Hierarchy, Substitutions & Bitmap Graphics

Hey there folks. I’m currently working on an animation project of my own that I plan on publishing on the web when finished. I’ve purchased Animate 2 some time ago and watched several great tutorials on the software but I still have a few questions that I don’t understand or haven’t seen covered. Right now I’m still in the script writing stage and haven’t jumped knee deep into Animate 2 but soon will be. Before I settle on an art and animation style I’d like to know the following:

Hierarchy& Substitutions

Let’s say I have a character that starts with a standing pose and then draws a pistol. I know that I could use substitutions to change the open hand into one grasping a weapon and animate it that way.

1. Is that the best way to add props to a character animation?

2. Can adding or subtracting a new object to or from the puppet rig hierarchy be part of the animation?

3. If I use substitutions to put the weapon in the characters hand should it be a separate object in the holster and then deleted once the arm is in the proper position to switch to the grasping hand/pistol substitution?

4. What do you do when you want something to be temporarily attached to parts of the character? For example, the character is pushing a car or picking up a heavy object.

Bitmap Backgrounds

I remember reading the post, “Best frame rate for animation to DVD?” a few months back about someone having, lag or sluggish playback issues in their finished .swf. Apparently the reason was that he was using QuickTime video within the swf. Another poster went on to say that bitmap images and video are loaded in as separate layers within the file and will cause the slow playback issues.

In my project I wanted to use a combination of flat color, vector based props and characters with puppet rigs. I also wanted realistic painted bitmap backgrounds. The finished movie would be available as an .swf for viewing in web browsers as well as a QuickTime file that can be downloaded.

I’m aware that I have to be conscious of pulling in with the camera because of pixilation issues that will arise with the bitmaps once they’re enlarged. From other things I’ve read the number of special effects and symbols used in the scene can also bog things down.

4. Using the aspects I just mentioned will I encounter any sluggish playback issues simply by using bitmap backgrounds? I’ve seen this combination used often in many animated films so if there is an issue how are they able to pull it off? Based on what I read earlier I’m guessing the Quicktime version wouldn’t have a problem but the .swf version might?

5. Is there any way to know when to limit the number of effects you have going on in a scene other than trial and error if you are having sluggish playback issues?

Cool… thanks for the reply. I think this is going to be a bizarre mixture of frustration and fun until these techniques are second nature.

I get what you mean about a hand held substitution for a weapon but what about a larger object that you want the character to temporarily stick to?

I guess what I’m looking for is a way to link and move two separate objects at the same time. For example, pushing a boulder where you want the hands and rock to move with the ik chain? Would you still use a substitution for something like this or just animate without worrying about ik?

What if I wanted the character to jump on top of a mount… would you handle them as two separate characters?

Can pegs be linked so that you can move two objects at once if the horse and rider were animated together?

"What you can also do is you can have a second Horse layer that is a child of your Legs layer (or your hips layer, or your character master layer, whatever makes sense - depends on your hierarchy) then only have the exposure on this layer on when the character is on the horse. Then you can animate them together but still be able to animate them independently. Does this make sense?"

Sweet… yea I think I understand what you’re saying. It didn’t occur to me that I could just turn off the layer and hide assets that I didn’t want animated. Thanks again.

Interesting questions.

I’m just going to answer your first series of questions in one answer, since I think they’re all related.

Props:

You’re on the right track with the drawing substitution. When you have a prop or an object that is interacting with a character’s hands, you still need to have a separate prop layer for when you want that prop to animate on its own, but you will also need a drawing substitution on the character’s hands when it’s holding the object.

What you do is you simply will use drawing substitution to swap to the frame that has the character holding the object, just like you said. Then you would go to the prop layer and delete the exposure on that layer while it’s in the character’s hand. Simply select the cells whose exposure you want to delete and hit “Delete”.

This is indeed something that is temporary, or animated, depending on which drawing substitutions you have active. You only will swap for the duration of frames where you want the character to be holding the object.

SWF Export:

The limitation in SWF format is due to the way that the format works, and is not something that we can control. Because SWF is a vector format, and because every time you load a frame it has to load the individual layers and effects on each frame, it can slow down when there’s a lot of information to load.

It’s true that you will not have these problems with the Quicktime export, since in that format regardless of the contents of your scene, those contents are baked out to a single flat bitmap image for each frame of the Quicktime file.

You can also try using FLV export if you want viewing on the web.

I suggest that you do a few sample scenes with the correct number of drawing layers and effects and test out how the swf export goes.

~Lilly

Well it depends on whether you want the two to be stuck together or whether you want them to be able to move independently. With something like pushing a car, I would still do this as a substitution. You could even get away with it with a horse, but you might want to have movement between the character’s legs and the horse - it depends on your style.

What you can also do is you can have a second Horse layer that is a child of your Legs layer (or your hips layer, or your character master layer, whatever makes sense - depends on your hierarchy) then only have the exposure on this layer on when the character is on the horse. Then you can animate them together but still be able to animate them independently. Does this make sense?

~Lilly

Exactly. Just have the exposure on when you want it on, then have it off when you want it off. :slight_smile: