karaoke ball

[Steve Roberts]

You’d want to limit the amount of work to moving the keys in time and moving the “down” positions in the comp window.

I’d make a bunch of animated ball layers: one for a one-word line, one for a two-word line, a three-word line, and so on. I think that each key would have to be a hold key and a regular key, to account for held notes (“IIIIIII wil always looooove yoooouuuuu”) so the ball lands, holds, then bounces to the next word.

The last word would always be a hold, yes?
… and the bounce timing should be the same between words, yes? No slow arcs from word-to-word. Hence the hold keyframes.
Maybe you could make “three words, no holds”, “three words, hold word two”, and so on. I think your co-workers would have to be able to handle adding/removing/moving hold keyframes, or else you’ll have to come up with a whole bunch of combinations in advance.

You could copy all the keys for a layer and save it as a preset, such as “three words, no holds”, and do the same for the other combinations. This preset would be applied to a static ball layer. It’s a little more efficient than passing around a project with a bunch of bouncing ball layers, I suppose. Does that make sense?

Anybody else?

[Slice11217]

Well the thing is, the songs in question aren’t all that predictable as far as number of words per lyric line.

The avenue that I’m exploring at the moment is this: I have a comp with a ball animated for a large bounce followed by a small bounce (from here on referred to as “the ball comp”). The bounce itself is comprised of position keyframes and then mask keyframes (to provide a little squash and stretch).

This comp is nested into another comp where the lyrics pop up in time with the audio (referred to as “main comp”). The ball comp is time remapped. What I’m thinking is to create a preset out of the time remap keyframes for the ball comp and name them “large bounce” and “small bounce”.

Then, my co-workers would only need to drag the appropriate preset onto their ball comp and then position it where it’s needed.

I’m hoping that it’s “simple/stupid” enough to pass on to someone else and not have any loss of quality. Otherwise, I’m going to have to do it all in addition to my other work, and that’s not going to be good!

If anyone has any better ideas, please pass them along!

[David Bogie]

> I’m hoping that it’s “simple/stupid” enough to pass on to someone else and not have any loss of quality. Otherwise, I’m going to have to do it all in addition to my other work, and that’s not going to be good!
< Show your coworkers how to animate it themselves. ONce you've created the ball and the general motion, you do not need to provide any further input if your people have any basic skills and you trust them. bogiesan This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Mike Procunier]

It sounds like a lot of work. Maybe create a precomp with 10-15 bounces. You co-workers would have to adjust the position keyframes and the timing for each line. Squishing the ball for each bounce will add some work for them… maybe there’s a way to do it with expressions. Check Dan Ebberts’ site, for all I know there may be a way to do the entire piece with expressions.

[Craig Wall]

I’m no expert but here’s my two bits.

I would try to identify what your variables are:

1 How many bounces per line?
2 What are the X Position values for the bounces?

Then it gets trickier
3 What are the Time values for each bounce?
4 What are the Time values for each hold duration?

This does sound like a full-blown plug-in of its own.

Whew. Not easy.

[Bill Clotz]

You might want to check out this SSA Karaoke Animator script: https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=380

I think it should be possible to rig it up to do what you want. Whoever is making the karaoke will need to use one of the various programs that can create ssa scripts though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubStation_Alpha#Editing_programs

[Slice11217]

Well, so far here is what I’ve been able to prepare for my co-workers:

-The animation of the ball bouncing in place (two bounces, high bounce and low bounce)
-The animation of the ball squashing and stretching as it bounces.
-Animation presets which can be dropped onto the time remap of the main comp on the ball layer

Here’s what my co-workers will have to do for themselves:

-Time the audio.
-Time the beats of the music.
-Position the ball so that it hits the text at the correct frame.
-Using the animation presets, slide the resulting keyframes so that it matches the downcycle of the bounce.

If I have any time to do it, I may set up the text for them so that all they’ll have to do is bounce the ball. Otherwise they’ll have to do this for themselves. I can’t pre-chew EVERYTHING for them!