Scene cut continuity

[Jkoseattle]

I'm sure this is a basic newbie question. I've been working with Moho for about 2-3 weeks now, my first foray into animation, and holy Toledo I'm having a good time....

I have a whiteboard animation project which will have a ton of camera movement and look like a single continuous scene, as if the whole thing were drawn with a single pencil line. Of course I'm actually splitting the project up into multiple manageable scenes, but I'm wondering what's the best practice for ensuring continuity when I break from one scene to the next. For example:

Scene 1, after a lot of camera movements, ends with a line drawing of a horse.
Scene 2 picks up with the same horse in the exact same place, with then more drawing and camera movement, like typical whiteboard animation.

My only thought is to save a copy of Scene 1 and call it Scene 2, then in the new Scene 2 delete everything except what's left displayed at the end of Scene 1 and place it all at Frame 1 of the new scene, and make sure camera movement is included. This seems clumsy, however, and essentially locks me into that placement because if I want to change anything about that horse I now have to re-do this clumsy continuity task in both scenes.

There must be a better way. 'Elp out a poor novice, kind suh?

[hayasidist]

this may help ... viewtopic.php?f=13&t=29996&p=170901

follow the chain of links until you get to the download ..

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or - instead of camera movements, is it feasible for you to move the layer (or group as necessary)?

[Greenlaw]

In addition to breaking out to differenct scene files, I would also break things out in layers using Layer Comps. This will make is a lot easier to manage since you can focus on keeping fewer elements 'in-sync' rather than managing a bunch of stuff in one scene. So long as you keep the camera sync-ed, it should be all good.

This was how I managed some of the longer sequences in HLF. The mechanical heart sequence, for example, is actually about three scenes long, but broken out into maybe a dozen layers and composited as a single scene in After Effects. I just made sure to use the same camera motions for every scene. The key is to lock down your camera choreography using proxies art/layers before you start other animations. A simpler example is the second scene where we move from the street to the bedroom. Ideally, you should not animate the camera it's 'locked' that but it's not too big a deal to copy and paste keys from one scene to another when you have all scenes open at the same time. Alternatively, there are scripts available that will let you export camera paths, and I think there's at least one that will export for AE, if you choose to put things together there instead.

It sounds like the scene you're working on is much longer and needs to be more seamless than the scene in HLF but this should still work.

Side note: At the time we made HLF, we didn't have reference scenes available in ASP. I wonder now if a scene with a camera animation can be made into a reference scene? If that works, it would be the best way to handle this.

EDIT: Nope, just tried it and cameras are apparently not importable objects. Guess I should put in a request for that. In 3D animation, I've often found a need to import camera references, especially when there are multiple animators working on a complex scene. I would use this feature in Moho too if it was available.

[jahnocli]

...cameras are apparently not importable objects...

Didn't someone write a script for this recently?

[Greenlaw]

Oo...that would be awesome! I'm not aware of it but would like to try it out. Ideally, it should work like a reference. That is, edit the master camera scene and all the scenes that use that camera can be updated with a mouse click. Many 3D programs can do that.

[hayasidist]

I did one an export / import camera keys a couple of years back ... http://www.mediafire.com/file/upewb49hw ... ysV320.zip
but I haven't updated it because we can copy / paste keys between docs now --I don't know if it still works for Moho12 (because of the new interpolation options) but if you want to give it a go please do.

[Greenlaw]

Hmm...just for kicks, I tried exporting FBX from Moho. In other programs, I've found FBX is useful for moving a camera between animation and compositing programs. Moho appears to export the camera for other programs but unfortunately there is no way to bring FBX into a Moho scene. So, scratch that.

(FYI, this was the first time I tried exporting FBX with Moho and, FWIW, it appears to have imported the Moho camera perfectly to my 3D program, as well as a null for the layer location. Hmm...this opens some interesting possibilities. And, yes, it would actually be super nice if Moho could import a camera and nulls/locators from another program via FBX too. Guess I better send in this request too.)

[Jkoseattle]

I created a monster made of body parts that are way more advanced with Moho than I am yet. But it was good reading to think "Here is a list of things you have yet to know anything about yet". Thanks for the lesson. I tested out a solution that will work for me for now:

1. Save Scene 1 as Scene 2
2. In Scene 2, copy/paste the last camera-related keyframes to frame 0 and 1
3. Delete every other camera-related keyframe after frame 1
4. Delete every layer that is not on screen at the start of Scene 2

Now good to go making new layers. Even though in my case there's the need for the illusion of a single drawn line, the reality is that Scene 2's vectors are completely different layers from what's left of Scene 1. Makes Stroke Exposure easier that way.

The only real drawback to this method is that the camera probably shouldn't be moving at a scene break. I think it would be too hard to match the motion paths. Shouldn't be too hard to manage that though.

[hayasidist]

another option you may have is to use "camera" motion in your compositor.
e.g.
>in moho export the files without a background (i.e. just the animated lines) (and minimal camera work) as png sequences
>in premiere (IIRC you said you had this?)
-- create a video layer that is your background (e.g. coloured matte) that does not move
-- import the moho output and use the Motion effect on the clips

You can then use Premiere's keying to simulate motion across clips.

(if you need to sync the background motion to the line drawings then a slightly different approach is needed...)

But the principle is the same -- if it's "too hard to do it during production" then do it in post!

[Jkoseattle]

Oh I see, yeah I could do that too. The reason I'd rather not is that camera motion in Moho is a matter of creating keyframes and moving them around exactly like every other element is edited, so there's a single workflow style for everything. I think remembering that I'm going to be doing more motion tracking once I export to another application complicates things making it less fun. At least for the time being. Good to know there are many ways to skin this cat, though. Sort of surprised the problem doesn't have a more tried-and-true solution. Seems like something a lot of people would have to worry about.

[Jkoseattle]

OK, so reviving this thread, as I have a very similar problem with the other project I'm working on.

I'm not thinking about camera movement at this point, but I need my character to be in the exact same position in frame 1 of this scene as he was in the very last frame of the previous scene. What is the best way to make that happen?

[Greenlaw]

Save a copy of your scene, the freeze the last frame of animation and copy that frame to frame 1. Clear the animation after frame one using the Clear Animation From Document After Current Frame command.

If this needs to go into a different existing scene, that is, a scene with a different environment, props, etc., then import this scene to your second scene and select only the character from the import window. This should place only the character into your new scene and leave everything else out. Assuming the format of the second file matches the first, the character should appear in the same position.

That may sound like a lot of steps but it's actually pretty quick and easy when you know what you're doing.

Alternatively, you can add the pose and position of the character to Actions, and then apply the action to the character in another scene. Depending on your setup, that might be more complicated though, and probably not worth it unless this is something you will repeat often.

[Jkoseattle]

Thanks. I'm having trouble with this though. You say to "freeze the last frame of animation", but in the documentation I can see options for freezing points (these are all rigged image layers), and for freezing bones, and for freezing the "pose". Being images, there are no points, so I'm trying to freeze bones and poses, but nothing seems to be working. Also, I have motion paths and and the layer resizes, and as I see it, neither of those things would get frozen if I am choosing some sort of bone freeze.

Is there some documentation somewhere on this specific use case? I've done some searching but coming up empty.

[synthsin75]

Animation>Copy Current Frame

[Jkoseattle]

Sweet! Thank you! I knew it was going to be easy.