Drowtales 2007 anniversary animation - segment done

[Touched]

Part of this year's Drowtales anniversary animation, a work in progress. The pauses in her speech are where the other character's lines will go. When she turns to the left, she's looking at the other character. Still waiting for that actress to send her lines in.

[old version removed]

Here's a question for the wise: Notice that white edge around the outline of her hair (notably her bangs)? What's causing that, and how can I stop it? I notice this on almost anything that has a white area with a black outline -- some white seems to bleed past the outline.

Latest update:
http://revver.com/watch/231256
(Fullscreen mode recommended)

[LittleFenris]

Animation looks real good so far. She's got personality. That head turn is awesome. Did you move the parts on the head to get that turn or is that point animation? I love her bangs swinging around as well...is that bone dynamics or manually animated w/ bones? Can't wait to see this w/ both characters in the scene.

[Genete]

Part of this year's Drowtales anniversary animation, a work in progress. The pauses in her speech are where the other character's lines will go. When she turns to the left, she's looking at the other character. Still waiting for that actress to send her lines in.

http://drowtales.com/~whiteradish/temp/turn.mov

Here's a question for the wise: Notice that white edge around the outline of her hair (notably her bangs)? What's causing that, and how can I stop it? I notice this on almost anything that has a white area with a black outline -- some white seems to bleed past the outline.

Apart of the superb animation the excelent drawing and the perfect lip sync ...
I think that the white line around the black line of the front hair that is visible only when the hair is over the blue coat (is it?) is due to a problem of renderering or a problem in the compression codec. Perhaps if you make a render to a single frame and watch it carefully you could see if it comes from AS or from other program.
Does it occur if you export it to flash?

I assume that you are refering to this:


EDITED:
HEY! COULD IT BE DUE TO THE GREY SHADOWS OVER THE HAIR? IT SEEMS THAT THEY DON'T SHARE THE SAME POINTS... MAY BE...


Good luck with your project.
Best
Genete

[LittleFenris]

Have you tried rendering out the animation at like double the resolution the final product will be in then scale it down for the final edited output? That might also help w/ that antialiasing issue around the white areas. Even if it needs to be in Flash, you could output the file at twice the resolution then make the animation a Flash video instead of an .swf file for filesize purposes.

[Genete]

By the way you could show us some of the tricks and tips of this animation to teach us a little with your wisdom...
Bone setup, layer setup, bone binding, use of switch layers...
It could be very ilustrative for all "always learning hobbylist" like me.
Thanks
Genete

[LittleFenris]

Genete, I think you are probably right that his problem lies in those hair shadows. Good job!

[Touched]

Genete, you're correct about the problem area that you pointed out, but the areas do share the same points. I have 3 shapes sharing the same points -- the white hair, the grey shaded hair, and the black outline. The grey shaded area is on top of the white, and perhaps that doubled-up shape is what's causing the problem. I'll try it after I run an errand with the shapes not overlapping. I also tried rendering a frame as a PNG instead of as Quicktime, and it had the same result. It does NOT occur if I export to Flash.

LittleFenris, If all else fails, I'll try what you suggest, the double resolution. This project will use a lot of raster effects, so I decided to not output it as SWF, but embed a FLV into a SWF for the web site. Also, I was getting a lot of disappearing shapes when I tried importing the initial SWFs into Flash, which would just be too much work to fix.

I'll be happy to explain my techniques, but I can't be sharing the .anme files of this project, since it's for a client. However, you can see one of
the tricks I used for the head turn in the source file I uploaded for my contest entry. Here, though, it's a combination of bone movement and point animation, as is the body rotation. It'll take a while to explain, but the brief explanation is that:

• There are no switch layers except for the mouth -- I'm controlling everything with actions and on-the-fly keyframes.
• The body turn with the arms changing from front to back and vice-versa are 2 copies of the arms (since I'm using separate bone layers for each arm and the body) with visibility swapping.
• I'm using Vern's master/slave bone control script to keep the bones manageable.
• The hair is dynamic bones.

[LittleFenris]

I also tried rendering a frame as a PNG instead of as Quicktime, and it had the same result. It does NOT occur if I export to Flash.

I would suspect this is because the Flash export keeps everything vector and this is why you don't get the weird glow around the shadow areas in the hair. When you export a PNG or QuickTime it gets rasterized and needs pixels to be placed. I think the double resolution trick might make the problem a lot less apparent once its scaled back down to the size you need it to be because the extra resolution will give AS more precise control on where it puts pixels.

[Touched]

Well, the thing is, if I export to SWF, then import into Flash and export to MOV from Flash, I don't get that effect.

[LittleFenris]

I guess Flash is doing a better job when it's placing the pixels in the rasterized QuickTime movie than AS is doing.

[Touched]

Here's for Genete and anyone else who was curious about my setup. This shows the layers expanded, and the bones of the head.

http://drowtales.com/~whiteradish/temp/setup.jpg

[Genete]

Here's for Genete and anyone else who was curious about my setup. This shows the layers expanded, and the bones of the head.

http://drowtales.com/~whiteradish/temp/setup.jpg

Thanks for share Touched.

Although it is offtopic I can see some custome tools installed in the main Draw toolbox and a new ToolBox called Keyframes... It could be a good thing that someone make a good toturial in the Script section to install other tools in the way you have them. Every new script tool that I install is putted always into the "Others" toolbox pallete...

Regards
-G

[Touched]

I assembled this custom toolbar by editing the "_tool_list.txt" file. Here is mine, so you can try it out. The tools appear in "Others" only if they're not assigned to another group specifically. Since I assigned all mine (and created a new group for some of them), the "others" group did not get created.

http://drowtales.com/~whiteradish/temp/_tool_list.txt

[Genete]

I assembled this custom toolbar by editing the "_tool_list.txt" file. Here is mine, so you can try it out. The tools appear in "Others" only if they're not assigned to another group specifically. Since I assigned all mine (and created a new group for some of them), the "others" group did not get created.

http://drowtales.com/~whiteradish/temp/_tool_list.txt

Thanks. I'll try it tomorrow...

[Touched]

Here's a little progress update:
http://drowtales.com/~whiteradish/temp/ ... 3-7all.avi

Faen's still not in it, but Ariel acts some more.