Amiga.org

Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Desktop Audio and Video => Topic started by: motorollin on December 16, 2006, 08:37:30 PM

Title: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: motorollin on December 16, 2006, 08:37:30 PM
I'm planning to create a music video. The graphics will be hand drawn as pen lines, with no shading or colour, just rough lines (I want it to look hand drawn). Is there any software for the Amiga which would allow me to use scanned 2D images to build 3D objects and animate them?

--
moto
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: KThunder on December 16, 2006, 08:54:46 PM
there is a pc program called photomodeller that can do that i dont know of any for the amiga though. it uses photogrammetry to build 3d objects from multiple images of an object and can get textures at the same time. i started to write a prgram to do something similar but i found that with carefully taken pictures you can get rough x,y,z data for the pixel coords

i saw an article in an amiga mag once that had an effect similar to what you are describing for your video. i think it was lightwave and it was a rendering mode where you could set it to render verteces or edges or faces.
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: X-ray on December 16, 2006, 08:58:27 PM
You gotta choose, do you want a 2D effect like the A-Ha music video of Take On Me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXBmgmytFVU) or do you want to input hand-drawn pencilled textures and wrap those on 3D objects and then animate those objects?

Both ways you can do it on the Amiga. But you'll need different software and hardware to do it.
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: X-ray on December 16, 2006, 09:02:09 PM
Oh I read your post again, and I think I understand what you want now. It sounds like a lot of work to draw individual perspectives and then scan those just to get the objects. You are better off modelling these as splines in a four-view raytracer then running the output frames through a Photoshop filter.

I will post a few examples if you are interested in going that route.
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: motorollin on December 16, 2006, 09:02:31 PM
Thanks for the info about PhotoModeler. I'm not sure how I would use this software in this case since the hand-drawn images would not be of 3D objects. Would it be easier to make 3D objects in a rendering package then apply the hand-drawn lines as textures?

--
moto
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: X-ray on December 16, 2006, 09:07:02 PM
Woah, now I am back to not understanding what you want. Do you want to input hand-drawn lines as the basis for creating 3D objects, or do you want to make hand-drawn textures that you apply to 3D objects that you make separately?
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: motorollin on December 16, 2006, 09:34:57 PM
Oops, my reply came after yours Ray, making the whole thing a bit confusing :-) I don't want anything nearly as detailed as the Aha video. It's literally lines roughly drawn with a pen on paper like a quick outline drawing done in biro. The objects don't actually need to look 3D at all. In fact, I would prefer it if they didn't. But some of the objects will need to rotate, for example a crane which will swing round. It seems to me that if this is created as a 3D object it will be easier to achieve this effect than redrawing the object in a different position in each frame.

--
moto
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: Amiduffer on December 16, 2006, 10:30:31 PM
Hey Motorollin. This might help it might not. In Imagine3D, theres a command that can take any 2D bitmapped drawing and turn it into a 3D object, which, I then think if you animate it swinging around, you can then cut out as a brush.
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: sprocket on December 16, 2006, 10:38:27 PM
Aren't we talking about using the DPaint 'Move' command for 2D sections..?

Using any sort of 3D rendering seems to me like it would require a lot more work and rendering time.

Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: X-ray on December 16, 2006, 11:15:02 PM
DPaint's move command is okay if the perspective doesn't change, but Moto wants to rotate stuff.
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: weirdami on December 16, 2006, 11:17:12 PM
Quote
Would it be easier to make 3D objects in a rendering package then apply the hand-drawn lines as textures?


I would think so.
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: Ral-Clan on December 16, 2006, 11:27:33 PM
Okay, first of all, if you REALLY want to convert 2D drawn objects into 3D objects for use in a ray tracing program like Imagine/Lightwave, then supposedly PixelPro 3D will do this.

However, are you sure you just don't want to use DeluxePaint?  It's a great animating program for 2D images.  You can even take an animated brush, and then with the MOVE command, twist, rotate and spin the moving brush in any of the 3 dimensions.  Also you can move it backwards or forwards (away from the camera or towards the camera).

I'm thinking you could accomplish what you need to in DeluxePaint.
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: X-ray on December 16, 2006, 11:47:05 PM
Moto what you best be doing is making very simple models in a raytracer, and then exporting wireframe views as individual frames. This won't take a long time, even on an Amiga with an 030. You can do it with Real3D V1.4 or Cinema4d. Both were given away on coverdisks.
Then you need to apply a filter to those frames, to get that drawn look.
I don't know what Amiga software has the right filters, but on the PC side Photoshop definitely has them. The 'Dry Brush' filter is probably what you need.
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: motorollin on December 16, 2006, 11:51:11 PM
Thanks for all the advice. I did consider using a 2D paint package like DPaint, but as others have pointed out the changes of perspective would make this somewhat complicated. I'll look in to a raytracer (should have some CUCDs somewhere :-) ) and see what I can come up with. I've got Photoshop CS on my Mac which I'm sure could apply the "hand-drawn" effect to the lines of the ray-traced frames.

--
moto
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: JaXanim on December 17, 2006, 06:18:57 PM
Maybe some reading around things like Isometric Projection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection) and Cell Shading (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_shading) might create ideas?

JaX
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: rednova on March 16, 2007, 01:19:11 AM
Hi Friend:

this might be a little off...but it might help.
There is a good old amiga proggie, called 'moviesetter'.
Is really good and easy to learn/use.It is to make your own animated movies (2d)or animations.You can scan into it your pencil drawings and mix them with sfx and pics.It is really good...for importing drawings and making your own animations.And it is easy to use. You could find a copy on ebay every once in a while..for a small price ($10 ?).
Hope this helps...

rednova
-mobilis in mobili-
Title: Re: Animating hand-drawn graphics
Post by: AmigaPixel on May 04, 2007, 06:47:47 AM
Did you ever find a solution? If not here is my 2 cents worth. Lightwave 3d has nice plugin called cell shader. It converts 3D scenes to appear 2D and it does a good job. It also lets you adjust your settings i.e. line thickness and others. Thisway you could have the 3D rotation effect of the crane but still have it appear 2D.

Also I would suggest ImageFX Studio by Nova Designs, the latest is version 4.5. This paint image manipulation package is second to none and rivals other similar programs on other platforms.

The batch processor alone makes it worth it. You could paint the hand drawn style you are looking for in the program or draw each frame and scan them in. Then use the batch program to assemble them into an animation.
finally Lightwave 3D allows you to composite videos into the background so you could combine the two elements.