Moho Forum

Animating a train is harder than it seems. The fatal flaw in this one that I acknowledge is the soft edge lining. Because i'm using size shifting, the bigger the train gets, the more out of focus the lining becomes, you can see it at the very end of the compartments...I'm going to tweak this and remove the effect from the lining and make it normal...unless anyone knows a better way. Personally the soft edging attributes to the "grit" of my world.

Anyways...this isn't done by any measure. I'm gonna stick some rats and scavengers in there later. In the meantime, here you go.

I'm running off very little sleep here, and just took a quick glance so I'm sure I either haven't thought it all the way through or not quite picturing the techniques at play...

Couldn't you work backwards and establish a soft edge that looks good in the foreground and then size it back down? I apologize, I'm not sure what technique "size shifting" is. I'm supposing a increasing the scale of the layer? Maybe what I'm suggesting wouldn't work with what you're doing.




Anyway, I'll look at it again later. Nice work though, I like the gritty style.

size shifting, scaling, it's exactly how it sounds. I just have a convoluted way of talking, like a pretentious douche.

I recognize that with soft edge and scaling there are two ways to go about it. The first way, You can scale it as the simple shape (by pressing S) you have selected which will directly effect how blurry the effect will become, for instance, if you scale it bigger, it'll come in clearer like the front of the train, but if you scale it smaller, it'll be out of focus like the back. But, what confuses me is that I didn't scale the back, I just dragged the points backwards, so I fail to recognize their incentive to do that. It's weird.

The other way is to scale as a layer (by pressing M) which shouldn't effect the outcome effects on the lining, as it's the first way that in the end determines it's final outcome.

You see, it's like working with masking. You think you got it figured out and then the rules seem to just change on you and you have to figure it out all over again. (or is that just me?)

sargumphigaus wrote:You see, it's like working with masking. You think you got it figured out and then the rules seem to just change on you and you have to figure it out all over again. (or is that just me?)

It's not just you. I don't care how simple the tutorial or the explanation, I will never, ever understand masking.

The amount it gets blurry is almost unnoticeable and most would certainly chalk it up to a stylistic choice. I think you're in the clear.

Mostly I was just happy that nothing in this will send me back to the sanitarium.

Danimal wrote:Mostly I was just happy that nothing in this will send me back to the sanitarium.

All in good time, Mister Danimal, all in good time. Wait till you meet the character Snatch. You'll never sleep again...hopefully

See, this is where I'm confused. Which scale technique are you using?

Also, this sounds backwards to me. The layer scaling tool should scale everything in the layer, including line width, where as shape scale should leave your line widths intact. Layer scale is like blowing up a picture, and if there's blurring of edges in the small version, that blur will just get larger. The whole thing about scaling vectors is that there is no resolution loss, so whatever line style you have will remain constant regardless of the size of the shape. That means a line width 5, blurred 10, will still be width-5, blur-10 no matter how big the shape gets. Of course the visual output will look different, because your overal ratio of line to shape size have changed.

Anyway, these things I'm sure you know, just talking through my confusion. Maybe still I'm not sure what process you're using, or the way the images are set up to begin with. Is the train car itself a shapes drawn in a vector layer?

**EDIT**

Just re-read your post, and I think we're just using different terms to talk about the same thing, (or rather, using the same terms but in reference to different elements.)

yeah, it's very weird to explain. The train consists of 8 or so layers, and it's all contained in a folder labeled "Master Train" and I just take that and layer scale it. Scaling the entirety of the layer should have absolutely no effect on the resolution, and yet for some reason it does. It's clear in front, but gets blurry in the back. I can't get my head around it.

On another note, when I tween it from point A to point B, I set the tween option to "Linear" so it doesn't ease in and out, and yet when I scrub the timeline, the thing bumrushes in and slows to an absolute crawl at the end, fulfilling the function of everything BUT linear.

This isn't the first time the program acted completely weird on me. And i know for a fact that it won't be the last.

sargumphigaus wrote: You think you got it figured out and then the rules seem to just change on you and you have to figure it out all over again.

Totally agree with you on this one. So far my limited use of masking has yeilded the results I expected, but then again I haven't tried to get too fancy with it either.

On the other hand the lines issue with point vs. layer scaling thing is what led me to exploring 3D alternatives in the first place and, as I think you saw from some of my own posts, comes with a whole new set of odd rules. Overall I'm finding that with either technique, and whatever style you choose, outlines in general start to become their own kind of nuisance when trying to deal with extreme movements. It's no wonder that so many of the more high quality looking works I've seen people put together have either omitted outlines entirely, or have avoided using extreme perspectives or single layers to create depth.

As for the train: it looks to me like the line size and blur looks acceptable up to the 3 second mark, where the leading corner of the train hits the left edge of the screen. But then the problem starts. The fact that the first car edge scales more and more as the second car finally comes into better view you see the distict difference in width and blur.

My 1st suggestion: (and this assumes that the train is made of Car 1, and essentially a copy Car 2 doing exactly the same thing) I would figure out the final position of Car 1, How large are you going to be scaling the thing? And create a line width and blur that looks good at that place, and then Adjust the width and blur of Car 2's lines such that it matches the look of the tail end edges of Car 1. Then scale both back to their starting sizes and positions.

My 2nd suggestion: Actually not a suggestion, as I started thinking about how to explain it my head started to hurt
Anyway, it involved setting the camera at a slight rotation (and probably redrawing) to create a form of forced perspective. As the object "grows" the "closest" lines would actually be moving farther from the camera.
I'm thinking that's too much effort and would require a LOT of testing before it was even close to the desired result.

Yup.

The train is being scaled way way too big for the camera and it's really going into the gross details of the soft edge stroke. I should of realized this right away...I'm better than this...self doubt...self loathing....ok, now i'm better. but anyways....I highly doubt anime studio was designed to advocate the style I'm developing, and the circumstances are extraordinarily rare for anyone to have done what i'm doing with this train with aforementioned effects. Goes with the territory I suppose.

So here's what I did. I threw together a second square with the soft edge setting down to 2 whereas everything else is set at your standard issue 8. I used this new piece of the side to patch over the back of the train that is too blurry, and took the original blury stroke and adjusted the line width to 0. BAM! problem solved. no Blurry stroke, no more problem. There is an issue where the fill spills into the scenery, might cover it up with a masking layer, but in all probability, the grain effect seems to make it impossible to notice. As Mister Danimal said, i'll probably just chalk it up as a stylistic choice.

ddrake wrote:Totally agree with you on this one. So far my limited use of masking has yeilded the results I expected, but then again I haven't tried to get too fancy with it either.

Masking is a punk. there is no doubt about it, but worth the struggle, it is easily the most effective thing I've ever used with this program. And in the strangest and most unlikely scenarios ever. For instance, the shading on that yellow line bleeds into the ground level of the platform due to it being a highly set level of soft edge, but when I duplicate the yellow line and turn it into the mask, the shading layer isn't even visible beyond it. This is how I approach my shading, especially with narrow segments. It's subtle, but I think it's extremely effective. Don't let masking kick your ass man, it'll pay off in the end, and you'll see epic doorways open up. Just keep messing around with it until it makes sense, and move all your fragile desk things out of reach. You will throw them at a wall in frustration.

I look forward to seeing this finished. Man, I just really dig your style. Love the tone and atmosphere you always create.

Since you spend so much work on this: maybe you could also correct the perspective on the bottom of train windows?

slowtiger wrote:Since you spend so much work on this: maybe you could also correct the perspective on the bottom of train windows?

Absolutely. Those train windows are all wrong. First, they're way too high up. It makes no sense that they're set higher than the door. And the the perspective definitely can always use tweaking, especially in this one specific shot, where everything is depth of field and whatnot. I've made adjustments, will make more.

This is an interesting animation problem. I think the apparent non-linear speed in your video might be related to the perspective issue. Because of the perspective vanishing point, the same length of train track will appear much larger in the foreground than it will appear in the background. Since linear interpolation will be based on the size of the object, not the simulated size of the object with respect to perspective, it will appear to move faster when it's further away and appear to slow as the object moves closer to the foreground on the perspective grid. If you have a perspective grid set up, you can figure out equal lengths of track as simulated in perspective for each part of the train and manually key to that. Or you can eyeball it until it looks right.

You can kind of see in this example how the train cars are significantly shorter looking when they are further away, but it's simulating train cars that are approximately the same length and height: http://www.dragoart.com/tuts/15619/1/1/ ... -train.htm

the train consists of 4 carts, the issue at hand is that first one goes by in 3 frames, way too fast then makes no transition whatsover into the slowing down. I fixed this by simply deleting the first cart. Everything else fell directly into place.

Okay, I fixed it up. all better.