Greetings. I am trying out TBS 4.0 and ASP 5 at the same time. My first impression is that TBS is MUCH better, starting with the look and feel (and the fact that you can actually use hotkeys, which doesn’t seem to be the case in ASP 5?)…
I’ve read quite a few of the tutorials (printed out most of JK’s to refer back to…), but I really need a little step by step guidance to get me started… For example, I’m simply trying to create a very simple Keyframe animation. I drew a small un-filled circle in frame 1. I extended it to frame 10 in the exposure sheet. I “duplicated” frame 10 to make it “separate.” I then created a new keyframe on frame 1, then on frame 10. Then I used the Sceneplanning “Scale” tool to make the circle much larger in frame 10. Then I right clicked the area in between in the timeline and “set a non-constant segment.” I’m not sure how much I had “highlighted” before doing so.
What did I NOT do, or what do I need to do next/differently?
Thanks!
PS: As I’ve seen some other folks say in other posts, "Please respond as if I’m a complete dummy. You will not offend by doing so! Ie. "click this, highlight that, shortcut key 9, etc. Thanks!
Did you test the animation and did it work as you expected? Based on what you wrote that you did, it should have worked with the circle growing in place from original size to the larger scaled up size.
You did not need to do the step where you duplicated the cell at frame 10. It would have worked exactly the same with just the one cell extended for 10 frames. You are animating the scale of the circle on your one cell. That’s the essence of keyframes, they are how you animate parameters like scale or rotation or location or skew etc.
To set the non constant segment you did fine as long as you did so between the two keyframes. I normally go to the starting keyframe to set the segment but it doesn’t matter, the segment is defined by the starting and ending keyframes of any specific parameter type so it can be set anywhere in between those two keyframes. The only way you could have not gotten the segment set to non constant would have been if you tried to set it with a tool like the rotation tool or the motion tool or the skew tool active. Those tools wouldn’t set a segment for scale keyframes, but the scale tool, the transform tool or even the select tool would have all worked to set the scale keyframe segment. -JK
JK, thanks for the quick response. No, it didn’t work as intended. I probably left something out in my previous explanation of what I did, so I tried it again and documented my steps. They are as follows:
1) opened TBS
2) drew small circle near left edge of grid
3) in exposure sheet, used “R” shortcut 7 times
(extended to a total of 8 frames)
4) in timeline view, right clicked frame1 and addded keyframe
5) clicked on “last frame” arrrow to go to last frame
6) hit the “I” shortcut to add keyframe to last frame
7) clicked on the “select” arrow button to de-select the ellipse tool button which was still highlighted
8) clicked on “last frame” arrow again
9) from the menu, chose Tools…Sceneplanning Tools…Scale
10) clicked on the small circle and made it much larger
(last frame, frame 8, is still highlighted…)
11) chose a frame between the two keyframes, right clicked and chose "non-constant…"
12) when I go back to frame1, the circle is now large
Did I miss a step somewhere? Do something in the wrong sequence? I read in many places that you have to be in Camera View to do certain things…I never switched to that view…Should I have done so?
Thanks again!
Bryce
PS: Why did my “8)” above become a smiley face?!
Yes, you are missing a simple but critical concept which is easy to fix in your next attempt.
At step 4 you said but you neglected to identify the “active” tool. If for example you were in drawing view with the ELIPSE tool selected then you never actually set a keyframe because you didn’t have a keyframing tool active.
Here is the important concept. TBS uses tools in a very intelligent way. Not only are tools used to manipulate objects they are also “switches” that tell the software to address specific parameter type values. The only keyframing tools are the TRANSFORM (7) tool, the ROTATION (8) tool, the SKEW tool, the SCALE (9) tool and the MOTION (0) tool. Each of these tools has a specific purpose besides just basic object manipulation.
The TRANSFORM (7) tool is the universal all purpose keyframing tool, it is used to set all keyframe value types and is the tool you will use most often when keyframe animating.
The ROTATION (8) tool is used for one of two purposes: to set the objects rotational pivot point for the entire scene or to allow you to operate on just rotational keyframes that are combined with other types of keyframes on the same frame. Think of this as a surgical tool. You want to go in and just delete a rotation key that is on the same frame with a scale key and a location key without disturbing those other keys. If you used the TRANSFORM tool as your active tool and executed the delete keyframe command you would delete all the keys that are set for that element for that frame. But if you used the ROTATION tool as your active tool and executed the delete keyframe command you would only delete the rotation key for that element for that frame and not have any effect on the other keys set for that element for that same frame. This is true for copying, deleting, pasting, and setting segments. The active tool controls which key type or types are effected by the action. So you choose your active tools for a specific reason not just to manipulate an object.
The SKEW tool is like the ROTATION tool it is only used to set a skew pivot point for the entire scene or to control access just to skew keyframed keys. As a side note: you can only have either a rotational pivot point or a skew pivot point for the same element on a single peg. If you need both for the same element you must use two pegs. The integrated element peg and a parent peg element.
The SCALE (9) tool is for setting the scale pivot point and for animating the scale of an element. As well as pin pointing actions only to scale keys.
The MOTION (0) tool is for creating and animating motion paths.
So now that you clearly understand the relationship of the active tool to the setting of keyframes, go back and try to create your animation again. And keep asking questions, because your questions are helping other people who read these posts to learn as you learn.
JK,
Read your reply, and it seemed to click for me. Went back and tried it; still no luck. Here’s what I’m now seeing:
(From my earlier post…)
1) opened TBS
2) drew small circle near left edge of grid
3) in exposure sheet, used “R” shortcut 7 times
(extended to a total of 8 frames)
*** 3.5) from the menu, selected Tools…Sceneplanning Tools…Transform
4) in timeline view, right clicked frame1 and addded keyframe
*** Repeated step 3.5
5) clicked on “last frame” arrrow to go to last frame
6) hit the “I” shortcut to add keyframe to last frame
*** Repeated step 3.5 again
Thought now would be the time “go to frame 8” and “transform” the circle into a larger circle…The problem is that I have the “ellipse drawing cursor” at this point, so it doesn’t let me select the existing ellipse and make it larger. When you said that I had “neglected to identify the active tool,” what did you mean? Does my step 3.5 above “identify the active tool?” Thanks again! Bryce
I use the term “active” to denote that a particular tool is currently chosen to be used. Basically in TBS when you use the menu to choose a tool or you use the tool palettes to choose a tool, or you use a keyboard short cut key to choose a tool, that chosen tool becomes the active tool and remains the active tool until you choose a different tool.
TBS has two major working environments: The drawing board environment and the animation camera stand environment. We refer to them as drawing view and camera view. Drawing view is for drawing cells to be used to create pictures for our animation work. Camera view is for compositing cells into pictures (frames) and to “shoot” the actual animation.
Animation is created by producing incremental changes between pictures in a sequence. Incremental changes between pictures can be produced either by slight variations that you create by drawing successively different cells. Or incremental changes can be produced by relative positional changes between picture elements. The first approach is often referred to as hand drawn animation. It can be full animation or limited animation. The creation of positional changes among picture elements is often referred to as animating with the camera or using the functionality of the camera stand. In computer animation the camera and camera stand (camera view) are controlled by the use of keyframes of various types and interpolation between keyframes called tweening.
I could have just said “when you are working with keyframes and keyframing tools you have to switch to camera view” but I think it is better to learn to understand the physical world to virtual world metaphor behind what we are doing with the software.
Let’s recap the process:
Step 1:
We want to start our animation in drawing view (on our drawing board) where we will create a drawing on a a virtual cell. (A real cell is a sheet of very thin clear plastic on which we draw and paint images.) In this case it is a simple drawing of a circle.
Step 2: We have decided that we want to animate our drawn circle using the camera stand so we move from our virtual drawing board (drawing view) across our virtual studio to our virtual camera stand. (we switch to camera view). Now we place our virtual cell drawing on to a registration peg bar so that we can positionally animate it. (in TBS the registration peg bar is integrated into the drawing element and is called a peg).
Step 3: We need a way to communicate the camera stand operational instructions and camera movements to our virtual camera person so they can shoot the animation sequence. (we use the combined exposure sheet and timeline, the top and side view pantographs, the function editor and the scene operations tools to produce keyframes to communicate these instructions to the render engine which is our virtual camera person.)
Step 4: We go to either the timeline or the exposure sheet and make a notation that we want to use a single picture element and a single cell that will be held (repeatedly photographed) for 8 consecutive frames.
Step 5: We go to the first frame we will “shoot” and using the transform tool we set a keyframe instruction that shows the camera operator where to start filming our single cell drawing.
Step 6: We move on our timeline instruction sheet to the eighth frame in the sequence and still using the transform tool we set another keyframe instruction that tells the camera operator to change the reference positon between the camera and the artwork to give the appearance that the size of the artwork has grown. (scaling is really just moving the camera closer to the art work to make it appear larger). Note: we could also have set this instruction using the SCALE tool.
Step 7: We go to our timeline instruction sheet and we make a notation for the camera operator that they should transition the camera movements between the starting camera position and the ending camera position as specified in our keyframed instructions so that the incremental changes in its position are evenly distributed moves. (we set a non-constant segment between our scale keys which is this instruction and the default way to execute this instruction is to use a linear function for the incremental change distribution, a balanced move. We could have used the function editor to specify a different incremental change distribution but we didn’t in this case.)
That’s it. So now we tell the camera person that it is OK to shoot us a test of the sequence and we watch the test to see if we set up the shot correctly. -JK
JK,
To quote from your last reply…
"Step 2: We have decided that we want to animate our drawn circle using the camera stand so we move from our virtual drawing board (drawing view) across our virtual studio to our virtual camera stand. (we switch to camera view). Now we place our virtual cell drawing on to a registration peg bar so that we can positionally animate it. (in TBS the registration peg bar is integrated into the drawing element and is called a peg)."
I had not switched to the camera view at this point in the process in my previous attempts…Problem solved! I can now make my circle grow and move smoothly from frame 1 to frame 8. Very exciting!
At the end of your Step 2 paragraph, you remind that the “…peg bar is integrated into the drawing element and is called a peg.” I must be using the “built in peg” then, because I didn’t do anything to consciously add a peg, right?
Again, many thanks!
Bryce
I appreciate your excellent attitude. I intentionally went the long way around just saying switch to camera view because I was hoping that by stressing the metaphor I would not only make things more logical but also begin to help you to have a better foundation on which to approach your next learning efforts in TBS.
Yes the integrated peg is the container for your keyframing instructions, it was a new addition in V3.5. Previously you would have had to attach the drawing element to a peg element before you could use keyframe notation. Which is actually more closely aligned to the physical world methods but the integrated peg is a valuable enhancement.
Sometimes I have been told by people that this is the computer world and we don’t need to know how it would be done in the physical world because this is all virtual. I smile and try to remind people that all software is at some point grounded in automating physical world actions. To avoid the underlying real world model that is the basis for the virtual world implementation is to handicap the learning process. That approach just focuses on blind step by step recipes for doing things. It is the old parable loosely paraphrased “give a person a fish and they can eat today, teach that person how to fish and they will never starve.”
I hope you will continue learning and using TBS as it is fun to use and a great application for the production of animated content. There are plenty of people here ready and willing to help you so just ask questions as they arise. -JK