Vern....do you mind if I make an observation about that mov file? It seems to me when you cut to the close up of the guy with the paint on him it looks like a completely different piece of animation because the lines seem to me to be way too thick. This is something that is bothering me about scale compensation. Maybe it could be improved on by a checkbox with zoom line thickness selections, say, from 2 point to 10 point?
D.K
Turning off scale compensation
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
I suppose looking at it now I could scale the line weight down a bit. It depends on the situation and how it looks. I don't have a problem with it. Often scaling the line weight down when zoomed in looks worse.
One thing to add which really doesn't make any difference, the animations in the TV are for the most part from exported movies from other projects. However I did do them originally using imported AS projects. It proved to be and inefficient way to do it because if I edited those other projects I had to reimport them and reposition... it was a pain in the arse so I changed my work flow and imported rendered movies from the "master" projects.
Any changes to those were rerendered and they automatically updated.
Because of this process I HAD to use scale compensation anyway. I was scaling the imported movie files which couldn't have scale compensation off anyway.
-vern
One thing to add which really doesn't make any difference, the animations in the TV are for the most part from exported movies from other projects. However I did do them originally using imported AS projects. It proved to be and inefficient way to do it because if I edited those other projects I had to reimport them and reposition... it was a pain in the arse so I changed my work flow and imported rendered movies from the "master" projects.
Any changes to those were rerendered and they automatically updated.
Because of this process I HAD to use scale compensation anyway. I was scaling the imported movie files which couldn't have scale compensation off anyway.
-vern
I'm having trouble with this line stuff as it is a little new to me and I can only go off what I've observed on Television etc.
Take this still from Spongebob's movie. There are two examples of linework in the one shot that appear to have been scaled differently for both characters. Suprisingly the line work on the king is very light as opposed to Spongebob who's lnes are very thin.
Interesting. This is making me re-think my linework completely.
D.K
Take this still from Spongebob's movie. There are two examples of linework in the one shot that appear to have been scaled differently for both characters. Suprisingly the line work on the king is very light as opposed to Spongebob who's lnes are very thin.
Interesting. This is making me re-think my linework completely.
D.K
For me that image reinforces my original concept. Line thickness defines scale. A small or far away object could have thinner lines than other objects.
It doesn't have to be this way but that's the impression I get. In that image Spongebob is very small compared to the king. His stroke widths are thinner. If Spongebob's strokes were the same as the king character they would overpower the drawing and it would look awful.
I've seen some stuff done in AS where outlines for the background were huge and thick, some characters had thin lines some foreground objects a different weight etc etc. I get the impression that a lot of layer scaling with scale compensation was used without any thought to why or what it's purpose is.
My feeling is there should be some CONSISTENCY to line weights. There should be a "creative logic". If you create a line drawing using a pen or a wacom or a pencil... not an animation... a still drawing, the line weights should be drawn so that the image "looks good". If it looks good in a still then that is how it should look when you animate it or at least try to maintain that relationship. Like a comic book. A comic book "inker" has to draw in a way to create scale and depth using line weight and stroke style. The same applies to animation if you choose a stroked style.
I've been leaning away from stroke styles due to the difficulty of keeping it consistent... not a lacking in the software mind you... a lacking in myself... I'm lazy.
-vern
It doesn't have to be this way but that's the impression I get. In that image Spongebob is very small compared to the king. His stroke widths are thinner. If Spongebob's strokes were the same as the king character they would overpower the drawing and it would look awful.
I've seen some stuff done in AS where outlines for the background were huge and thick, some characters had thin lines some foreground objects a different weight etc etc. I get the impression that a lot of layer scaling with scale compensation was used without any thought to why or what it's purpose is.
My feeling is there should be some CONSISTENCY to line weights. There should be a "creative logic". If you create a line drawing using a pen or a wacom or a pencil... not an animation... a still drawing, the line weights should be drawn so that the image "looks good". If it looks good in a still then that is how it should look when you animate it or at least try to maintain that relationship. Like a comic book. A comic book "inker" has to draw in a way to create scale and depth using line weight and stroke style. The same applies to animation if you choose a stroked style.
I've been leaning away from stroke styles due to the difficulty of keeping it consistent... not a lacking in the software mind you... a lacking in myself... I'm lazy.
-vern
I agree with you on all points Vern. I also think there should be a better way to manage line thicknesses in AS though but i'm not sure how it would be implemented.
For now I am going to create a set of LINE GUIDES as a jpg strip image that I can import into each scene and leave just outside the render area for each scene. This way I will have a visual reference to what weight I want my lines to be for each scene.
D.K
For now I am going to create a set of LINE GUIDES as a jpg strip image that I can import into each scene and leave just outside the render area for each scene. This way I will have a visual reference to what weight I want my lines to be for each scene.
D.K
Great tip.a set of LINE GUIDES as a jpg
I just had the pleasure to see Nina Paley's "Sita sings the Blues" at its world premiere. She created that 82 min long film entirely in Flash, all by herself. (And it's a really good film!)
Interesting bit: her characters where designed in only one size, all together with the same line thickness. And that one line width worked perfectly well in all sizes, from extreme closeup to faraway wide angle.
http://blog.ninapaley.com/
http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/
It looks like an amazing style of animation. Did the extreme closeups have huge line widths or did the lines scale with camera zoom?
Damn. If I had known what the hell scale compensation was, that would have been awesome.
In my Happy Land animation, another of the reasons for me having objects with no outlines was that I knew that having outlines would cause problems with varying sizes of strokes and look nasty. I agree that it would be awesome if there was a way to make sure that ALL layers had one global thickness of outline. Even if the lines didn't have the ability to taper. Having a project with GLOBAL line thickness would be rad. Watch an episode of THE SIMPSONS. They're good with that. Don't know if they did the line thickness the same in THE SIMPSONS MOVIE, but I know they made it in Toonboom. Maybe that app has a global setting?
Although, even in the episodes and the movies, you can see when something doesn't look quite right - like when the camera's zoomed right up to a background element, and then zooms out to the scene - when its zoomed in, the lines look way too thick. When the camera zooms out again it looks right.
If there was a way to make lines ignore camera movements or scale, that'd be cool.
In my Happy Land animation, another of the reasons for me having objects with no outlines was that I knew that having outlines would cause problems with varying sizes of strokes and look nasty. I agree that it would be awesome if there was a way to make sure that ALL layers had one global thickness of outline. Even if the lines didn't have the ability to taper. Having a project with GLOBAL line thickness would be rad. Watch an episode of THE SIMPSONS. They're good with that. Don't know if they did the line thickness the same in THE SIMPSONS MOVIE, but I know they made it in Toonboom. Maybe that app has a global setting?
Although, even in the episodes and the movies, you can see when something doesn't look quite right - like when the camera's zoomed right up to a background element, and then zooms out to the scene - when its zoomed in, the lines look way too thick. When the camera zooms out again it looks right.
If there was a way to make lines ignore camera movements or scale, that'd be cool.
I like that style. If it is "done right" of course. Too thin lines to start with, or too thick. It's important to have it look the way you want it at "100%" scale then you can feel confident it should still look good when scaled up or down.slowtiger wrote:She didn't change any line width, so when it zoomed in, the lines went thicker the same amount the face grew bigger.
-vern