Inbetweening

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Tweening) Jump to: navigation, search Inbetweening or tweening is the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image. Inbetweens are the drawings between the key frames which help to create the illusion of motion. Inbetweening is a key process in all types of animation, including computer animation.

Contents
[hide]

1 In digital animation 2 In traditional animation 3 Frame frequency 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] In digital animation

See also: Interpolation (computer programming)

This animated GIF demonstrates the effects of Adobe Flash shape, motion and color tweening. When animating in a digital context, especially with Adobe Flash, the shortened term tweening is commonly used. Sophisticated animation software enables one to identify specific objects in an image and define how they should move and change during the tweening process. Software may be used to manually render or adjust transitional frames by hand or may be used to automatically render transitional frames using interpolation of graphic parameters. In the context of Adobe

Flash, inbetweening using automatic interpolation is called tweening, and the resulting sequence of frames is called a tween. "Ease-in" and "ease-out" in digital animation typically refer to a mechanism for defining the physics of the transition between two animation states, i.e., the linearity of a tween.[1] The use of computers for inbetweening was pioneered by Nestor Burtnyk and Marceli Wein at the National Research Council of Canada. They received a Technical Achievement Academy Award in 1997, for "pioneering work in the development of software techniques for computer assisted key framing for character animation".[2]

[edit] In traditional animation

Traditional inbetweening involves the use of light tables to draw a set of pencil-on-paper pictures. In the inbetweening workflow of traditional hand-drawn animation, the senior or key artist would draw the keyframes which define the movement, then, after testing and approval of the rough animation, would hand over the scene to his or her assistant. The assistant does the clean-up and the necessary inbetweens, or, in large studios, only some breakdowns which define the movement in more detail, then handing down the scene to his assistant, the inbetweener who does the rest.

Animation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For other uses, see Animation (disambiguation). This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
(June 2011)

The bouncing ball animation (below) consists of these six frames.

This animation moves at 10 frames per second.

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways. The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although there are other methods.

Contents
[hide]

1 Etymology 2 Early examples 3 Techniques o 3.1 Traditional animation o 3.2 Stop motion o 3.3 Computer animation 3.3.1 2D animation 3.3.2 3D animation 3.3.2.1 Terms o 3.4 Other animation techniques o 3.5 Other techniques and approaches 4 See also

5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

[edit] Etymology
From Latin animti, "the act of bringing to life"; from anim ("to animate" or "give life to") + ti ("the act of").

[edit] Early examples

Main article: History of animation

Five images sequence from a vase found in Iran

An Egyptian burial chamber mural, approximately 4000 years old, showing wrestlers in action. Even though this may appear similar to a series of animation drawings, there was no way of viewing the images in motion. It does, however, indicate the artist's intention of depicting motion.

Early examples of attempts to capture the phenomenon of motion drawing can be found in paleolithic cave paintings, where animals are depicted with multiple legs in superimposed positions, clearly attempting to convey the perception of motion.

A 5,000 year old earthen bowl found in Iran in Shahr-i Sokhta has five images of a goat painted along the sides. This has been claimed to be an example of early animation.[1] However, since no equipment existed to show the images in motion, such a series of images cannot be called animation in a true sense of the word.[2] A Chinese zoetrope-type device had been invented in 180 AD.[3] The phenakistoscope, praxinoscope, and the common flip book were early popular animation devices invented during the 19th century. These devices produced the appearance of movement from sequential drawings using technological means, but animation did not really develop much further until the advent of cinematography. There is no single person who can be considered the "creator" of film animation, as there were several people working on projects which could be considered animation at about the same time. Georges Mlis was a creator of special-effect films; he was generally one of the first people to use animation with his technique. He discovered a technique by accident which was to stop the camera rolling to change something in the scene, and then continue rolling the film. This idea was later known as stop-motion animation. Mlis discovered this technique accidentally when his camera broke down while shooting a bus driving by. When he had fixed the camera, a hearse happened to be passing by just as Mlis restarted rolling the film, his end result was that he had managed to make a bus transform into a hearse. This was just one of the great contributors to animation in the early years. The earliest surviving stop-motion advertising film was an English short by Arthur MelbourneCooper called Matches: An Appeal (1899). Developed for the Bryant and May Matchsticks company, it involved stop-motion animation of wired-together matches writing a patriotic call to action on a blackboard. J. Stuart Blackton was possibly the first American film-maker to use the techniques of stopmotion and hand-drawn animation. Introduced to film-making by Edison, he pioneered these concepts at the turn of the 20th century, with his first copyrighted work dated 1900. Several of his films, among them The Enchanted Drawing (1900) and Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) were film versions of Blackton's "lightning artist" routine, and utilized modified versions of Mlis' early stop-motion techniques to make a series of blackboard drawings appear to move and reshape themselves. 'Humorous Phases of Funny Faces' is regularly cited as the first true animated film, and Blackton is considered the first true animator.

Fantasmagorie by Emile Cohl, 1908

Another French artist, mile Cohl, began drawing cartoon strips and created a film in 1908 called Fantasmagorie. The film largely consisted of a stick figure moving about and encountering all manner of morphing objects, such as a wine bottle that transforms into a flower. There were also sections of live action where the animators hands would enter the scene. The film was created by drawing each frame on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film, which gave the picture a blackboard look. This makes Fantasmagorie the first animated film created using what came to be known as traditional (hand-drawn) animation. Following the successes of Blackton and Cohl, many other artists began experimenting with animation. One such artist was Winsor McCay, a successful newspaper cartoonist, who created detailed animations that required a team of artists and painstaking attention for detail. Each frame was drawn on paper; which invariably required backgrounds and characters to be redrawn and animated. Among McCay's most noted films are Little Nemo (1911), Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) and The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918). The production of animated short films, typically referred to as "cartoons", became an industry of its own during the 1910s, and cartoon shorts were produced to be shown in movie theaters. The most successful early animation producer was John Randolph Bray, who, along with animator Earl Hurd, patented the cel animation process which dominated the animation industry for the rest of the decade. El Apstol (Spanish: "The Apostle") was a 1917 Argentine animated film utilizing cutout animation, and the world's first animated feature film.[citation needed]

[edit] Techniques
[edit] Traditional animation Main article: Traditional animation

An example of traditional animation, a horse animated by rotoscoping from Eadweard Muybridge's 19th century photos

Traditional animation (also called cel animation or hand-drawn animation) was the process used for most animated films of the 20th century. The individual frames of a traditionally animated film are photographs of drawings, which are first drawn on paper. To create the illusion of movement, each drawing differs slightly from the one before it. The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on the side opposite the line drawings. The completed character cels are photographed one-by-one onto motion picture film against a painted background by a rostrum camera. The traditional cel animation process became obsolete by the beginning of the 21st century. Today, animators' drawings and the backgrounds are either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system. Various software programs are used to color the drawings and simulate camera movement and effects. The final animated piece is output to one of several delivery media, including traditional 35 mm film and newer media such as digital video. The "look" of traditional cel animation is still preserved, and the character animators' work has remained essentially the same over the past 70 years. Some animation producers have used the term "tradigital" to describe cel animation which makes extensive use of computer technology.

Key frame
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For key frames in video compression, see I-frame and video compression picture types.

A key frame in animation and filmmaking is a drawing that defines the starting and ending points of any smooth transition. They are called "frames" because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film. A sequence of keyframes defines which movement the viewer will see, whereas the position of the keyframes on the film, video or animation defines the timing of the movement. Because only two or three keyframes over the span of a second do not create the illusion of movement, the remaining frames are filled with inbetweens.

Contents
[hide]

1 Traditional animation 2 Animation by means of computer graphics o 2.1 Use of key frames o 2.2 Keyframing o 2.3 In-depth examples 2.3.1 As applied to motion 2.3.2 As applied to shape transformations 2.3.3 As applied to color transformations 3 Use of keyframes as a means to change parameters 4 Video editing 5 Video compression 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Traditional animation

In the workflow of traditional hand-drawn animation, the senior or key artist would draw the keyframes, then, after testing and approval of the rough animation, give the scene to his assistant. The assistant does the clean-up and the necessary 'inbetweens', or, in really big studios, only some breakdown which define the movement in more detail, then give the scene to his assistant, the 'inbetweener' who does the remainder.

[edit] Animation by means of computer graphics

[edit] Use of key frames

In computer animation this workflow is basically the same. The animator creates the important frames of a sequence, then the software fills in the gap. For example, in Adobe Systems Flash, the animator can specify, in keyframes, the starting and ending position of an object, such as a circle. Flash smoothly translates the object from the starting point to the ending point. This is called tweening. The animator can correct the result at any point, shifting keyframes back and

forth to improve the timing and dynamics of a movement, or change an 'in between' into an additional keyframe to further refine the movement.

A very simple animation created by keyframing. The animation lacks smoothness because each frame is completely independent of any other frame. [edit] Keyframing

There is also an animation technique known as keyframing. Contrary to tweening, every frame of a keyframed computer animation is directly modified or manipulated by the creator, such that no tweening has actually occurred. This method is similar to the drawing of traditional animation, and is chosen by artists who wish to have complete control over the animation.
[edit] In-depth examples

As noted above, a key frame defines the starting and ending points of any smooth transition. Consider the examples below, created using animated GIFs:
[edit] As applied to motion

An object will move from the top left corner of the frame to the bottom right corner. One of the two keyframes present in this animation will contain the object at the top left corner of the frame, while the other keyframe will show the object at the bottom right corner. Everything in between can be interpolated smoothly.

Motion using key frames

The Starting Keyframe

The Ending Keyframe

The Completed Animation [edit] As applied to shape transformations

In a shape transformation, the first keyframe contains the original shape, while the ending keyframe contains the transformed shape. Shape transformations defined by keyframes cannot accurately show how the shape will be transformed in between the two keyframes. In Adobe Flash, shape hints can be added to both original and transformed shapes to give the program a better idea of the interpolation.

Shape transformations WITHOUT shape hints

The Starting Keyframe

The Ending Keyframe

The Completed Animation

Shape transformations USING shape hints

The Starting Keyframe

The Ending Keyframe

The Completed Animation [edit] As applied to color transformations

When an object changes its color smoothly, the animation can be defined by keyframesthe first showing its original color, and the second showing its final color.

Color transformations using keyframes

The Starting Keyframe

The Ending Keyframe

The Completed Animation

[edit] Use of keyframes as a means to change parameters

In software packages that support animation, especially 3D graphics packages, there are many parameters that can be changed for any one object. One example of such an object is a light. (In 3D graphics, lights function similarly to real-world lights: They cause illumination, cast shadows, and create specular highlights.) Lights have many parameters including light intensity, beam size, light color, and the texture cast by the light. Supposing that an animator wants the beam size of the light to change smoothly from one value to another within a predefined period of time, that could be achieved by using keyframes. At the start of the animation, a beam size value is set. Another value is set for the end of the animation. Thus, the software program automatically interpolates the two values, creating a smooth transition.

Inbetweening or tweening is the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image. Inbetweens are the drawings between the key frames which help to create the illusion of motion. Inbetweening is a key process in all types of animation, including computer animation.

Contents
[hide]

1 In digital animation 2 In traditional animation 3 Frame frequency 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] In digital animation

See also: Interpolation (computer programming)

This animated GIF demonstrates the effects of Adobe Flash shape, motion and color tweening.

When animating in a digital context, especially with Adobe Flash, the shortened term tweening is commonly used. Sophisticated animation software enables one to identify specific objects in an image and define how they should move and change during the tweening process. Software may be used to manually render or adjust transitional frames by hand or may be used to automatically render transitional frames using interpolation of graphic parameters. In the context of Adobe Flash, inbetweening using automatic interpolation is called tweening, and the resulting sequence of frames is called a tween. "Ease-in" and "ease-out" in digital animation typically refer to a mechanism for defining the physics of the transition between two animation states, i.e., the linearity of a tween.[1] The use of computers for inbetweening was pioneered by Nestor Burtnyk and Marceli Wein at the National Research Council of Canada. They received a Technical Achievement Academy Award in 1997, for "pioneering work in the development of software techniques for computer assisted key framing for character animation".[2]

[edit] In traditional animation

Traditional inbetweening involves the use of light tables to draw a set of pencil-on-paper pictures. In the inbetweening workflow of traditional hand-drawn animation, the senior or key artist would draw the keyframes which define the movement, then, after testing and approval of the rough animation, would hand over the scene to his or her assistant. The assistant does the clean-up and the necessary inbetweens, or, in large studios, only some breakdowns which define the movement in more detail, then handing down the scene to his assistant, the inbetweener who does the rest.

[edit] Frame frequency

Animation "on twos" dates to the dawn of animation, being used for instance in Fantasmagorie (1908)

Typically, an animator does not draw inbetweens for all 24 frames required for one second of film. Only very fast movements require animation "on ones", as it is called. Most movements can be done with 12 drawings per second, which is called animating "on twos". Too few inbetweens distort the illusion of movement, such as in cheap TV animation series where there can be as few as 4 drawings for a second of film. Computer generated animation is usually animated on ones. The decision about the number of inbetweens is also an artistic one, as certain styles of animation require a not-so-smooth fashion of movement. Animation "on twos" dates to the dawn of animation Fantasmagorie (1908), widely considered the first fully animated movie, was animated on twos.

[edit] See also

Flicker fusion threshold Morphing