Strangeness in my Keyframes

[Cloister]

Right, I'll try and explain my problem here as best I can.

 

It started a while ago after I did the "Door is stuck" animation. I completed the exercise and I went back to it to re render it and when I played it in the editor each keyframe stays there while it carries on and it seems to kind of create a copy of the same model at each keyframe. So I end up with my model at the end of the small animation being a mess of what looks like lots of models all in one.

 

Then I was working on something yesterday and the keyframes slowly started deleting themselves when the animation bit finished. it will output to an animation file ok, there is noting like this on the actual output of a rendered file.

 

Also yesterday while I was creating a walk cycle for my character as soon as I moved onto the next time frame for it and started to move my model it was as if I had two models one stuck in the initial keyframe bit and the one I was positioning into the new position for the keyframe. I just can't work like this...

 

Have I inadvertently switched something on here? I hope you guys can help.

[Rodney]

It sounds like you've got 'Onion Skin' turned on.

 

Go into Tools/Options and turn off onion skin. In v15 it has its own dialog/panel (see attached). This may not be your issue but by the description I'd say 10 out of 10 times it is.

 

You can also use the Shortcut keys [sHIFT + 5] to toggle on/off Onion skin.

Its possible you hit those keys by mistake?

[Cloister]

It sounds like you've got 'Onion Skin' turned on.

 

Go into Tools/Options and turn off onion skin. In v15 it has its own dialog/panel (see attached). This may not be your issue but by the description I'd say 10 out of 10 times it is.

 

You can also use the Shortcut keys [sHIFT + 5].

Its possible you hit those keys by mistake?

 

Thanks For the swift reply, I have been looking in the options and I do seem to remember Onion skin being turned on - well I'll take a look tonight and see if that sorts it.

 

Fingers crossed.

 

Tony

 

Ps. 10 out of 10 times, heh

[Cloister]

YAY!

 

Thats sorted it thank you very much, now I can carry on with my work

 

One question though? What is the point of Onion Skin? What does it do?

 

Thanks

 

Tony

[Rodney]

One question though? What is the point of Onion Skin? What does it do?

 

Onion skinning is a method that derives its name as well as function from the method of using a thin paper (referred to as onion skin) to trace or outline drawings in traditionally hand drawn animation.

 

Definition from wikipedia:

Onion skinning is a 2D computer graphics term for a technique used in creating animated cartoons and editing movies to see several frames at once. This way, the animator or editor can make decisions on how to create or change an image based on the previous image in the sequence.In traditional cartoon animation, the individual frames of a movie were initially drawn on thin onionskin paper over a light source. The animators (mostly inbetweeners) would put the previous and next drawings exactly beneath the working drawing, so that they could draw the 'inbetween' to give a smooth motion.

 

In computer software, this effect is achieved by making frames translucent and projecting them on top of each other.

 

With onion skinning the animator can see the path an object makes to help determine if the action or movement of the object is smooth.

 

With advancement in computers the use of onion skinning has diminished somewhat as the computer interprets the path and creates 'inbetweens' for you. For simple animation onion skinning may not be needed.

 

Where you'll see the feature become more useful is where you instruct the computer to place objects at locations the computer wouldn't otherwise place them. These motion does not follow the animators needs.

 

Perhaps we we need some examples to demonstrate this better?

 

Here we see one object at the end of a 30 frame (1 second) transformation.

It looks for all intents and purposes as if there are 30 different objects.

With the onion skin set to display the previous 30 frames all the preceding states of the object are captured and put on display for the animator.

[Rodney]

Now lets adjust the settings a little.

 

Here we've told A:M to display every 5th frame.

As animators we are still informed about the previous path of the objects transformation but less information is available. This may help us a lot as too much information can be really confusing!

[Rodney]

For our next test we'll adjust our animation.

 

First we'll set our onion skin preview back to 30 frames (Step=1 as we want to see every frame).

 

As our object is constrained to a path we'll edit that Constraint.

In particular we want to change the Ease.

 

Here we set up what is known as a Slow Out.

You can see this in the Timeline represented by the slow curve moving up to the right.

We could expect to see from the curve our object speed up over time.

The more space between locations from frame to frame... the faster our object will appear to move.

 

In our Onion Skin view we see that demonstrated.

Most of the early frames appear on the left.

[Rodney]

That won't do.

 

What we want is for the animation to start and end slowly and speed up in the middle.

For this we'll use whats known as Slow In and Slow Out.

Less change from frame to frame equates to slower action.

 

The Onion Skin shows us it'll work in our rendered animation just as expected.

[Cloister]

Now THAT was a fantastic explanation. I really do appreciate all they effort you have gone to with me on this, I have to say this is some of the best tech support I have ever recieved.

 

Thank you Rodney, I could learn a lot from you - maybe I'll see if I can post a few things I'm working on. Luckily my character is quite a simple one, but I'm working on getting him walking at the moment.

[Rodney]

Thank you Rodney, I could learn a lot from you

I'll remember you said that when you are some high speed hotshot animator!

The good news.... to learn everything I know should take only a day or two.

I forget things very quickly.

 

Guys and gals like you make it worth every effort to explore whats here to be explored.

Trust me... I learn a lot more from you than vice versa.