1. Intro to Animation What is animation?
A drawing that moves, or
bringing the drawing to “life”
moving something which can't move itself
Animation is a powerful tool capable of communicating complex ideas
How the heart beats
Adds visual impact to MM project

2. Intro to Animation Why Use Animation? Animation is used for:
Entertainment (action, realism)
Education (visualization, demonstration)
Why Use Animation?
Rely on animations “moving images” for effective communication
It helps to illustrate what you are explaining
Overcomes learning disabilities
Simulating scientific phenomena
Increase of the interest of viewer and create a lasting impressions
Easier to show somebody how something works then to try and explain it
Four Stroke Engine

3. Animation: how it works?
Simulation of movement through a series of pictures that have objects in slightly different positions
Each drawing is called a Frame
Required Frames Per Second FPS? 24

4. Animated Cartoons I
In animation, each frame overlaps the previous one

5. Animated Cartoons II

6. Dialogue Animated Cartoons

7. Examples of Animation
Computer Based Training Programs Demonstrate the way something works ie. assemble parts, adjust controls, perform surgery. Example
Education: Teach applied and hands-on skills
Spelling and foreign language programs for school children
Programs that prepare high school students for college exams
Learning to play an instrument
Athletes learning techniques in their sport
Games:
All games on the market ie. Playstation, Nintendo, Xbox, gameboys
Web:
Animated buttons, banners, text, and characters are used for visual appeal for example to market/advertise services and information.

8. Animation and Authoring systems
Authoring systems provides several visual effects such as: wipes, fades, zooms and dissolves. For example in Director there are many effects.
To add transition in Director:
Select Modify > Frame > Transition
Double-click the frame in the transition channel
Right Click on the transition channel
A transition always takes place between the end of the current frame and the beginning of the frame where the transition is set

9. Sources of Animation
Animation clip art websites available on Internet for free or at cost:
The ones for a cost are more professional and creative
Create each image that corresponds to a frame using a draw or paint program
Create animations with software
Enhance using an editing program such as Adobe Photoshop
Multimedia authoring programs like Macromedia Director allow you to easily create path animations

10. Animation Realistic motion
One of the overall photorealism motive is realistic motion. Animation is a special case.
Ease of control
something nearly impossible to control does not help much
Flexibility
support the widest possible range of motion
Expressiveness
the animation shows the feeling of the animated figure.

11. Movements Of The Two Legged Figure
More movement examples

12. Creating animation logical steps
Gather all the activities you wish to provide in the animation
Choose the animation tool best suited
Build and try your sequences with lighting effects
Post process your animation: do any special rendering and adding sound

13. Animation techniques: Cel animation
Traditional animation (Cel Animation) :
It is labor intensive
Start with story board (set of drawing outlining the clip).
Master artist draw key frames to define action.
Other artists (cheaper) draw in between frames to complete animation
all line drawings are painted on cels

14. 2-D Animation  Cel-Based
“Cel” clear sheet material on which images were drawn by movie animators
images placed on a stationary background.
Background remains unchanged
Object changes position

15. Animation techniques: Cont. Cel animation
Film runs at 24 fps. Thus minute of animation requires 1440 hand-drawn pictures

16. Animation techniques: Computer Assisted Animation
Computer-assisted systems are now quite common to do traditional animation more economically
We can use computers to help expedite the animation process
Draw sketches with digital systems & use digital paint programs for coloring
Can even try to automatically generate in-betweens (tweening)
Widely used in production

17. Path-Based Moves object along Path: straight or any curves
Often object does not change (but resized or rotated)
Path animation easier to create than cel based animation
Specify beginning and end position
Tweening

18. Animation techniques: Computer Animation
start with some model of the scene (a set of parameters are associated with the model such as joint angles, positions, etc.)
view each of these parameters as a function of time
vary parameters to generate desired pose for all objects
render scene to produce one frame
repeat for all frames (roughly 130,000 frames for 1.5 hour movie)
So how will we control these parameters?

19. So how will we control these parameters?
manually set them for each frame
key-framing: specify parameter values at specific times
generate them procedurally: the computer interpolate the in-between values
execute behavioral scripts (e.g., follow the fish in front of you)
motion capture
physical simulation

20. Key-Framing
Associate a set of parameters with the model: joint angles and positions.
View each of these as a function of time.
In key-framing, we specify parameter values at specific times and let the computer interpolate the in-between values.

21. Key-Framing
In key-framing, we specify parameter values at specific times

22. Interpolating Motion Parameters
For a given parameter, we’ve specified some fixed values: these are the key frame values

23. Interpolating Motion Parameters

24. Kinematics
Kinematics: Is the study of the movement & motion of structures that have joints such as people or robots.
This means: derive motion from positions, angles, velocities, …
Position of end effectors is a function of the state of all joints
When animated, the position, speed, and rotation of all the joints and the articulated parts (such as head, shoulder, & knees) are calculated.
Given an articulated human, how do we make him wave?
• rotate the shoulder into position
• and then the elbow and wrist
• and finally rebalance other parts of the body

25. Procedural Animation To specify a procedural animation
sit down and write some code — the animator as programmer
input: current time
output: correct parameter value
usually combine lots of little procedures together one procedure for walk, one for run, one for hop, …
There is a clear tradeoff between procedures & interaction
think of the analogy of creating a 2-D illustration if it’s simple, we can probably quickly do it interactively
but if it’s very complex & regular, coding is probably quicker

26. Behavioral Animation
Animate by defining rules (or writing a program) that
governs your entities’ behavior.
Typically, define behavior in part as a response to what
the environment is doing
Classic example: “boids”
objects whose motion is determined as a simple function of near neighbors’ motion (plus obstacle avoidance, etc.)
A common example of this approach is “flocking”

27. Motion capture
strap a bunch of sensors on a person & record their motion
track the location of several reference points
convert this to joint angles & map to expressed model
several technologies available
–optical
–magnetic tracking
– instrumented exoskeletons
But it can be hard to edit

28. 3-D Animation involves 3 steps:
Modelling
Process of creating broad contours and structure of 3D objects and scenes (draw views – top, side, cross section
Animating
Defining lighting and perspective views to create change during animation
Rendering
Sample Demo

29. Animation  Some Special Effects
Morphing:
Process of blending together two images into a series of images
Useful for showing how image might change over time
Is an effect in which one effect is transformed into another.

30. Morphing
Some software transform still pictures as well as animated images.
Morphed images are built at a rate of 8 frames per second and each transition takes 4 seconds, a total of 32 frame per second. MonaAnim.gif
Key pointes can be held on both the initial and final images, in this case the points on the start image will move to the corresponding pointes on the final image.

31. Animated GIFS
For simple animations use .GIF format
Special type of GIF file known as an animated GIF/GIF89a that provides the animation you need.
When the GIF document is viewed, the multiple images display, quickly and in succession, and produce a streaming animation
world_tsunami.gif (contains a sequence of frames in the file)
monkeypoo.gif (contains by Laura’s sister in Photoshop!)

32. Animated GIF files - continued
Characteristics of an Animated GIF:
File size is affected by:
Number of frames
image size
No Plug-ins Required: Animated GIFs require no plug-ins, and the authoring tools to create them are often free and easy to learn.
No Sound: If you need sound in addition to motion, you cannot use an animated GIF by itself. Instead, you may want to consider other animation alternatives, such as Flash, or even video

33. Other Animation File Types
Animated Gifs (.gif) (universal)
Flash (.fla, .swf) (by Adobe)
Macromedia Director
Sophisticated Animations:
Strata 3D, LightWave, 3D Studio Max, Maya, and Houdini

34. Animation File Types Flash Software
Flash uses the .FLA file extension for source files
.SWF extension for the Flash movie that is created and played.
.swf originally meant “Shockwave Flash” but now “Small Web Format”
Animation is choreographed using one or more sequential timelines in which actions and interactions are defined
Animation is choreographed using one or more sequential timelines in which actions and interactions are defined

35. Animation Software Why Is Flash So Popular?
Professional designs
Interactive content rich with video, graphics, animation
Import multimedia elements from other applications
Support vector graphics:
much more space efficient over bitmapped frames
scale up with accurate detail no matter how large the window is resized by the user.
Flash Player is a free client application that works with popular Web browsers to play the animation
Adobe Flash Player is the standard for delivering high-impact, rich Web content. Designs, animation, and application user interfaces are deployed immediately across all browsers and platforms

36. Onion skinning
is a 2D computer graphics term for a technique used in creating animated cartoons and editing movies to see
allows you to see a faint ghost image of the previous frame so you can see where you want to place the artwork for the next frame.

37. Flash Animation using Onion Skinnig
Step 1 - Draw the image (for example Frog) on the Stage

38. Flash Animation using Onion Skinnig
Step Select Frame 2 and add a Keyframe In Frame 2 click on the Frog to select it, and move it up and to the right.
At the bottom of the Timeline there is a row of five buttons. Click on the second one- this turns on Onion Skinning
Notice how you now can see a faint ghost image where your first frame was?

39. Flash Animation using Onion Skinnig
Step 3 - With the Transform Tool selected rotate, scale etc your Frog. Continue to add Keyframes for each change you make in the Frog. Do this for 11 frames.
Choose Control > Loop Playback so that you can see your animation repeat.

40. Flash Animation using Onion Skinnig
Step 4 - Play with and Modify your movie. Add as many Keyframes as you wish and make the movie as long as you wish.

41. Animation Software flv (used on YouTube) or swf (Flash Animations) ?
.swf originally meant “Shockwave Flash” but now “Small Web Format”
Animation Software
Animated GIF
Flash
Director
Created by
Depends
Extension
Source depends
.gif (movie)
.fla (source)
.swf (movie)
.dir (source)
.dcr (movie)
Size
Larger than normal gif
Vector images take up less space than GIF bitmapped images
Uses
Banners, small areas
Interactive video, graphics, animation
More interactive sites
Need to play it
Nothing
Flash Player (Free and works with most browsers)
Web browser plug in (The Shockwave Player)
flv (used on YouTube) or swf (Flash Animations) ?