get jiggly, hand drawn looking lines on a 3D object?

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Sat Mar 27, 2010 9:32 am

My client wants a hand drawn line drawing look for his animation. I have one scene done using the "noisy animated outlines".

In the next scene I decided to load in a 3D object because it would give me the movement I wanted (hammer swinging down). When I render it though, it's a solid black silhouette. This isn't too bad because the whole animation is B&W line drawing, but it lacks the jiggly noisy outlines in the other stuff. Is there a way I can add this type of noisy outline to a 3D object? How can I get it to render outlines only?

Can I render out to a vector format and re-import this?

Do I have to resort to a post process filtering?

Thanks!

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Sat Mar 27, 2010 10:08 am

Unfortunately you can't apply any brush effects or noisy outlines onto an imported 3D object in AS.

Some options you have:
- take the 3D object as a reference and re-animate it with AS' vectors.
- trace the 3D animation in a bitmap program.

But a hammer is a really simple object, and a swing a basic movement - what's so special that you need 3D for it?

Mylenthes · Post by **Mylenthes** » Sat Mar 27, 2010 4:18 pm

Whats with all the spam on the forums?

i mean seriously, yesterday i saw toilet ads now today im seeing toonboom!

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Sat Mar 27, 2010 9:24 pm

Well I don't want to switch to Toon Boom that's for sure. That message didn't even tell me I could do what I want to do in Toon Boom.

SlowTiger: I was looking to get some dimensionality into my animation. Sure, with enough diligence I could do it strictly in 2D, but it would be much more convenient if I could do it in 3D with a 2D hand drawn look. The hammer is at an angle so you an see that it's moving in perspective.

Here are the examples my client sent me. This is the general look he's after:
http://vimeo.com/7723254
http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/

The first one is clearly 3D rendered as 2D. The second is more like typical Anime Studio vector animation. I am trying to do a little of both.

I had thought of tracing the 3D hammer in AS. I may do that, or I may use some post processing filters on it to give it that look.

It sure would be nice if I had more control over the look of the 3D object. Also, exporting and importing vector animation would be nice.

Any hints or tips would be appreciated.

Thanks

Rhoel · Post by **Rhoel** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 8:30 am

Mylenthes wrote:Whats with all the spam on the forums?

i mean seriously, yesterday i saw toilet ads ...

I think they were taking the piss

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Thu Apr 01, 2010 3:34 pm

I finished this project yesterday. I ended up doing some of it in Lightwave 3D with a 2D look using a cartoon shader. It was actually much easier and allowed me to use Lightwave's hard body dynamics to animate a pile of coins being hit by the hammer and bouncing around.

It was supposed to be an animation of a hammer smashing a piggy bank. I used Lightwave for the hammer and coins, and Anime Studio for the piggy bank. I used After Effects to give the Lightwave render a wiggly hand drawn look to match the AS portion.

I think in the future I will only use Anime Studio when I need to do a 2D character with bones and lip sync. It's nice for that purpose, but for a lot of things, it's just not the most effective and convenient software for the job.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Apr 01, 2010 9:37 pm

Always use the right tool for the job. If you really need 3D, use a 3D software. If you need hand-drawn look, use some bitmap animation software, or even pen on paper. My last job I did in TVPaint and AS, just because all camera moves are magnitudes faster to do in AS.

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 4:24 am

Well in this case I needed 3D with a hand drawn look, and it needed to be done quickly, so rotoscoping was out of the question.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:01 am

I remember a job where I had to integrate 3D into some hand drawn scenes. This was in 1996. I had InfiniD and Director and Photoshop. In the end I rendered a wireframe and applied a blur and a noise filter in PS to get something similar to a scanned pencil line.