Bones and dynamics for TVPaint?

[Sewie]

Dear TVP friends,

I don't know if this has ever been suggested in the past, but wouldn't it be a good idea to add a 'bones' feature to TVP? I can imagine that for certain types of animation it would be very efficient to switch between (or combine) a bone-type animation with hand drawn animation. If this could be combined seamlessly and easily into the work flow of hand drawn animation, I think it might be a great addition to TVP.

Combined with a bones feature a natural dynamic feature would be a great addition as well, I think. (fire, water wind, gravity, etc.) I can imagine having a drawn object being dropped with the natural dynamics of gravity on a chosen layer. Or a combination of handdrawn objects being linked through bones reacting to natural elements. For example; the branch of a tree with the leaves, linked to the tree with bones, reacting to the wind. This could easily be animated quickly, and very subtly, with a bones feature combined with a natural dynamics feature. And after having used the dynamics feature one could go back and adjust (or do a further render) of the drawings in the frames if it is needed. Or one could build and animate characters and puppets in TVP and adjust certain sequences of the animation by adjusting the drawings in those frames by hand. I'm just thinking out loud but it could save a lot of time on certain projects. In almost all 3D animation software applications it is a common feature but it's hardly used for 2D animation software, which I find strange.

I don't know if this goes against the philosophy of TVP to, software-wise, specifically specialize in handdrawn animation or not..?

[Mads Juul]

I think Bones could be nice. But how should one Implement a Bones feature in TVPaint. in handdrawn "D Animation. At the Studio I'm working at we are using Flash. for an animated TV Series. To cet the benefit of Vector and Cut out. and also be able to do some handdrawn frame by frame animation. The New Flash has bones feuture. But the animators never use it because it is not flexible its difficult to go from drawn animation to bones animation and back again. In adobe after effects they have made a Effects thats called 'Puppet tool' which I find interesting. And I remember the bones tool in Moho I think its called Animation Studio now was quite impressive.
But how to implement it to make it suit A Bitmap "d Animation Frame by Frame Animation Workflow. I think like an effect you kan put on top of one of your Instances like the 'Puppet tool' in after effects would be best. so you easy could go back to drawn. i think linking different parts to a skeleton is quite tedious in a drawing workflow.

some quick thoughts
-Mads

[Fabrice]

I don't know if this goes against the philosophy of TVP

Nothing goes against our philosophy.


btw, about bones, there is still the CelAction solution :
http://www.celaction.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Fabrice]

(fire, water wind, gravity, etc.) I can imagine having a drawn object being dropped with the natural dynamics of gravity on a chosen layer

nb : did you try the FX particles ? It's partly possible.

[Sewie]

(...) But how to implement it to make it suit A Bitmap "d Animation Frame by Frame Animation Workflow. I think like an effect you kan put on top of one of your Instances like the 'Puppet tool' in after effects would be best. so you easy could go back to drawn. i think linking different parts to a skeleton is quite tedious in a drawing workflow. (...)

I think you are right that switching between a bones mode and handdrawn mode should be very easy and intuitive for it to be practical in a hand drawn workflow. If we can find a way to get the rigging done easily without too much of a hassle between different interfaces, etc. I can see it being very valuable.

Nothing goes against our philosophy.


btw, about bones, there is still the CelAction solution :
http://www.celaction.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have every confidence in the TVP team.
I know about Celaction. I have worked with it in the past. But I was thinking about a way to easily integrate drawn animation and the use of bones animation. In Celaction you can't do drawings. A great benefit of a bones system in a hand drawn workflow could be a natural dynamics feature which could then, for example, be used for the more mechanical parts of the animation, like an objects blowing in wind, or floating on water, or falling realistically with gravity. This would free al lot of time for the animators who can then focus more of their time on character animation.

(fire, water wind, gravity, etc.) I can imagine having a drawn object being dropped with the natural dynamics of gravity on a chosen layer

nb : did you try the FX particles ? It's partly possible.

Yes, I've fiddled with it but I couldn't get it to work. I will dive dive into it a bit deeper soon.

[Fabrice]

Yes, I've fiddled with it but I couldn't get it to work. I will dive dive into it a bit deeper soon.

Ah, I see. Open the particle effect, then just go into the "FX BIN" > Browse. You will find some nice exemples (fire, smoke, fog, etc ...)
Don't forget to set the background to "none".

nb : The manual is explaining all this very well (see lesson 18)

[slowtiger]

Just from my gut feeling I would advise against this ...

As you know, I use AnimeStudio, which is very good with cutout style anymation because of its bone system (and the newest version even has a physics engine). It has its limitations, but overall it's really good with that. If I want bones, I use AS. If I want frame-by-frame, I use TVP.

I just don't like to have the very same features in different programs - that's not the sense of having different programs. I like programs which focus on something.

There's that old argument that this would be oh so restricting to the artist - I don't believe that. From my observations the opposite might be true: a well defined set of tools enforces creativity, but a program suffering from featuritis leads to uniform, bland, uninspired output.

Bones definitely lead to puppetry. Nothing wrong with puppetry, but there's already a plethora of software on the market for that: all 3D packages, AnimeStudio, Toonboom, Celaction, Flash, even AfterEffect now features bones. And in at least half of them the feature is implemented poorly, judging from other user's critique. And adding bones is not enough: you will need to introduce a whole tweening system, bone dynamics, and so on, and then users will complain because they want curves to control the tweening, and so on.

If TVP wants to implement bones, it has to add something to it. I could, right from my foggy brain-before-coffee, suggest some ideas: not just attach single bitmaps to a bone, but well-defined clips - have the ability to easily switch from tweening to frame-by-frame - and so on.

One caveat: Add bones to an animation package, and you will get cutout animation. Bones are tempting, they make work seemingly easy and fast, but lets face it: does the world really need more of those typical AfterEffect animation films? My inner animation lover cringes at the mere thought.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I am in complete agreement with slowtiger and to that I would add only that the thoughts of what could have been improved upon hand drawn ideas each time Herve and team would dig out a new set of old bones would irritate me. There's a good justification for featuritis (if I even understand what that means) it leads to top of the line specialization. There's an old saying that says that having 9 professions leads to the tenth one, which is Poverty. Let's keep TVP specialized and rich!

[Sewie]

I can see what you mean. Of course for this to be of any value to the handdrawn workflow it would have to be executed well. Not just a half measure to add a new half-working feature.
But I can see you point of specialization.

[BenEcosse]

Yes, to bones and dynamics in TVP!

[JohnArtbox]

I'm in the middle of a fairly large cutout animation project where I'm using tvp for all of my preparation and anime studio for the animation, and it's working really well. Unlike most people here I use tvp mostly as a painting/texturing/storyboarding/finishing tool, and I love it. Most of my actual animation time is spent in 3d and compositing software.
And in defense of cutout animation, sometimes it's the most economical way to convey a concept....which ultimately is a lot of commercial work.
At it's simplest level some heirachical composite fx which allowed you to easily move a group of layers/brushes with simple joints(really just rotating, moving and scaling) plus a control (slider?) that let you move through the frames of an external project(for different mouths etc) would be very useful. And as an fx it shouldn't effect the core engine.
As for the painting effects outlined above, you can get some effects approaching these by using particles as a paint medium, but It would be beautiful to have them easier to access, with better controls over the actual stroking.

[Fabrice]

interesting posts