More looping/animation questions

[Mike Derk]

Well, I have half of an answer: I dragged the keyframes (set up initially by loopOut) apart, and it slowed the speed nicely. (Although, I couldn’t find any indicator of how far apart the keyframes actually were, and had to count them manually… there must be something that measures the distance between two keyframes, right?)

Then for everything that had to match to that loop-cycle, I changed the keyframes to rove across time.

However, this wasn’t entirely accurate. Each “walking” frame is now two frames long, but the head interpolates a position, so it is no longer on the neck. I guess what I’d like is hold keyframes that rove across time…

So, I’m going to say I don’t have a full solution yet.

[Mike Clasby]

Can you parent the head to the torso?

Dan does it here:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/ebberts_dan/layer_looping.php

And more impressively here:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/ik.html

[Mike Derk]

I am parenting the head to the torso, but essentially what I’m revealing — I think — is a problem with my workflow.

(This will answer your question in the other thread about my minute adjustments.)

All of the frames are of a stick figure, and he leaves little footprints behind him. Because they’re all drawn freehand and not very precisely, none of the cropped photoshop images are the same size, so the torso isn’t in the same place every time when it’s imported into AE.

In order to parent the head to the torso (head and body are two different sets of images), I moved the anchor point on the torso comp — on each frame, because they’re all different. Then I parent the head to the anchor point. So far so good.

But, this only lasts six frames — each frame of the walking cycle.

If I add a “loopOut()” expression here to both the torso walking and the head, it’s great. It all moves together.

But, the walking looks herky-jerky because it’s too fast. So, when I go to slow it down, that’s when I end up with problems.

Roving keyframes tend to put the head in an odd place every other frame (where they’re interpolated).

I think I have a simple workflow solution: parent the head and the torso in a comp. Bring that composition into my final — and slow it down there: there won’t be any mismatch with interpolation this way.

Or, redraw things so that the “neck” is always in the same place, and maybe don’t crop the layers when I bring them from PS to AE. It’s a level of carefulness that goes against the style of the drawing, but really, could it be that hard? I don’t think so. I new to this, so I’m learning workflow by casually making mistake after mistake. No big deal.

But, I still have that one last question: when I set up a loopOut() cycle, and want to move the keyframes to adjust the speed it plays, it seems to look best when it’s a multiple of the number of frames in the loop. In my case, 6 frames looks best at 12 frames or half-speed. Making it 11 frames gives me on “hiccough.”

So, is there a way to see just how far apart two keyframes are, or a way to move a keyframe by inputing a value instead of dragging it?

Mike

PS. I feel like I owe you all a good end product now.

[Mike Clasby]

I think I would use Time Stretch to change the speed, it moves keyframes for you, interpolates and such.

Click on that little double arrow, second from left) on the bottom of the timeline window and drag the Stretch to what you want. Or just below where the columns me the layers. It all looks smooth to me no matter what the stretch is, no multiples necessary.

You can also access it with Layer>Time Stretch, but there you need to type in a figure, not as interactive.

Or if that doesn’t work for you, try Time remapping or Time Warp to change the speed, then loop the animation. Andrew has a good tut on speed changes here:

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=30

[Mike Derk]

I’ll try this, but I think the problem lies in the fact that one set of frames is going to alter its speed by frame-doubling (and therefore not change its position), and the other set of frames is going to continue to alter its position because of interpolation.

[Trent Armstrong]

This sounds fun! Can’t wait to see the final product!

Try selecting all keyframes and put your play head at the frame where you want the last keyframe to be (multiple of 6: 12, 18, 24) then option or alt select the last keyframe and hold opt shift as you drag toward the time marker. Opt will evenly scale the time b/w keyframes and shift will lock the last keyframe to where the time marker is sitting.

Trent

[Mike Derk]

Well, of course, now the more I’ve learned, the more complicated the project gets and the longer it’s going to take…