Training:3D Animation Course

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Contents

Exercise Files

  1. Download the "CatWalk_EvaSize6.mod" file from here
  2. Download the "Step 1" Folder from here
  3. Download the "Step 2" Folder from here
  4. Download the "Step 3" Folder from here

Animation Exercise

  1. Start PDS (version 11).
  2. Open file: "Animation Exercise\step 1\ 3D dress(original).pds"
  3. Load model: "Animation Exercise \CatWalk_EvaSize6.mod" (This is an ANIMATED model.)
  4. Place cloth on the model and Simulate Draping.
    1. (Bug#1: the front piece appears without texture. Temporary Solution: select the piece and check the ‘Mirror’ checkbox of Texture1 in the Shader dialog).
  5. Save Cloth name as: "3D dress(original)" as "Cloth File (*.clt)" type, in "Animation Exercise\step 1" folder. (Image Quality = High)
  6. Open the Animation window. Select from the menu: View>3D windows>Animation
    1. 3D Animation Pane

    2. (The Animation Cache section gives the user the capability to create Caches for the animated models. Cache is useful, if you want the animation to playback faster. This method stores the data of the full animation onto a Cache. The animation is then read from the hard disk (Cache) instead of being recalculated for each frame like a new animation process.)
  7. Before we create the animated video, we want to create the Cache and test the animation result. Check the Export Cache checkbox in order to create a cache for your animation.
  8. Press the Browse button (2.png) and Save the Cache name as: "step1" as "OptiTex Cloth Cache Data (*.ccd)" type, in "Animation Exercise\step 1" folder.
    1. Export Cache

    2. (Frames, Frame Rate & Sub Frames: frame is one of the many single photographic images in a motion picture. The individual frames are separated by frame lines. Normally, 24 frames are needed for one second of film. In ordinary filming, the frames are photographed automatically, one after the other, in a movie camera. In special effects or animation filming, the frames are often shot one at a time.)
    3. (Frame rate is the measure of the number of frames displayed sequentially per second of animation in order to create the illusion of motion. Frame rate is most often expressed in frames per second (FPS). The higher the frame rate, the smoother the motion, because there are more frames per second to display the transition from point A to point B. The recommendation is frame rate range of 25-30.)
    4. (Sub frame simulations greatly increase the stability of the simulation to any desired level, it basically perform a user defined number of pre-simulations in between frames, allowing finer grain Sims, and a nice side effect. Sub frame simulations do increase the calculation time proportionally to the number of sub-steps, so the user has to make a trade-off between stability and simulation time.Default sub frame is set to 3.)
    5. (Make sure that the "Create Video" checkbox is unchecked.)
  9. Press the Play button to start creating the animation Cache. You can see the model moving through the catwalk and the frame counter number in the animation dialog increase. This Eve animation model contains 264 frames.
    1. Frames

  10. At this stage your first animated cache file is created (3D dress.ccd). It is time to see and check the result. We need to check if there are glitches that interrupt the flow of the movement and catch any mistake in the walk cycle animation. Set the ‘From’ frame counter to ‘0’ and Press the ‘rewind’ button to go back to the first frame. Uncheck the ‘Export Cache’ checkbox.
    1. Frame Counter

    2. Time to check and redraw your walk cycle animation frames:
  11. Press the ‘Play’ button. A slow motion of the cached animation is displayed. You can press the ‘Pause’ button to stop and observe a certain frame. To “jump” to a specific frame enter the frame’s number in the ‘Current’ text box and press the ‘Go to’ button. Press the up/down arrows to navigate between the frames.
    1. Note: If you exit the software, next time you enter it you can see the animation you have created by loading the matching clt file and using the ‘Import Cache’ button (File:6.png) to load the saved cached file (.ccd)
    2. In current cache file animation, we can see that there are some glitches:
    3. a. In frames 40-60 we can see that the cloth is too Jumpy and this is not normal behavior of a cloth (actually in all the frames we can see the ‘jumpy’ behavior)

    4. b. Self intersection – frame # 188: at this part we can see that the cloth intersect with itself)

    5. c. The shoulder straps slips down (frames # 37-38 in along the entire animation)

  12. Solutions:
    1. a. The cloth is ‘Jumpy’ because the model motion is too fast for the cloth to follow. We can solve this problem by increasing the sub frame value. Increasing the sub frame cause to model motion to be divided into sub frames and by that allow the cloth to follow the body respectively. Increase the sub frames value to 5
    2. b. Check the “Use self Intersection” checkbox in ‘Simulation Properties’ (12.png) dialog. Press the ‘Rewind’ button in the ‘Animation’ dialog and re-simulate the cloth. This will untie places where the cloth crosses through itself.
    3. b. Use Self Intersection

    4. c. Increase the friction property of the top pieces (“RIGHT FRONT, LEFT FRONT and BACK TOP) to 0.3 and re-simulate the cloth. This will increase the friction between the straps and the body.
    5. c. Friction

  13. drape the dress with it’s new parameters and create new clt file (‘\Animation Exercise\step 2\ 3D dress(step2).clt’)
  14. After setting the sub frames to 5, check the ‘Export Cache’ checkbox and start creation a new animation cache by playing the ‘Play’ button . (‘\Animation Exercise\step 2\ step 2.ccd)
  15. Please repeat step 7-8
  16. Looking at the result, we can see that the previous problems were resolved but we still need to handle few issues:
    1. a. Because the friction increased, we now see in frame #80 that the cloth intersect with the body

  17. Solution: Increase the Thickness of the fabric from 0.05 to 0.1 – this will resolve the intersection problem. (‘\Animation Exercise\step 3\ 3D dress(step3).clt’)
  18. Re-simulate and create new animation cache. (‘\Animation Exercise\step 3\ step 3.ccd)
  19. Now, that the results are satisfying, it is time to create the animated video file (AVI): rewind the cache back to frame 0. Uncheck the ‘Export Cache’ option, check the ‘Create Video’ option and choose destination for the video file. Set the desired Width & Height and Press the ‘Play’ button to start creating the video.
    1. Create Video

  20. A “Video Compression’ dialog is open. Choose the video codec suit for your need and hardware, configure the color and quality and press the ‘Play’ button.
    1. Video Compression

  21. On windows 7 and my hardware, the video codec I chose is "Cinepak"
    1. Compressor (Video Codec)

    2. Note: it is possible to create both the cache and the video at the same phase.
  22. The result will be ‘3D Dress.avi’


Congratulation! You have created your first animated video file!

Frame By Frame images

  • Additional option for creating a video is by reading a series of numbered images as a video stream.
  • In order to create sequence of all the images in the animation (263), check the ‘create video’ checkbox and in the video name dialog entered the video name with extension JPG:
video as JPG extension

  • The result will give sequence of all frames images that can later be use for video creation or any other purpose you like:
Frame image Sequence

  • I used the QuickTime player (with a licence) to create mov file with high quality (‘\Animation Exercise\step 3\3D Dress.mov’)

Related subjects

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