Problems with Spacing and Timing (Keyframer)

[Animark]

Hello,

please help me before I am getting mad of one problem I have with a camera movement .

I have a box swimming on a river. The box movement starts on the horizon and should come closer to the camera. It should also move on a path and the spacing of the boxe during animation should slow out from the beginning. I have 2 problems with that movement.

1. I want to have an extrem slow out in the progress profile, but no slow in at the end. I am not able to get this, nor using spline or polynormal.
2. When my box follows the path, there is some curious spacing that has nothing to do with the progress profile or the points of the path.

Maybe I need some hints to get a new idea, how to create a movement like this. I tried to make it clearer on this screenshot.
http://www.turbotoons.de/forschung/TVP_ ... roblem.jpg

I did it in this way:
1. scaled the box (10% to 200%)
2. positionend the box
3. created progress profile
4. curved the path

Thanks from Animark

[Paul Fierlinger]

To get the fast ending, make a new inpoint close to the end and drag all the way to the end.

EDIT: Maybe I misunderstood the speed. The curve I am showing here will make the move start off slow, slow down almost to a stop (midway)pickup speed and end in a fast stop.

[Elodie]

Well, you can try to use the polynomial curve ?

polynomial.png (11.2 KiB) Viewed 18461 times

[Paul Fierlinger]

I was giving you the advice based on using the new camera. I think you should try it, especially for something like the example you are showing. The curve in the middle is easy to create and you get instant results so it's very easy (actually fun) to tweak the speed and curve and everything else. In other words, you don't need to use the KeyFramer for such a simple move.
EDIT: And one more hint: It's best if you stretch the curve editor over the entire length of your move on your layer panel. That way you have more control over where exactly you want things to happen.

[Animark]

Yes, that's a good suggestion to add a point in the end and drag it onto the last point. Thank you, that helps me.
But it's not perfect. I made a test with a horizontal movement of a very thin line about 100 Frames. The line should accelerate the hole time. The picture shows the position of the line at the last frames. I used the light table to make them visible and masured the distance between them. It's a little bit curious ...

[Animark]

@Elodie
Thanks, but I also tried the polynormal version, but wasn't able to make the curve as extrem I wanted to. If you drag the points more to the right side, you will loose the beginning of the curve. Sometimes I use this extrem settings when creating a perspective movement, where the object scales a lot.

@Paul
Thanks again. I tested the new camera tool a lot and I like it. But in this case my goal is to move a lot of boxes swimming in the river (constant BG) and I try to find a solution that prevents me from drawing all these boxes manually. Maybe I am ending there . I don't think, that the camera tool helps me a lot in this way.

[Paul Fierlinger]

and I try to find a solution that prevents me from drawing all these boxes manually. Maybe I am ending there . I don't think, that the camera tool helps me a lot in this way.

It can be done. There is a way to render the camera to a new project and from there you can take the rendered layer of the box and repeat it in a staggered fashion.

[ZigOtto]

Thanks, but I also tried the polynormal version, but wasn't able to make the curve as extrem I wanted to.

you can extremize the polynomal curve by adding some nodes, but it's very funky/perilous to set

polynomalextreme.png (7.03 KiB) Viewed 18409 times

I upload this one as attached. prf (zipped) file .

unfortunalely, it won't solve entirely your problem, which is an old one with splined path,
I mean the tangents setting the sloop of the path interfer on the speed ...
even the Constant Speed feature in the Path Manager panel can't solve this ...
or I'm not aware how to manage a Constant-Speed + a custom SpeedCurve together (?)

anyway, here my way to (try to) avoid this undesired interaction:
supposing your "cube" is a custombrush (or animbrush),
- create your first key, say the farthest, set its size for this farthest position, mode = smooth,
- go to the end of the moving (in the timeline) and create the last key (= out), set its size (the biggest), smooth mode too,
- then, scrub on the timeline and add key and move the position to fit the trajectory, the less you add keys, the better it will be.
- at last, set the speed curve to a polynomal (concave), a kind of the one above,
- select all, KF-apply.

hope it can help.

[Paul Fierlinger]

unfortunalely, it won't solve entirely your problem, which is an old one with splined path,

If such is the case, what I would do would be to just manually remove some of the frames at the end and possibly also nudge them around a bit and it's done.

[ZigOtto]

unfortunalely, it won't solve entirely your problem, which is an old one with splined path,

If such is the case, what I would do would be to just manually remove some of the frames at the end and possibly also nudge them around a bit and it's done.

it happened I fixed it in the same way than you, removing some ones, nudging the remainings.
manual (and nose) tweaking.

[Paul Fierlinger]

That's why we can always claim "hand made".

[Animark]

Wow, now I got this polynomal thing. Yes, it's very tricky to handle the points, but it works.

ZigOtto, I tried the same way you suggested before with the difference, that I set the speed profile before I added the points to the path. I think your way works better. Now I got the best results of today. I also used the "constant speed" option, which helped a bit. And, Paul, tweaking by hand at the end is a very good idea.

Thanks for your help, now I can leave my workplace with a smile in my mind

[ZigOtto]

Wow, now I got this polynomal thing. Yes, it's very tricky to handle the points, but it works.

add it to Bin, and (save) export it too , so you will be able to re-use it later, in other FXs, or in other projects.