Moho Animation Forum

I was wondering if it is possible to use switch layers faster than the one second timeline rate? Say a half a second. I know I can increase the frame rate to 30 frames a second, but that's not what I mean. Please advise.

half a SECOND? or half a FRAME? :S
there's no such thing as half a frame. If you want a switch at half a second, at 24fps (for arguments sake) thats a switch every 12 frames.

You really seem to be confusing yourself with things... don't take this badly but, have you read the manual?

SCs3000 wrote:I was wondering if it is possible to use switch layers faster than the one second timeline rate? Say a half a second. I know I can increase the frame rate to 30 frames a second, but that's not what I mean. Please advise.

Maybe you should tell us what visual effect you are trying to achieve? A faked motion blur, perhaps?

First off I want to thank everyone for trying to help me out. I have a theory about using actions with switch layers. I have done some still animation with wings in a regular video program. The frame rate is .3 to .5 = 90 to 60 frames a second. This is so the wings move smoothly. I have a test animation below, but it choppy due to the cut down rate in Youtube. Back to my theory. I believe it maybe possible to increase the number of images within a second if you create an action and run that action on a timeline over a path. Of course this is probably wishful thinking on my part, but hey it was worth a try. Of course I could do something really crazy and increase the frame rate to 48 per second then create an action at that rate and then use it in at 24, but it will probably crash the system. I know I can decrease the number of images and blur them slightly, but I'm trying to avoid that for right now. http://www.youtube.com/user/sgcollinsfilms?blend=2&ob=5

what you are trying to achieve is technically impossible. Your frame rate is NOT .3 or .5 - it is 90fps (!) or 60fps... are you trying to achieve something that has NEVER been done before? an effect you've never SEEN anyone else do?

full HD is 30fps - so any effect you've seen on a HD video can be achieved with only 30 frames per second, there's no such thing as half frame increments - even at 60fps that's 60 FRAMES per second, not half a frame per second at 30fps (its like saying if you copy a 100x100 pixel image into a 50x50 canvas you will get .5 pixels as a result, but you won't, it will squish the pixels down and approximate what should go where to result in single whole pixels.

look at HD footage of a butterfly - thats still 30fps... i think there's a flaw in your theory. Often people shoot 60fps so that they can make it last 2 seconds and get a .5 speed slow motion effect at 30fps...

I know it may sound strange but here is a clip from the program 0:00:04. The 0 in bold is one second or one frame. The animation runs at :04 th of a second rate. Weird right. I know I'm asking too much, but thank you for your time. This helps me a lot as to the capabilities of the program. Thank you so much.

I do not think frames come in fractions. Its not the frames that are shortened, its the time. If I want to shoot something in slow motion I increase the frames per second and slow it down in an editor. A frame is a unit, a snap shot, there is no half of a snap shot, but you can take that snap shot and have it shown for a second or a millisecond, all depends of what you are tying to do.

You are correct. It is a millisecond. I didn't explain it correctly.

Maybe its just a misunderstanding of terms? I'm still not sure wether I understand what you want, but I'll give it a try.

Frame rate: that's the basic pace of any video. It is constant through the whole video, therefore 1 frame is the smallest unit of animation. It is a good idea to stick to standard frame rates, like 24, 25 or 30 fps, expecially if you want top distribute over youtube. (I'd recommend vimeo for better image quality.)

Very fast movements: in life action, any bold movement which happens in just a few frames will cause motion blur. In animation you have to add this manually, with more or less satisfying results. Motion blur works best with realistic material, as in CGI animation or VFX.

In more cartoony animation motion blur is not really convincing (it breaks the style), so the aniamtors developed two other techniques.

One is the distortion of shapes. Think life action motion blur, but then in a drawn fasion. Jim Tyer was a master of it, see http://joelbrinkerhoff.blogspot.com/200 ... smear.html for an example: the head turn happens in only 1 frame, so to indicate the motion the artist distorts the face and even smears some parts like it would happen in life action. (Another example with video: http://klangley.blogspot.com/2009/05/ji ... chase.html)

The other trick is to draw multiple images in one frame. I couldn't find any example online, so here's one of my scenes:

As you see, I've crammed 3 drawings in just 1 frame (#6) to "guide" the eye in the very fast movement from #5 to #7. The result is a very dynamic movement, see here: http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/metzger_small.mov

That is a great example. Thank you so much for explaining that. I am using png files from a real butterfly so I'm going to try the blur motion and cut down the number of wings for a test.

great butcher slowtiger

Yeah SCs3000 - you're confusing frames and seconds as terms. And that 'milisecond' number is usually a frame number - in audio and video production programs that last number isn't 'miliseconds' but frames, you'll see it will count up to whatever your framerate is before a second goes up - so 24/25/30 usually.

I guarantee whatever you're trying to achieve can be done more simply by following tried and tested methods

Thanks for the tips and advise everyone.

I've found that website again: http://animationsmears.tumblr.com/ collects stills with those "cheat" techniques for creating really fast movements.

Have a look, and compare to the relatively stiff drawings we do here with AS. I'd really like to see some really fast and distorted stuff made with AS.

cool post tiger... maybe it will be easier now in as using transparent gradients on a single smeared frame to create a less 'solid block' effect (although many of those examples are solid blocks too - and that's the way I've stretched stuff)

Great website slowtiger. Thanks