Lesson 02 — Explorer, Keyframes & Dope Sheet

Great lesson, learned a whole bunch (despite blog-related embarrassment...!) — the dope sheet I found particularly useful. I'd not previously been aware of it at all and it certainly answered many of the frustrations I'd encountered in my previous attempts at keyframing.

Initially, we were introduced to the basic animation interface and default timeline. We were shown how to set up the camera/output preferences - I'd been having great frustration with previous exports where all my stuff came out skewed no matter what I did so it was a relief to find out what I'd been doing wrong!

File -> Preferences -> Output Format

There are a number of preset output formats - however, these will be optimized for TV display, i.e. NOT square pixels. Best to use a custom preset! 

Ensure 'Maintain Picture Ratio' is UNCHECKED.

Pixel ratio: 1

Resolution: 1024 x 576 (widescreen)

Remember to double-check frame settings - should be working at 25fps. 

Hit 'Apply settings' to... well, apply the settings!

After setting up, we started by animating a simple object using basic keyframes on the default timeline. No fancy timing adjustments or dope sheet witchcraft here.

I, rather uncreatively, picked a sphere. And made it fly uncreatively across the screen. Hey, this was a technical exercise! Achieved simply by keyframing the scale and position values of a primitive sphere object.

We were then introduced to the dope sheet which allows for much more refined animation by providing greater control over keyframes. The dope sheet can be accessed by View -> General -> Dope Sheet, or alternatively by opening the Animation Editor (shortcut 0) and then clicking Editor -> Dope Sheet.

The dope sheet is, effectively, an expanded version of Softimage's default timeline. It displays all keyframes for all parameters of the selected object all at once - far more intuitive than the regular timeline, which simply displays all keyframes on one row which can cause a lot of really unnecessary confusion.

You can select and move all keyframes for all parameters by clicking the giant green square in the topmost row - very useful for making quick timing adjustments! Alternatively, you can select one or more keyframes for specific parameters simply by clicking the corresponding coloured square for each parameter. (Hold CTRL + click to select multiple keyframes)

We were provided with a premade scene file with a croquet mallet and ball. Using the dope sheet, we basically had to use the mallet to knock the ball from A to B, using the dope sheet to adjust timings where appropriate. 

Only really had 15 minutes to do this, so it's pretty unpolished at this stage and the timing's really squiffy. I tried to delay the hammer slightly before it comes swinging down to give it a little more character, though it still needs work. I'm thinking I may hold it at the furthest position for a little bit to add some anticipation. The ball is very static too - there's no feeling of contact or weight when the mallet strikes the ball and it moves very uniformly. I'm going to try and alter the timing so the ball decelerates before coming to a stop. I'm not entirely sure how to improve the impression of power when the mallet connects with the ball; I'm going to simply need to experiment with it a little bit. Maybe if the hammer swings a little faster it would help?

I've also gone over Jon's awesome exporting tutorial which, again, solves a lot of problems I'd previously encountered with exporting, so expect a post on that soon! 

Softimage XSI: Keyframes and the animation editor

Sounds like a great title for a film -Keyframe and the Animation Editor! Easily the next Harry Potter...

Anyhow, figured I'd do a little post on keyframes just to act as reference. I also find that this sort of recap is really helpful to me - having to go back and re-explain everything I've covered in words really gives you a good perspective as to whether or not you've truly understood something. If you can explain why and how you did something, it's gives you a more flexible knowledge of applying it. Or... something...

These things make sense in my head.

At the bottom of the screen is the timeline. It's fairly straightforward, works much the same way as any other timeline; it displays frames! Click a frame and it takes you to that point in the animation. Keyframes are represented by those little red boxes.

At the bottom of the window is a gigantic icon of a key - here I have auto keying turned on (which basically sets keyframes automatically whenever the value of an object is changed) so my big key is greyed out. However, turning that off for a moment, the key will appear green which means you can set a keyframe at that point in time.

(Auto keying appears to still be turned on at this point - ignore it, it lies! I turned it off!!)

Click the key to set the first keyframe at the beginning point of your animation. The key will turn red and a keyframe will appear in the timeline.

We can then select a new point in the timeline (frame 20, say) and change the value of our object to set the new keyframe at that point.

Now if we select the scale tool (for example - it works with any of the transform tools) and change the value (in this case, squashing our ball flat) the key will turn yellow. This means that a value has changed, but a keyframe has not yet been set!

Click the key and it will turn red, indicating that there is a keyframe at this point. The new keyframe will appear on the timeline, and an animation will be created.

It works much like After Effects or Final Cut or anything of that nature really, just with a slightly less fancy interface! You can also set keyframes with a keyboard shortcut - K.

Editing keyframes isn't readily explained and so confused me for a while but it's actually pretty simple once you know where to go! To shift the position of keyframes on the timeline, hold shift and drag across them - they will gain a white border to indicate that they're selected. To move them, position the cursor over the keyframes (a hand icon will appear), hold the middle mouse button (hand will "grab" the frames) and drag to move them along the timeline!

You can also right click selected keyframes and right click to cut, copy or paste keyframes. You can also delete 'em from here!

This is probably the most useful way of getting your initial, basic animation down, but it's very limited and doesn't give you terribly fantastic results by itself. The real tweaking and refining seems to come in the form of the Animation Editor that I talked about previously:

This big, scary chart shows you the curves of your keyframes, plotting its motion/position through time and space. It's terrifying and I didn't understand it at first (still not entirely confident with it) but I've spent a bit of time looking into it and it's beginning to make more sense now.

It basically plots the keyframes of any given parameter of an object on a chart. By default it displays EVERYTHING, which for a complex animated scene means lots of wiggly lines everywhere, but you can filter the display and select what you want to see with the menu on the right. Here I've selected the "pos y" movement - i.e. the up-and-down movement of a bouncing ball. The little green dots are keyframes!

The bottom row of numbers on the chart are frames. The numbers on the left basically represents the value of the parameter - so, effectively, dragging the keyframes left and right on the chart adjusts the timing whereas dragging them up and down alters the spacing or shape or whatever (in this case, for example, dragging a keyframe upwards would move my ball higher into the air on that particular frame).

But that's not all! You can also really fine-tune the slope of each curve to adjust the timing and spacing accordingly. Using the keyframe/animation editor select tool (keyboard shortcut Y), click on the keyframe (or keyframes) and these little bezier handles appear.

You can drag these around and alter the slope of the curve, tweaking your animation accordingly. You also get a nice onion skin-type thing that shows you the old curve for comparison.

You need to be careful with the editor however as it can actually place frames between frames (called "ticks") is probably useful in something complex like a walk cycle or other complex movement. However, in this instance, it would be more of a hindrance. To turn it off, click on Edit in the Animation Editor and make sure "Auto snap to frames" is checked! I wasn't aware of it at the time so I ended up with a lot of these "ticks" all over my timeline... quite confusing and made editing the timing/spacing very difficult.

I knocked up a quick ball bounce using this editor to try and get a feel for how it worked. It wasn't entirely successful, but it's getting there.

The timing's a bit off - I think there needs to be more of a clear acceleration as the ball drops and I possibly need to hold the squash for just one frame longer? The second and third bounces are too jittery - there needs to be a clear distinction in height and speed to give the impression that the ball is losing energy as it comes to a stop. They're very similar right now - it kind of judders then suddenly stops. To be honest most of the problems were due to my lack of knowledge of the interface (weird as that sounds). I couldn't figure out how to achieve those things because, at the time, I didn't understand how the animation editor worked or how I was supposed to alter the timing properly. I now have a bit more understanding, though, so hopefully I'll be able to improve things on the next attempt!

Softimage XSI: Selecting and transforming objects

Now that I've got a basic overview of the interface, I'm getting my hands dirty with actually moving and manipulating objects. Wish me luck...

Here I've got two "primitive" objects, a sphere and a cylinder. Currently the cylinder is selected. The panel on the right hand side is my transformation panel and contains all the tools I need to scale, rotate or translate (move) my object around the workspace. Currently, scale is selected.

Objects can be scaled by simply grabbing the handle and dragging it up or down to transform the object along that axis.

Objects can be transformed across all three axis simultaneously by clicking and dragging in the center of all the axis. This constrains the proportions of the object across all axis - similar to scaling whilst holding shift in Photoshop.

You can also transform objects on just two of the axis by holding the cursor between the two handles that you want, then clicking and dragging in the normal way. I got far more excited about this than I perhaps should.

The space bar functions as the select tool in Softimage. Hold shift to select a new object - otherwise you'll continue to transform the previously selected object!

Keyboard shortcuts

Scale - X
Rotate - C
Translate -V
Select - Space bar

Softimage: Projects and folder structures

Similarly to After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut and other such programs, Softimage works with a project-based folder structure used to contain the project files themselves and all the necessary assets that go along with it (textures, scenes, audio, renders, etc.). Fortunately Softimage creates this folder structure automatically when a new project is created, so half of the organization is already done for us!

File > New Project brings up the above dialogue box, asking simply for a name and location for the new project.

This incredibly daunting list is basically all of the assets Softimage will generate as we start creating and animating stuff within it. Kind of scary, isn't it?!

The Open Projects menu contains a list of all recently accessed projects (including Softimage's preset scenes and samples that come bundled with the software), allowing you to hop back and forth between projects and open different assets from each. As more and more project files are created and accessed, the list on the right can grow to astronomical proportions, so fortunately Softimage's "Project Manager" can help us to manage and clean it up a bit.

You can add or remove projects from the list at your leisure. This won't physically remove them from your hard drive, it will simply add or remove them from the list for quick access. It's probably worth going through and doing a bit of housekeeping to remove complete or deprecated projects from the list every now and again, to keep things tidy.

Softimage XSI: Camera memos

Slowly but surely progressing with Softimage. Came across something really really cool just now: camera memos!

Essentially, these record the current position of your camera. So, for instance, if you've lined up a shot perfectly for rendering, you can basically 'bookmark' the position of the camera and jump back to it at any point.


Say for instance that this framing of my cube is absolutely perfect and I want to remember this for later, so I can jump straight back to it after I'm done making adjustments to the other side of my object. At the top of the view port are four small boxes:

Middle clicking one of the boxes creates a camera memo, remembering the exact position of the camera. If you pan/rotate/zoom around a lot, you can simply left click the camera memo to be taken back the recorded position.

 What's really great, though, is that you can have multiple memos on all the different view ports. Up to four memos per view port, so if you've got a nice framing of your object on the 'top' viewport you can create a new memo just for that.

Amazingly useful really, I could certainly have used this when I was trying to line up the model of the Macbook Pro with the desk on my previous project!

Getting started with Softimage XSI

Decided to get a bit of a head start with some new software in preparation for the next Digital Skills project, so I've managed to cram Softimage XSI onto my computer and have proceeded to try and get to know the program over a romantic candlelit dinner.

Or, rather, the excellent beginner tutorials over at http://www.digitaltutors.com

I've not gotten much further than learning how to navigate through the 3D workspace just yet, but that's a start! I'm going to make a note of all the shortcuts and things as I learn them, as a bit of a reference.

Camera controls

While holding S

Left mouse button: pan/track around
Scroll wheel/middle mouse button:  zoom/"dolly" in and out
Right mouse button: rotate/orbit camera

Keyboard shortcuts
 
F: centers ("frame") selected object
A: centers everything in the scene