Whenever I try to animate a simple pendulum movement (e.g. a head looking from side to side) the animation comes off as very ‘jumpy’ or ‘off model’, any tips, tricks or exercises on how to avoid this?
This is a bit of a trickier question to answer cos this is one of those things that comes with practice and drawing skill.
This is where you really need to focus on your key drawings and not just animate straight ahead going frame by frame because your character model will get away from you. Draw in your key poses and constantly be flipping back and forth between them, making sure everything is staying in proportion. When you do that, you should be seeing it in motion and if your lines kind of look like they’re bubbling or look jumpy, then it’s easier to fix this now than to do it all and have problems later. Create good solid key poses and fill in the frames in between after.
If it still looks jumpy and you’re doing that, then it may be your timing, which I talk a bit about here: http://tvpaintanimation.tumblr.com/post/11543293921/timing-inbetweens
I hope that helps?? D8
Anonymous asked:
This is probably a dumb question, but I can’t figure it out. -_- Every time I hit “play” to preview my project, it starts playing from the beginning; how can I get it to play from a particular point on the timeline?
Simple enough! Just click on the little arrows next to “mark in” and “mark out” while on the particular point in the timeline you want to play from and it’ll play through the frames that are only between these numbers. 8)
If you want to quickly turn either one on or off but keep the numbers you can click right on “mark in” or “mark out” to toggle those.
Camera Moves
I’ve gotten a bunch of asks about the camera in TVPaint and I’m going to be 100% honest here: I don’t use it.
Again, I am a little limited in that I have an older version of TVP and I hear the newer camera is a lot better, but I much prefer planning out my scenes in a bit more of a traditional sense and then putting it all together in After Effects. I’ve discovered that it’s tricky to keep the image quality in backgrounds when doing camera moves in TVP and you have to flatten the entire animation to make them. I don’t like doing that!! I like keeping layers! With importing it into After Effects, it’s so easy if you want to make a change: you can just re-export your animation and update the file that AE is reading and you don’t have to re-do any animation in your camera like you would in TVP. Plus it really keeps the image quality!
Now again, this is just my personal preference, but this means I’m totally not an expert on the TVP camera hahah D8 TVP has a really great guide on how to use all the tools and it will definitely be able to help you out a lot better than I can! It can be found right here: http://static.tvpaint.com/downloads/manual/tvpa10/manual.pdf
If you would like to give AE a try, I highly recommend the Video Copilot tutorials here: http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/ They teach you all the basic things you need to know!
You are really cool! Have some love! *hugs* And I have a question. It’s silly. I just started using TVPaint anddd… when I import the audio (dialogue), the file is so long, like, on 800 frames? I don’t know how to describe it. :”D Just, how can I make it smaller/shorter? Like, 0,5 sec for one frame or something like that? :”D (You probably don’t understand me. sigh)
It depends on the audio you’re importing! If it’s 33 seconds long then yes, it’s gonna be 800 frames. You can edit it down to what you want using Audacity (a great free sound editing program!) or click and drag the sound waves in the timeline to where you want it to start, and only make the frames as long as you want; you don’t have to use ALL 800 frames. TVP won’t export your animation to the end of the sound, it’ll export to the end of your scene length.
Or if you’re looking to set it to play more of the sound in a frame as you’re scrubbing through to get a better idea of the sound in that frame, you can right click on the sound and go to “Enter audio scrub duration” and adjust it that way!
I know there are more ways to edit sound now in the newer versions of TVP, so I’m afraid my help here is a bit limited. Sorry! I hope you can find this useful though! :)
Anonymous asked tvpaintanimation:
Hey, great site! I have a kinda dumb question.. im using a cintiq and Im sketching a table and wanted to use the straight line tool to make straight lines for the table legs. but when I go from the free line tool to the straight line tool the line is thick and light because I guess the straight line tool doesn’t take pressure into account. is there a way to make my straight lines look the same as they do with my freehand tool? how do you go about making straight lines? thanks!
If you hold down the Shift key while drawing, you can make vertical, horizontal, and diagonal (45 degree angle) lines with pressure but as far as I know there’s no way to simulate pressure with the line tool!
If you hold down Ctrl + Alt, you can rotate the canvas to make it easier to make brush strokes! You can go to View > Reset to get it rotated back. I hope this helps!
EDIT:
I haven’t used TVPaint yet so I don’t know if this helps the previous person at all, but what helps sometimes in photoshop is making a path with the pen tool and then telling it to make a stroke through that path. You can set up pen pressue that way. Again, I’m not familiar with TVPaint so I don’t know if it’s possible or what tools you have available. :0
Hi, I was wondering - is it normal that the quality of your images goes way down during playback? I know that you can change the playback quality; but I turned it all the way up, and it improved, but it’s still significantly worse than the still images. Do you have this problem? Does the quality go back to normal when you export? [I have the trial version so I can’t export] Or is it just my computer being awful? I emailed them and they didn’t tell me anything useful >.>
ahh yeah that’s totally normal! It turns down the quality so that it can play back your animation without lag so you can see it move smoothly. I usually export to a Quicktime to test my animation and the quality is totally fine when you do that. Too bad you can’t export with the trial version though, dang!
Hi there, I’m really glad I found your blog, and you sound really helpful to lots of people :D I was wondering if you could help me on a matter of loading a video in TVPaint, to draw over it. I tried going into the Load… menu, selected my video, made it a new project, and all I get is the sound, with a black image. If you can help soon I’ll be really grateful, thanks in advance c: Have a nice day!
Heya!! So sorry for the late reply, you’ve probably figured it out by now hahah D:> But!! I just tried importing with these settings and it seemed to work for me!
hi!, im now working in a project that involves TVPaint, but im in a trouble, i need to paint the line with a specific color, not black, and all the tools that the software have dont really help me, i wonder if you know how to paint an already drawn line, with a different color, i hope you can answer me, thanks !
Yes indeed!! There’s a transparency lock toggle that’s right here:
In the timeline, under “S”, which stands for stencil. If you click the little box, it’ll turn yellow and this locks the layer, allowing you to colour your lines. If you click the box that appears underneath it, it will inverse the stencil allowing you to paint around/behind your lines!
Also make sure to toggle it back off when you’re done, cos if you leave it on and move to a different layer, you’ll still only be able to draw within the stenciled layer and you’ll be like “WHY ISN’T THE BRUSH WORKING”
Anonymous asked:
I’m currently studying Computer Animation (meaning 3D technical stuff) at university, but am not always a huge fan of it. My passion is for 2D hand-drawn stuff, and I’d like to start trying to get good at this as soon as my course ends. If I want to make a living animating, is this a terrible idea? I know most jobs are in the CGI industry, but the internet seems to be bringing 2D back a little. Do you think it’s possible to do that, or should I consider changing my career aspirations entirely?
This kind of thing is really tough, because.. of course I wanna tell you to go with what you find the most fun and what drives you to create better work. But if you have uncertainty over whether or not you’re going to get a job out of it, well then… I don’t know!! This industry is tough, and it HAS to be something that you enjoy doing. I can’t tell you what the industry is like right now because honestly, it fluctuates like crazy!! There are jobs for everything whatever you end up doing and a lot of it depends on where you live too. So yeah, there’ll always be jobs and if you want to go into 2D after you finish 3D, I’m all for that! This is all completely your decision of course, but it seems like a good idea to me. You might not get another chance to give 2D a try if you get a job in 3D, and then you’ll have knowledge of both under your belt. BUT then again you might get offered a job in 3D and you could end up loving it!! Like I said, it’s your decision.
I’ve said this before, but you can’t get into animation because you want a job. That’s.. kind of crazy haha. You have to do it because you love it!!
