"Tweening" frames in an animation - 2nd party apps?

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Level 1

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"Tweening" frames in an animation - 2nd party apps?

I just did small stop animation of somebody which I shot frame by frame then assembled into a movie. Fine, no problems with iMovie reading this. However, because the animation was of a person and not a puppet, the results, while charming, are also jerky as can be. Then I thought, "Wow, I wonder if I could make that look a little less jerky by making dissolves between each of the frames?" After some thought I made a slideshow from the frames with a one second duration for each image and a dissolve between them. Then I imported this into iMovie and shortened the new (long) animation with the time slider.

It worked, but it's very imprecise due to iMovie's limitations on how precisely you can stretch or shrink time this way. What my question is really asking is - are there any second party apps that would do this easier? Ideally I'd like to have just a three frame dissolve between each key frame. It seems like this would be something that anybody who has ever done any stop animation would already have thought of so there may already be a neat solution out there somewhere.

Thanks.

G4 Sawtooth, Mac OS X (10.3.9), 896 RAM, 620 gigs HD

Posted on Mar 14, 2007 2:42 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 14, 2007 3:12 AM in response to Rick Adams1

You should be able to make a 3-frame Dissolve by selecting one of your Dissolves (click it) and opening the Editing Transitions pane (on the right) and changing the duration to 00:03 (or just dragging the 'Speed' slider) and clicking on 'Update'.

You can similarly select multiple Dissolves by holding down the Apple ('Command' ⌘) key and clicking on each of the other Dissolve transitions. Then drag the 'Speed' slider to what you want, and click on 'Update'.

You may not get exactly the duration you want by dragging the slider; it may jump by 2 frames at a time, for example.

Ooops: I'm using iMovie HD 6 ..things may be slightly different if you're using an earlier version of iMovie.

I don't know about 'tweening programs; I only know IStopMotion as an animation program ..but I don't think it'll build 'tween frames.

There are also QuickTime Pro methods for creating, or generating, a succession of frames for an animation ..but I don't know enough about that: Karl's your man..

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Answer 2

Mar 14, 2007 3:17 AM in response to Rick Adams1

depending on your 'style' of drawing, aside David allready mentioned istopmotion, there's
ToonBoom
http://www.toonboom.com/

and for sure zillions of Morph apps, a nic one is
Norrkross MorphX
http://www.norrkross.com/software/morphx/morphx.php

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Answer 3

Rick Adams1 Author

Level 1

10 points

Mar 14, 2007 9:17 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

David, I didn't create the animation in iMovie because I didn't want to have to adjust each frame's size individually. Is it possible to set them all at once?...(Obviously, I'm pretty new to iMovie). At any rate. I was looking for something to kind of automate the process, because there are just too many frames to do them one at a time. Also, at least as far as iMovie 4.01 is concerned, the time slider adjustment goes in jumps rather than small increments, making precise control of timings other than the default ratios impossible. It may be that the later versions corrected this.

Karsten, I have MorphX, although I think the old Morph (Classic only) beats it hands down and would use it for this purpose if I had to. However, you still have to do each pair of frames one at a time which is really tedious if you have several hundred of them - realistically, I'm just not gonna do it.

I didn't know about Toon Boom at all. Checking it out now. Thanks very much for the mention.

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Answer 4

Mar 14, 2007 12:16 PM in response to Rick Adams1

"..adjust each frame's size individually.."

D'you mean size as in dimensions (..640x480 pixels..) or as in duration (..time it stays onscreen)..?

I don't know of a way - but that doesn't mean there isn't one! - to automatically adjust the dimensions of a set of separate photos (..if that's what they originally were..) apart from, say, using an Automator script or AppleScript to automate a particular set of actions ..assuming that the program which you want to automate (..Graphic Converter? ..PhotoShop? ..Preview?..) accepts scripts.

If you want to automate, or convert a whole set of, durations of transitions (..i.e; make all Dissolves 3 seconds long..) then the only way I can think of doing that is as I described above.

Unfortunately, I can't remember the characteristics of iMovie 4 ..and it might take me a while to dig out mine (..I keep only 2 and 6 regularly to hand..) but I know that I was rather disappointed by it, so that's why I upgraded and largely forgot it, sorry!

QuickTime Pro, which I mentioned (..and it costs $29.99, and just upgrades your existing QuickTime Player by a simple click on the QuickTime tab at the top of this page..) has a facility to export a set of pictures as a movie sequence, with the individual frames set to whatever duration you want, as far as I remember. But as I said; Karl knows much more about that than I do ..give a shout and he may come and reply..

However, I don't think that will automatically dissolve between the frames ..though maybe an automatic dissolve can be integrated by using one of those scripting methods I mentioned above.

As you can tell, my forté is not animation (..though I used to do it long ago with 8mm film ..oh; and more recently with a little Olympus Pen 35mm half-frame camera..

..because a 35mm half-frame is identical to a 35mm movie full frame, so that's a quick and cheap way to make full-size cinema film animations!) ..But that's the limit of my knowledge..

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Answer 5

Rick Adams1 Author

Level 1

10 points

Mar 14, 2007 12:47 PM in response to David Babsky

Sorry, my terminology was vague; I meant the duration of the frame, not the size. I can't imagine an animation with differing frame sizes...

I'm using iMovie 4 because my old G4 probably won't cope with iDVD 5 and up (or so I've been told) and iDVD 4 works fine, though I have to wait for things. I'm not crazy about iMovie at all, but I keep telling myself it's a consumer application and I'm coming from the world of professional photography, it's just that until recently all my photography has been non-digital. I REALLY hate the color balance method you're stuck with in the effects pane, for instance. Lame!

But you use what you have, so I'm trying to get along for now.

Thanks for the help!

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