Electric Image Animation System 7 Tutorials
Animation / Intro to the Function Curve Editor pt. 3
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Subtitles of the Movie (Electric Image Animation System 7 / Animation / Intro to the Function Curve Editor pt. 3)
One more great feature of the FCE; let's say you want to copy your animation from one object to another or share an animation without having to send over the model. Let's open our previous project and I'll show you how. Let's make a sphere from the Uber Shape Plug-In, radius of two. OK. Next I'll enable animations for the sphere. In its Group Info Window, I'll set its position keyframes to Explicit. Then I'll add those position channels from the sphere to the FCE and finally open the FCE. The Explicit position channels for the spaceship are already in the FCE. I'm about to export its animation channel by channel. Each export is called an Envelope. To export an envelope, click on the channel, then go up to the FCEs Main Toolbar and click on this icon; the one that looks like a piece of paper and from the pop-up list choose Save All. This will save all the keyframes. Name the file and click Save. Now I'll do the same for the Y position channel and then the Z position channel. Notice that I'm doing this with Explicit channel. Implicit won't work. Next I'll select the position channels for the sphere. One by one, click on the File Button again and this time load each one of these envelopes to the sphere. X and then Y and then Z like that. Now the sphere has the exact same graph as the spaceship and you can see that it has jumped to where the spaceship is. Let's preview. So with envelopes, you can copy and save your animations for further use. One last thing I'll point out about the Function Curve Editor. When we were editing Implicit Curve, the graph measured velocity; not so with Explicit Curves. With Explicit, the data is defined by position values, not speed. Let's click on the sphere's Info Window again and look at the value in the xfield. I'll move the time thumb to the second keyframe. If I barely move the keyframe in the FCE, two number appear; T for time and V for value. In this case, the value is its position in X World Space. So it shows 54.5 in the FCE and in the Info Window. If I move the point up, the value increases and it's reflected in the Info Window. Now I'll change the sphere back to Implicit Mode. The position channels disappear in the FCE so I have to send it again. Click on the little Black Arrow here. That enables me to send data to the FCE. And then double click on Position as usual. Now our Implicit motion appears on the graph. Now, I can move the second keyframe point and the value in the Info Window doesn't change. That's because the value in the graph is speed; V for velocity in this case. So let me finish up this introduction to the good old FCE by giving you a tip. How do you best set up an animation? Generally, go ahead and work with Implicit keyframes. Get your animation as tight as you can in the Function Curve Editor and then switch to Explicit Mode. You'll be able to define the shapes of your motion path better with Implicit keyframes and then the timings if necessary with Explicit Keyframes.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Electric Image Animation System 7 |
| Author: | Scott Simmons |
| SKU: | 33996 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-45-9 |
| Release Date: | 2009-06-01 |
| Duration: | 8 hrs / 102 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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