about that , but i wanna know that if there's a way to make it less smoother even less smoother than after using every second frame render option .
Like making it render every fourth frame or something like that..
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slowtiger
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by slowtiger »

Many people mix up fps with actual drawing frequency.

FPS: the frames per second a film/video runs, this is always constant and should be a standard setting, like 24, 25 or 30.

Drawing frequency: you can animate on one's, on two's, on three's, on fourth's (anything higher is a slide show, not animation). This doesn't mean that your whole film or even your whole scene is done like that. You always do so many drawings as your movement in that moment needs. That can be just one for some time (a hold), or 1's in fast movements, and anything in between. Just an example from my recent job, the number of frames each drawing covers: 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 3 8 2 2 24. Something like this is quite standard.

Now if you render only every second frame straight through the whole scene it's possible that you miss the beats/keys which will spoil your movement and flatten the dynamic.

If you animate on 3's or 4's take care that each new drawing/key is in the same frame with the others, they should be in sync.

(There's some more things to consider regarding to pans with moving characters.)
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striker2311
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by striker2311 »

slowtiger wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 8:54 pm Many people mix up fps with actual drawing frequency.

FPS: the frames per second a film/video runs, this is always constant and should be a standard setting, like 24, 25 or 30.

Drawing frequency: you can animate on one's, on two's, on three's, on fourth's (anything higher is a slide show, not animation). This doesn't mean that your whole film or even your whole scene is done like that. You always do so many drawings as your movement in that moment needs.

Yeah you're right about that but in my last work it was commented like my final output is looking way too smoother than an anime (which is generally frame by frame so less smoother) so is there a way so my work could look more like anime?
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slowtiger
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by slowtiger »

Just set additional keys at every 3rd or 4th frame and set them to "step", if you're going for that cheap anime look. (Duplicate your project first.)
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chucky
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by chucky »

slowtiger wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 10:48 pm Just set additional keys at every 3rd or 4th frame and set them to "step", if you're going for that cheap anime look. (Duplicate your project first.)
Or Limited Frame by frame look.
Overly smooth vector tweening can look far cheaper and nastier in fact ( motion blur can exacerbate it and look even worse).
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striker2311
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by striker2311 »

slowtiger wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 10:48 pm Just set additional keys at every 3rd or 4th frame and set them to "step", if you're going for that cheap anime look. (Duplicate your project first.)
I got that. I'll keep that in mind for my next work.
Thanks 😊.
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striker2311
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by striker2311 »

striker2311 wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 4:13 am
slowtiger wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 10:48 pm Just set additional keys at every 3rd or 4th frame and set them to "step", if you're going for that cheap anime look. (Duplicate your project first.)
I got that. I'll keep that in mind for my next work.
Thanks 😊.
Sorry of I'm asking too much but is there a script which can set keyframes for "step" for 2-3 keyframes interval in the last of whole work?
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slowtiger
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by slowtiger »

Ask in the scripting subforum?

But there's already an "interval" option in the keyframe settings.
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by striker2311 »

slowtiger wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 1:34 pm Ask in the scripting subforum?
Yeah that's right
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striker2311
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by striker2311 »

slowtiger wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 1:34 pm

But there's already an "interval" option in the keyframe settings.
Ok then I'll check that out right now
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by Víctor Paredes »

Here at the studio we mostly animate on 2s.
I made this tutorial some years ago about using intervals. Maybe it can help you:
http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtop ... =9&t=26783
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striker2311
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by striker2311 »

Víctor Paredes wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 3:05 pm Here at the studio we mostly animate on 2s.
I made this tutorial some years ago about using intervals. Maybe it can help you:
http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtop ... =9&t=26783
Yeah yeah this was exactly what i was looking for.
Feeling a little blushed didn't know it was there this whole time :oops:
Thanks...
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by Greenlaw »

When I need to force the animation frame rate after the fact, I use a feature in After Effects called Posterize Time. When you apply this effect, the default frame rate is displayed in the settings, and lowering it drops and holds frames without changing the playback time.

For this example, let's say the project frame rate is 24 fps. When I drop Posterize Time's the frame rate down to 12 fps, After Effects will play/render the animation as if it had been animated on 2s; when I drop it to 6 fps, it plays/renders the footage as if it had been animated on 4's; and so on. The 24 fps frame rate of the Ae project itself remains unaffected.

This is a useful trick when I need to quickly adjust my animation to match the look of other animated footage it has to cut with in the video editor that was animated on 2's, 3's or 4's. (It's especially useful when I need to force the animation frame rate of CGI/cel shaded animation to match the rate 2D footage I'm compositing with.)

Naturally, this effect is applied arbitrarily, meaning it isn't aware of key poses and it's possible you can lose some of them when the frames are dropped. If you use the Posterize Time effect, you need to check the footage carefully, and make any necessary timing offsets in Ae or go back to Moho and make the offsets there.
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striker2311
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by striker2311 »

Greenlaw wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 7:09 pm When I need to force the animation frame rate after the fact, I use a feature in After Effects called Posterize Time. When you apply this effect, the default frame rate is displayed in the settings, and lowering it drops and holds frames without changing the playback time.

For this example, let's say the project frame rate is 24 fps. When I drop Posterize Time's the frame rate down to 12 fps, After Effects will play/render the animation as if it had been animated on 2s; when I drop it to 6 fps, it plays/renders the footage as if it had been animated on 4's; and so on. The 24 fps frame rate of the Ae project itself remains unaffected.

This is a useful trick when I need to quickly adjust my animation to match the look of other animated footage it has to cut with in the video editor that was animated on 2's, 3's or 4's. (It's especially useful when I need to force the animation frame rate of CGI/cel shaded animation to match the rate 2D footage I'm compositing with.)

Naturally, this effect is applied arbitrarily, meaning it isn't aware of key poses and it's possible you can lose some of them when the frames are dropped. If you use the Posterize Time effect, you need to check the footage carefully, and make any necessary timing offsets in Ae or go back to Moho and make the offsets there.
Thanks greenlaw, that was an awesome thing you told that i wasn't aware of, I'm quickly noting this down. This is definitely gonna be useful.
chucky
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Re: Making final render less smooth

Post by chucky »

You don't even need After effects for this simple task, most editing apps will allow you you render at a different rate than playback without effecting timing, even rendering out of Moho does the same thing.
For example if the project rate is 24 you just render at 12, I do it often.

Victor and Slowtiger bring up very good points about when you might want to up the intervals for a particular part of the animation, Victor's example ( if it's the swimming one I remember) demonstrates well.
You have to be very careful when doing this though in some areas (like when using camera moves or other bones in the same rig that are moving at a different interval), as you can get a weird effect where it appear to slide and skip and the same time.

The Spiderverse movie has a great making of video somewhere that shows how they managed to overcome the issue.
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