Lock Layer to Camera?

[Greenlaw]

Hi,

I'm helping my 10-year-old daughter Sienna with an animation she's making for a school project. Today she animated a run cycle for a cheetah and she wishes to insert it in a multi-plane environment. I'm fairly new to TVPaint myself and I wasn't sure how to go about it, so I put together a test scene for both of us to learn from.

Anyway, I figured out how to set up and animate the multi-plane camera for the environment, and I added her cheetah animation to the project. The question we're facing now is how to insert her animation between the environment layers and have only the cheetah stay 'locked' to relative to the camera motion.

I'm assuming her animation needs to be added to the mutli-plane camera but then what? Since the cheetah is running 'in-place', we need it to travel with the camera motion. Is it possible to link a plane or layer to the camera so that it moves with the camera?

Sorry, I feel like this is a basic question but it's been a head scratcher today. If I can't figure this out soon, we'll fall back to doing this part in After Effects. But even if we wind up doing that, I'd still like to know how to do this in TVPaint.

Thanks in advance for any tips!

[Greenlaw]

Or, I suppose, I could leave the camera and cheetah in place, and animate the five environment layers together. But if I do that, is there a way to link all five layers so only one item needs to be animated? For example, in a 3D or compositing program, I'd simply parent all the environment layers to a null or locater and animate that, or parent the cheetah layer directly to the camera.

What's the equivalent process or technique for TVPaint?

Thanks for any helpful tips or info.

[NathanOtano]

Hey

Unfortunately this is a feature I often need and its not possible in the current version

I made a little script to do so if you want : viewtopic.php?f=11&t=10735

[Greenlaw]

Hey, thanks for the helpful reply!

I think we'll do it in AE then because we need to get it done quickly, but I'll definitely check out your script once the dust settles. (Actually, I'm already looking at that thread.)

[Greenlaw]

Oh, it just occurred to me that, alternatively, I can render the animated multiplane environment in two passes (FG and BG), and then import those as regular layers in her original cheetah animation project. A little clunky but doable.

(Actually, we already started down the AE path but I'm still thinking about ways to do this for future TVPaint projects.)

[D.T. Nethery]

Oh, it just occurred to me that, alternatively, I can render the animated multiplane environment in two passes (FG and BG), and then import those as regular layers in her original cheetah animation project.

I've done that before . It works.

[slowtiger]

You don't even have to render the multiplane setup. FX always uses projects as source in their actual state of visible/invisible layers.

Try this:
- have animated walk in place in one project, and animated multiplane setup in second project
- in first project, open FX > Keyframer and choose second project as source
- in second project, switch off foreground layers
- in first project, apply FX to empty BG layer
- in second project, switch off background layers and switch on foreground layers
- in first project, apply FX to empty FG layer

[Greenlaw]

Thanks for the tip Slowtiger! That may be what I'm looking for.

Right now we're busy in the middle of her project and she's hoping to finish her character animations this afternoon.

I'll try your technique as soon as I have some time for myself again.

[NathanOtano]

I also do it that ways (render and import or fx) but I found it was more handy to stick it while storyboarding to avoid back and forth and work on just one project, managing interpolation with camera only. Depends on the complexity of the shot
Anyway as long as it works hope your daughter's project is doing good!

[Greenlaw]

Thanks, Nathan! I'll let Sienna know you wrote that. This is her first big TVPaint project and she's very excited about it.

Sienna has been animating since she was six- or seven-years-old, mostly on iPad. Here's what she created last year for the same school competition:

http://littlegreendog.com/2016/11/19/si ... ons-award/

I've had TVPaint for years but I was always too busy to sit down and learn it properly. Then Sienna started using my license a few months ago, and she really warmed up to it (Her words: "This is much easier than animating on the iPad!")

We recently got her her own license for her birthday, and now we're both learning to use TVPaint together. Watching her animate makes me want to get back to animating for myself again.

[Elodie]

I will complete that topic with 2 video I recorded 2 years ago :

Keyframer :
https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLO-QW ... ZhzTo4hOgo
(btw, my bad for this video I mixed "axis" with the French word "axe" )

Multiplane camera :
https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLO-QW ... yyZfcw197M

Have fun

[Greenlaw]

Thank you, Elodie! I'll be sure to check out your videos tomorrow.

Sienna got her animations completed. Tomorrow we're finishing the soundFX and then she's working on the music score. It's looking very cute...but then I'm biased.

I'll post a link when she's finished with her project.

[Greenlaw]

Sienna finished her short film and, as promised, here's a sneak preview for this thread:

https://vimeo.com/235299806/5049fa51ca



Today she's submitting her short to a student arts competition.

I'm astonished by how quickly she learned how to use TVPaint, and I can't wait to see what she does with it next.

Thanks to everybody here for the technical help. We'll make an official post later.

[Elodie]

That's so sweet ^^

[Fabrice]

the link seems not to be valid anymore.