Contact Points and Pipeline
The questions as always are these: Which element leads? Where are the contact points? What media will be used?
Usually the prop animation is the first one to be considered. Props either lead the character or are led by the character. As in our earlier discussions, props themselves can become complicated in line mileage and perspective. So using 3D props has become popular.
After considering props, the next factors to consider are the environment and the elements. Most elemental items react to the character; therefore, they follow after the character animation. Even when the environment and elements to do not react to the character, they are still usually done after the character animation so that they do not accidentally obscure the important story points trying to be conveyed in the scene.
The last element that is usually drawn is light. This is the light that is cast upon the characters, props, water, goo, and so on.
Trench Note
You can imagine that after the character animators are done and having their celebratory "animation is done" parties, EFX artists are still bent over their desks working on the light, props, and abstract shapes that are in the very scenes whose "doneness" is being celebrated. The same can be said for the other departments that follow EFX. These departments are referred to as the "back end" of production. At the Disney studio, these departments were called scene planning, scanning, color models, ink and paint, compositing, and final check. The departments and the breakdown of tasks vary from studio to studio. The takeaway here is that the waterfall of "doneness" is never complete until the wrap party.
Industry examples
You do not have to look very hard to find plenty of examples of props leading 2D animation: Futurama, Family Guy, The Simpsons, Lilo and Stitch, Triplets of Belleville, Mulan, Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Sinbad, The Road to El Dorado, Pokemon movies, Macross Zero, and the list goes on and on.
You might have noticed the heavy use of 3D spaceships and environments in Futurama. I’ve had students comment that they did not notice it until taking my class, where they were told to go look. The flat shading and toon shading did not cause the 3D to stand out too much. Other examples that students have commented on include the obvious use in the Family Guy movie, Clone Wars.
Other films have used 3D and you might not have even noticed. Mulan, for instance, used a large amount of 3D for both character and EFX. One complicated shot comes to mind where Mushu is looking for Mulan while riding a shield down a 2D avalanche. The background was a traditional painting. The snow avalanche was done in 2D. In this case, the 2D EFX avalanche was leading, so an animated grid was created to help with the perspective of the sloshing snow. A 3D shield holding a 3D reference Mushu was also created. The 3D shield was the only 3D element that was to be used in the final composite; all else was reference. The Mushu character was so small for some of the shot that they kept the 3D stand-in for that section, much to the happiness of the 3D animator. The 2D avalanche was added along with snow chunks, snow particulates, tones, shadows, and a Hun head. This scene itself was extremely challenging because it contained a traveling pan across so much 2D snow, and this was done before we had Cintiq tablets. Lacking a way to do digital 2D animation meant that a printing/pegging process had to occur so that the 2D animators could use the 3D reference. Because this was a large camera pan, the paper that was used for printing was extremely large: 24 fields, the printing/pegging days. Come to think of it, wouldn’t that be a great shot to re-create as a homework assignment? Note to self: maybe for the advanced version of this class.
Using 3D for props and environments, if not having contact with the 2D character, is relatively easy, and therefore the use of 3D props is widespread. As we have found, once the different elements begin interacting, things take on a bit more complexity. The trick when combining the 3D prop with the 2D character is making sure that their dimensionality matches. Either the 3D prop needs to be flattened visually to match the 2D, or the 2D needs to be made more rounded by using tones and highlights to match the 3D. If the 2D appears to be very flat and the 3D appears very highly rendered and round, the styles may clash 3D vase reference, 2D water, and 2D flowers.
|
3D Background |
Maya |
|
3D Vase |
Maya |
|
2D Water |
Photoshop |
|
2D Flowers |
Photoshop |
|
2D Spark |
Photoshop |
|
2D Fire |
Flash and Photoshop |
|
Ink and paint |
Toon Boom |
|
Final compositing |
Toon Boom |
FIGURE 6.6 Elements from shot 38: temporary 3D background
The pipeline for 3D prop leading 2D is the same as a 3D character with 2D parts. This should begin to be familiar now.
Begin by setting up your camera in the 3D package of your choice and animating the 3D prop. In the example shown in Figure 6.7, you see the camera placed in the 3D room and the keyframes of a 3D vase. This is the shot we were discussing earlier in the industry section of the lecture notes. Clint Donaldson, the director of Jaguar McGuire, did the animation of the 3D vase.
In this example, the render size is HD720, which has a pixel size of 1280 x 720 in Maya’s render settings. Because we are only rendering out a reference image for the 2D animator, we can simplify things by rendering out the vase layer only. Also, the alpha channel is not necessarily needed here. We can add a gray background to the camera’s environment setting so that we do not get a black background.
To set the background to be gray for this reference render, follow these steps:
FIGURE 6.7 Perspective camera viewing animated vase keyframes and render camera viewing animation.
1. In the rendering camera’s viewport, click View > Camera Attributed Editor …. This opens the Attribute Editor for the camera.
2. Open the environment tab and change the Background Color to the desired color.
3. Render a series of images as usual. Remember to select the rendering camera. If you need the alpha channel, then remember to select it, and as we have learned, to keep that alpha channel you will need to create a QuickTime animation compression file. For this example, we do not need the alpha channel, so we will stay with a series of .tif files.
A quick check in Adobe Bridge shows us that the images are rendered correctly: from the right camera, named with frame padding (leading zeros), correct background color, and correct version of animation. We’ve already talked about it before, but I cannot stress enough that it is a great timesaver to check your renders before proceeding. It is an even better work habit to do a spot check on one frame before kicking off a render that might take a long time. Once you lose a couple of hours worth of time to a silly oversight, you’ll start developing “rules you should live by" too. You can share those with us on the website at www. hybridanimation.com. (We haven’t spoken about it in a whole topic!)
2D Animation in Photoshop
Open your .tifseries of images in Photoshop by clicking File > Open …. Select the first image of the sequence and click on image sequence. Don’t forget to set the correct frame rate.
This will automatically create a canvas with the correct image size and load the image sequence into a video layer.
FIGURE 6.8 A reference loaded in as a video layer in Photoshop.
As we have done before, you will want to create a video layer to draw your EFX layers in. We have many EFX elements to draw in this shot: water, flowers, sparks, and flying copper bits. We’ll start with the flowers. If you remember back to our lecture at the beginning of the topic, flowers would come under our solid shapes category.
In Figure 6.9, the vase reference layer is in the bottom layer position. A flower animation layer is also visible. As a note to my students, notice that the flowers are extremely roughed in. This is a great way to animate through your shot quickly so that you can test out various versions or, as was the case with this example, get the animation supervisor’s feedback and approval. A great guideline is to work rough and fast; show early; show often.
All of the flowers were created on one video layer. Was this a great idea? Remember that the video layers will be exported out for ink and paint and compositing. If all of the flowers are on one layer, that makes for one sequence of images that will be inked and painted. It might make inking and painting easier to have the flowers all on one layer, but that makes it more difficult for the animator to keep track of the stems.
FIGURE 6.9 Rough pass of a flower animation.
Animating using video layers sometimes causes bad habits of putting elements all in one layer. It is quite common for elements to appear on one layer and then move to another layer so that they have proper leveling. Ultimately, do what is right to get the proper animation, but keep in mind how the leveling is going to happen during compositing. Keep those x-sheets handy. As you gain more experience with creating shots, you’ll start to see how to break apart the levels.
Once the flower’s rough animation was approved, a more polished version of the animation was completed.
FIGURE 6.10 Final animation of flowers.
A special note on animating in Photoshop: in shot 39, the timing of the vase movement was worked out in Maya, and that dictated the main movement of the 2D flower and water elements. The water element was easy enough to animate in Photoshop because it was mostly animated straight ahead. Animating pose to pose in Photoshop is difficult when using video layers. It can be done, or the animator can choose to use the older method of animating in Photoshop: using the frame method versus using video layers. Why is it difficult to animate using video layers? When there is a keyframe on frames 1 and 7 and you want to create a breakdown on frame 5, all of the other blank frames on the video layer get in the way of rolling through your animation (see Figure 6.7). For animators that like to flip back and forth between the drawings instead of using the onion skinning, the blank frames can cause the eye to lose where the previous drawing was. It is still possible, with some duplicating of layers, to use a familiar flipping or rolling method.
The following method can be employed when doing cleanup in Photoshop or animating pose to pose:
1. Draw the first and second keyframes in a video layer, as we learned in previous topics.
2. Duplicate the layer.
3. In the timeline, open the layer and notice the blue boxes on the altered video line. You cannot move these keyframes (drawings), but you can move the duplicate layer itself so that the keyframes line up where you want them visible.
4. Repeat as needed so that you can see your keys in the correct order to roll or flip the images as desired while you draw the needed breakdown drawing.
5. When you are done, delete the duplicate layer(s).
In Figure 6.11, three flower keyframes have been drawn. The layer has been duplicated and moved so that the two keyframes show up at the same time. In order to roll the drawings, the duplicate would be moved back one frame in time.
To flip or roll images has a different definition based on what studio/country one is in. In some U.S. studios, to flip images means the animators stack their papers in such a way as to look at the first key, look at the breakdown that they are currently drawing on, and then flip back a page to the second key. It is called flip because you end up flipping forward and backward to see the motion. To roll, in the United States, is to stack the papers in order and to roll through the frames with the first key on the bottom, the breakdown on top of that, and the second key on top. Depending on one’s dexterity, one can roll up to five drawings at once. These terms have to do with paper and what one has to do in order to keep the drawing one is currently adjusting on top for drawing. In our digital animation pipeline, you will mostly be rolling or you might hear the term scrub (which comes from the digital editing field). However you manage it or whatever you call it, it is imperative for the pose-to-pose animator and the cleanup artist to have the ability to roll through their drawings without seeing the blank inbetweens.
FIGURE 6.11 Using duplicate layers to roll through keyframes without blank inbetweens.
Another type of EFX element that we discussed was abstract elements. Water can fall into this category because it is purely drawn in as an abstraction of its natural form. Liquid, water, and smoke are all abstract elements. Our shot 39 depicts a vase, filled with water, flying through the air. The vase hits the ground and the water splashes out onto an electrical outlet in the wall. The same method of roughing in the animation with video layers was used. You can see an example of the rough and final animation in Figures 6.12 and 6.13. You’ll note that the rough animation is extremely rough, with nothing more than bouncing balls to indicate direction and volume.
FIGURE 6.12 Rough animation of the water in the vase.
FIGURE 6.13 Final animation of the water EFX element.
