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Yet again I'm working on a project that is filled with endless zooming which demands image sizes that literally kill.
I tried to create a TVpaint project set for a 900% zoom at 17280 x 9720 px. TVpaint crashed instantly.

So I guess I'll have to split it up in two projects of half that size. Paint the widest zoom instance of the background, cut out a 1920x1080 piece, paste it in another large project, scale it up to fit the project (now it is lossy, pixelated), make a new layer and paint match a new background that can zoom further in.

I've done it before, but this time the background needs to live a little (animated) hence TVpaint, otherwise I would have painted it in photoshop.
Anyway, this split-it-up operation makes my head hurt and frustration is just around the corner. How to go about it?


I would love to hear your story about this classic animation background issue. How did you solve the puzzle? Any golden tricks?

Coincidentially I did just that, last month.

Easiest way is to start with the zoomed-out position, then enlarge the center and draw what's visible when you zoom in. Switch on the Field Guide. Create a rectangle at the 6F position, this shows the portion of the frame which will fill the screen in the next frame.

1. Draw into the frame.
2. Expand that frame in time, go forward 1 frame.
3. Use the scale tool and expand the image to 200%.
4. Draw, and repeat from 1.

You'll end with a sequence of frames like this:


Now you'll need to expand each frame to get the zoom speed you need. I did that part in Anime Studio and chose 2 sec for each image, with an overlap of 1 sec to allow for a dissolve. It's quite tricky to hit the correct enlargement for each frame to get a continuous motion, the numbers I used are:
0,5
0,5297
0,5612
0,5946
0,63
0,6674
0,7071
0,7492
0,7937
0,8409
0,8909
0,9439
1
1,0595
1,1225
1,1892
1,26
1,3349
1,4143
1,4984
1,5875
1,6819
1,7819
1,8878
2

I don't know how transfer these factors into TVP keyframer values, so don't ask me. The values are an exponential curve. Once you get this into the keyframer, save the bin for later re-use. You can use each segment as background for animation and apply the keyframer to that as well.

Here's a quick test I did: http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/zoom_in1c.mov (5,5 MB). I started with the mouth and drew from there, reducing each image to 50%, then draw around it. You can spot the corners because I was just testing.

Great to hear your method.
I reckon I'll need to do it somewhat like that as well, I just use After Effects for composit.

But of course, it's a whole lot simpler to stay in the same project and work over the timeline (new frame for each upscaled image). That way, it's also simple to export as image sequence and comp it together in another program.

Thanks alot for a thorough example.

do you mean something like that zoomquilt painting?

i think they probably used an aplication using a system mush like slowtiger explained

In fact zoomquilt inspired me to do that.

Eventually, you might want to place the images on a depth space, like the multiplane camera, or after effects 3D layers, to give your zoom more depth.
And in order to achieve right positioning/scale ratio, you can enlarge each consecutive drawing 200% of it's original size, and move it to twice the distance - this distance + scaling compensates for shifting the image further from the camera - you get the endless zoom effect + 3D feel from camera move.

Actually I'm just interested in how you guys manage extensive zooms, not necessarily endless loops.
I'm a big fan of multiplanes and cameras in After Effects but sometimes you just need to do something like a single image scaling a lot to create a zoom. Working with HD, you'll probably need to split up background paintings in several stages to avoid extreme resolution images.

I guess the best way around this is to do a lot of tests with mockups and layouts before getting into final artwork. Trial and error and spending a lot of time.

This is a technique for those moments where you don't want any 3D effect, like the common situation of a fast pull-out, without the disadvantage of working in a too large project. Example: http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/fon_oben.mov

The background consists of two images here, both in 1920 x 1080. If this were just one background it had to be about 6000 x 3000px large - too big for my machine. (I use Anime Studio for compositing stuff like this. They're announcing a new version now - unfortunately introducing new features I definitely don't need, instead of fixing old UI issues. It could be such a versatile tool and perfect companion to TVP ...)