Markus Sosnowski – 2D Animator / Content Developer
Markus Sosnowski
Finding popularity for his first original nursery rhyme written for his young daughter, Markus Sosnowski made the decision to create a music video for YouTube with the help of Cartoon Animator, which he now has a loyal following for his collection of children’s music videos.
In his interview with Reallusion, Markus tells how Cartoon Animator, along with his passion for music and illustration, helped him realize his dream of becoming a successful story teller for children.
“I would never have dreamed that I would be able to produce such good quality videos without having any drawing skills myself. As a beginner with Cartoon Animator, you can start animating right away.. I can make cartoon videos in this quality without ever having studied animation or art and without a large team behind me.”
Markus Sosnowski – 2D Animator / Content Developer
Matt Hickinbottom – Owner of Musical Music Pictures
Matt Hickinbottom
Matt started in film and television at the age of 12 as a child actor on children’s television. Being a musician, he soon landed a freelance job writing regular music and jingles for children’s television and Disney across Europe. Wanting to develop his skills further, he learned how to shoot and edit and has become a sought-after producer, director & director of photography. Up until recently, he shot regular promos for SONY pictures with some of his work winning Promax awards.
In his film work he has worked all over the world from Canada and the US, across Europe and as far east as Kazakhstan. He has also created numerous cinema adverts for companies such as Merlin Entertainments, across their LEGO Discovery Centres, Sea Life Centres and Warwick Castle attractions.
‘Emily, the little match girl’ started over 25 years ago when Matt started to write a stage musical based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, ‘The little match girl’. This current production is aiming for a Christmas 2021 release and stars the voices of Bafta, Laurence Olivier and Annie Award winner ‘David Bradley’ (best known for playing Argus Filtch in all the Harry Potter films & Walder Frey in Game of thrones) as well as Olivier Award nominated ‘Lesley Joseph’ and many more.
Matt started working with Reallusion’s iClone in 2020, as the pandemic made it one of his main tools for creating animated content, where he employed everything from iClone animations to Character Creator, and Perception Neuron motion capture.
“Reallusion’s tools have been the key to unlocking my imagination, allowing me to show everyone else what’s been inside my head for so long. With the lockdowns, it’s also been the one set of tools that’s allowed me to keep working and creating without limitations.”
Matt Hickinbottom – Owner of Musical Music Pictures
Greetings, my name is Peter Alexander, a 3D Generalist, and freelancer who works heavily with iClone and Character Creator.
iClone’s Facial Animation Technology includes facial expressions, lip-sync animation, and facial mocap which provides real-time facial animation with facial capture equipment. AccuLips provides a very intuitive way to generate procedural, editable lip-syncing animations, allowing users to easily create accurate, natural, and smooth-talking performances. It detects and extracts text and viseme from audio, or imports a prepared script for precise lip-syncing which saves a massive amount of time when animating dialogue.
In this article, I’m going to run you through the process of using AccuLips to create lip-sync animation for my Laughing Buddha. I’m also going to show you how to export your animation from iClone to Blender for Eevee rendering.
To keep the focus on AccuLips, I’ve already done the character’s movements using elements from a previous project. You can see the lip-sync animation tutorial in the following video:
Prepare Recorded Voice MP3 File Compatible with iClone
For the character’s audio track, I recorded my voice using Audacity, an audio manipulation application and altered the audio’s pitch and reverberation. After editing the track according to my needs, I save it as an MP3 file, which is compatible with AccuLips and iClone.
Import and Edit the Audio in iClone
In iClone, go to Animation and Create Script, choose AccuLips, and import the saved audio. Select Generate Text. AccuLips will analyze the audio and attempt to approximate the speech into text. The words that can’t be identified will be in red, much like a spell check. You can manually correct this for a better generation of visemes.
Adjusting Text for Better Visemes and Modifying Visemes
When you apply the AccuLips data to the animation, it will produce the various visemes to accompany the audio. I then go through the timeline, and if I want a sound to be emphasized or replaced with the lip-sync, I click on the viseme indicator and adjust it. The key point is that you want to emphasize visemes at certain points during the animation. If the dialog emphasizes a sound, the animation should as well. You can keep the lip editor open as you go through the timeline, to make things easier to adjust.
Export the Audio and Character from iClone
If you choose to render in Blender, you’ll want to do two things. First, export the audio from the range of the video, then select the character and export the FBX from the same range. This will ensure that the audio and animation are in sync.
Importing Character into Blender via Auto Setup
In Blender use the Blender Auto Setup, located in the CC3 tab, to import the FBX file as a character. In the CC3 tab, click the Range from Character option to set the proper animation range for the timeline.
Importing the Audio into Blender
To import the audio, go to the Video Sequencer, press Shift+A, then select Sound from the menu. Or you can go to the Add menu at the top of the Video Sequencer section and add Sound from there. This will allow you to select the previously exported audio file. You can select the Playback panel on the timeline to enable scrubbing so you can hear your audio as you go through your animation timeline. If you don’t hear the audio, open preferences, go to System, then check your Sound settings.
Saving the Animation as a Video File
To save the animation as a video, go to the Scene tab, go to Output, and choose to save it in a video format rather than as an image. Also, remember to choose an audio encoding option. If you plan to do some compositing, you can set up a green screen or save this as a video with transparency (RGBA).
Rendering to Video File in Blender
Now with everything set up, choose Viewport Render Animation, rather than the full render (depending on your rendering preferences). This will render things as they appear in the Eevee Preview window.
Examples of other lip-syncs and facial animations:
Greetings, this is Peter Alexander. I’m a digital freelancer specialized in illustration, graphic design, and 3D modeling.
I’d like to share how I take advantage of Blender’s powerful modeling features in creating clothing and accessories, then send those assets to Character Creator to build up a reusable asset library. Character Creator supports skin weights transfer function and other optimizing tools to make the process easy.
In this article, I am putting existing assets through the pipeline for refinement, so you will have better ideas about the Character Creator-to-Blender pipeline. I will use a free ‘Blender Auto Setup’ add-on to simply the import and export process.
If you are interested in how I built up clothing and accessories from scratch in Blender, please check out this full-length video.
Depending on your needs, export either a clothed character or an unclothed character in the pose you plan to work within Blender. If you export with a bind pose, make sure your character is in the same pose when you re-import your clothing and accessories.
As I was going to be re-importing all of the items I had exported in an optimized state, I deleted his existing clothing after I exported the clothed character.
Import Character in Blender via Auto Setup
In Blender, using the CC3 tab provided by the Blender Auto Setup add-on, import your file using the ‘Import for Accessory’ option. This is similar to the other options, but is optimized for asset editing and export.
Tweak Clothing and Accessories in Blender
Although not necessary, I fixed a few visual settings, such as the opacity blending for the smoke I had previously created. Doing this is good practice, especially if you plan to render within Blender at some point.
Make any adjustments, edits, or even create new assets from within Blender, depending on your requirements. In my case, I mostly adjusted a few clipping issues and added some edge loops to assist with clothing deformations.
Export Clothing and Accessories via Auto Setup
After making the adjustments or creating the digital assets, export the item back through the Blender Auto Setup add-on as an accessory. If you’ve imported the character as an OBJ, you’ll be provided with an OBJ option to export back. I believe if you’ve imported an FBX, that option will be provided.
Bring in Assets with Skin Weight presets
Import the items one-by-one through the Create > Accessory option. This will import the item in approximately the same position relative to the posed character as it was created in Blender. Sometimes you will have to do some placement adjustments.
By default, the item is an accessory (unskinned geometry), and you can part the item to various bones for accessory (such as in the case of this character’s cigarette and smoke, which I parented to the Jaw bone). Clothing should be skinned through the ‘Transfer Skin Weights’ option.
Optimizing the Assets with Hide Mesh Tool and Skin Weight Editing Tool
Clothing that conceals significant geometry should be optimized to auto-hide that geometry when fitted to the character. This can be done in the ‘Hide Body Mesh Tool’. This not only optimizes the visuals during clothing deformation, but it will also allow you the option of deleting hidden mesh automatically during exports into other applications.
Finally, try various poses to see where issues with skinning weights should be adjusted. In my case the clavicle was pulling the collar of the coat too harshly, so I assigned some of the vertex weights to one of the upper spine groups.
Send Character Back to Blender for Eevee Render via Auto Setup
If you plan to render out the character using Blender’s Eevee engine, you can export the character with animation or in a pose using the FBX export options. I tried the option to delete the hidden mesh during export. This eliminates the ability to re-import back into Character Creator, lessens the need to adjust the mesh after it’s been imported.
You can import the FBX file to Blender through the ‘Import Character’ option of Blender Auto Setup add-on, which will automatically translate Reallusion’s Digital Human Shader and parameters to Blender Eevee and Cycle. You can further adjust SSS skin, eyes, teeth, and hair dynamically.
Comprehensive 3D Hair and Beard Component-based Design for Any Hairstyle Imaginable.
The embeddedSmart Hair system is designed to provide the most realistic, yet performance-friendly hair, brows, and beard for digital humans in games and films. The card-based hair meshes are intricate in detail, economical in texture resolution, and efficient for real-time rendering. The highly flexible color gradients and specular variations are powered by the Smart Hair shader. Design components allow you to freely assemble different custom hair and beard elements into unique hairstyles, while the beard and brows can dynamically conform to any facial movement.
A Plethora of Choices
Smart Hair’s component-based design offers an easy and effective way to manage 3D hair, brow and beard assets. Users can add select hair parts and accessories, combine elements into groupings, and compose them together to form a cohesive look. Group and Style items can be replaced with a single click to quickly test out different variations. Imported assets assigned to a corresponding facial area automatically conforms to the underlying surfaces . The beard is composed of mustache, goatee, sideburns, soul patch and other accessories. On the other hand, hair is divided into base, top, rear, bangs and accessory parts for optimal mixing. Use the component design system to alter character hairstyles with different fringes, bodies, and ponytails. You can also fill in tiny hair and wispy fuzz around the hairline and back of the neck.
Creating a multitude of natural hair looks is possible with four powerful controls: Ombré (root and end color), Balayage (highlight color), Base Layer (vertex color), and Reflection (flow map). With these potent effects you can easily create chic or stylized hair dye, create silky smooth hair reflections, simulate silver gray, or parched look and feel. Blend with vertex color (predefined in hair meshes) for enhanced depth effect. For natural layer contrast, you can use lighter vertex color on upper layer meshes, and darker vertex color for layers underneath. Create subtle gradual hair color fades using Root and End colors, usually from darker tones at the roots to a lighter tone towards the hair tips for a classic ombré style. The strand color pattern is defined by the grey-scale Root map, and supports different blend modes and strength controls. The Highlight Color effect is the highlighting done with hair dyes that we see in reality; Two highlight colors can be blended to create more natural looks, with theID texture map controlling the effect. The natural reflections gives hair a healthy lifelike look and feel . One can adjust the Specular strength, alter the Reflection Flow, or disrupt the reflective pattern to emphasize unique hairstyles.
The Smart Hair system is designed for performance: the card based meshes are small in size, fast to load, and efficient for real-time animation. One complete hair set is merely hundreds or thousands of polygons, while using optimal texture sizes : hair at 2K and beard at 1K. By utilizing minimal resources you can achieve high visual realism with sophisticated coloring, and adjustable reflections using the real-time shader.
The Smart Hair Beard and Brows can perfectly conform to animated facial surfaces during real-time performance. It works in real-time for facial morphs, lip-sync animations, facial motion capture, and intensive expression change with the Face Puppettool. One can also fine-tune the shape and position of the facial hairs with the Mesh Editor. To top it all off, facial hairs are exportable, at any stage, as FBX blend-shapes for game engines and 3D rendering.
Reallusion’s Smart Hair system is compatible with major 3D hair creators like Ornatrix (for Maya, C4d, Ma, ...), XGen, and Blender hair plugins – as long as they can export card based hair meshes in OBJ or FBX format, and generate the texture maps needed for the shader effects. You can convert existing hair assets as Smart Hair components, or upgrade the rendering with the Smart Hair shader by adding required effect maps. Smart Hair supports direct shader compatibility with Unreal Engine; with one-click you can transfer hair assets through the Auto Setup plugin, while keeping the identical feature adjustments consistent between the two programs. For Unity and other 3D tools, you can choose to bake shader effects to PBR textures for rendering.
Smart Hair’s beard and brow elements are designed to move along with their corresponding facial vertices – however when bringing in new items which have vertices detached from the facial surface, users can use the Vertex Assignment tool to define the target following area to avoid mesh stretches, or mesh penetration, when animating the face.
For more information, visit the Smart Hairlanding page.
Neil Biondich is a writer/director/animator, based in Los Angeles. He grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he studied art, film, music, martial arts, and roleplaying.
Neil began animating in the nineties, co-founding the company, Sik Puppy Studios. The company’s tech progressed from Amigas running Lightwave, to SGI’s running Alias Power Animator, to finally, PC’s running Maya. Neil had left animation behind for more than a decade but was drawn back in when COVID broke out and he began to study Virtual Production methodologies. The real-time raytracing capabilities of Unreal Engine blew him away and reignited his passion for animated storytelling.
Neil founded Kuden Creative with a charter to develop original, high-concept content for film and television. His sci-fi feature screenplay, KITTY, was a finalist at the 2020 Austin Film Festival and is now in pre-production with Neil set to direct.
His Pitch & Produce project: Chiburi employed real-time tools from Reallusion including Character Creator, iClone, LIVE FACE mocap for iPhone, with Rokoko Smartsuit Pro, and Unreal Engine.
Chiburiis a story about breaking the mold that society tries to keep us in. The plight of a girl in medieval Japan trying to rise above her station is perfectly synonymous with today’s struggles for equality. The character Sister just wants to earn her adult name. Unfortunately, her father will only award a name to one who lands a blow on him with a sword. Females are not allowed to touch swords. So, while Sister is raised watching her father train her brother to become samurai, she sneaks off into the woods to secretly practice what she observes.
“Reallusion was the exact toolbox I needed for my project. Each application tackled a different aspect of my pipeline and it all worked together flawlessly. They manage to bring high-end character modelling and animation into the reach of artists and filmmakers (non-3D gurus) without sacrificing quality.”
Mixing 2D with live-action has been a popular format for movies and TVs over the years. The obvious benefits of this style include that it produces visually realistic results and makes the film more engaging. However, creating such a piece can sometimes be painstaking for video animation makers. Today we have invited Chris Meyer-White to show you how to easily accomplish video compositing of 2D animation with live footage using Cartoon Animator 4.
A Brief History of 2D and Live Action Animation
My name is Chris Meyer-White. I have worked in Home Entertainment for 15+ years, in both the US and the UK, and on projects for Warner Brothers, Disney, BBC, Paramount, and many other studios. The most time of which being at Abbey Home Media which was the UK’s leading independent home entertainment company for lots of well-known children’s shows, Care Bears, Topsy and Tim, Peter Rabbit, Sooty, Horrid Henry, Fireman Sam and more.
Before I start showing you the workflow of my creation, let me give you a quick introduction to 2D and live-action video.
There are many different styles of animation, 2D, 3D, stop motion, and more.
One of my personal favourite styles has to be when 2D and live-action are mixed together. This is sometimes known as hybrid animation, and it’s a technique that has been around for over 100 years.
The earliest example of this style I could find was used in the 1918 series, Out of the Inkwell, followed soon after by the Alice Comedies series by Disney. The Alice Comedies were a series of live-action/animated shorts that followed Alice (a live-action girl) having adventures in an animated world with animated 2D characters.
This was a technique that Disney seemed to love as they created many classic movies mixing live-action and animation in films such as Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Song of the South, Mary Poppins, and more.
Dot and the Kangaroo is a classic story from Australia that sees the main character Dot, lost in the Australian Bush. Dot and all the other characters she meets in the film are 2D and the backgrounds are either live-action film or photos and, as a 5-year-old, this style really captivated my attention and creativity as it was so different from anything I had seen before. The quality is now a little dated, but it still has a magical charm and such a mesmerising style for a young child to see.
One of the most famous films to mix 2D and live-action has to be the classic 1988 film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Bob Hoskins and Christopher Lloyd as live-action characters, along with the other stars of the film, Roger Rabbit and Jessica Rabbit, and many more famous cartoons as 2D characters, in the groundbreaking film where cartoon characters and people coexist in the same world. And, for me as an 8-year-old, this film was absolutely mind-blowing and really cemented my fascination with both film and animation.
I have a lot to thank the makers of Dot and the Kangaroo and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as it was these 2 films that made me want to work in animation and film.
With Cartoon Animator, you can create similar styles, easily and fast.
Over the years, I have used many different software packages to animate – After Effects (using DuiK and Joysticks and Sliders), Adobe Animate, Moho and more. Cartoon Animator (CTA) is the only software package that I’ve used that was easy to use straight out of the box. For example, the templates that come with CTA are a fantastic starting point for anyone looking at character animation, the free motions have you animating in no time.
Another reason why CTA is fantastic is that there are always brilliant new additions. The 360 head turn feature is a game-changer, and the 3D-2D animation motion feature is ground-breaking.
Now with CTA 4.5 you can export your animated 2D characters as transparent .mov files and use them in external effects and editing software such as Adobe After Effects, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Motion, HitFilm, and more.
CTA supports both transparent video (MOV) and image sequence (PNG) export. If you choose to export your characters as transparent png sequences, which is great, however, it would result in thousands of files (as each frame was a .png file). Rendering out as a single transparent .mov file means you can keep the files down, and help keep your project tidy, which really helps the animation pipeline.
Exporting as a transparent .mov file really is as simple as clicking a button. When you go to render your video, make sure you select Apple ProRes 4444 and this will keep the transparency. Then import into your software of choice and submerge your character into your scene – it’s that simple.
After Effects
For me, as I always use After Effects, you can simply export to After Effects with the plugin, and select MOV Video, and, like when you render as ProRes 4444, your project will import into After Effects and, rather than a PNG sequence, it will import as one .MOV file with transparency.
Final Cut Pro
As a video editor, I love when you can make a smooth pipeline between software and design, and the new CTA feature of exporting transparent .mov files is a welcome addition to my animation and editing pipeline. Like you can do with After Effects, you can easily import your animation sequence with transparency and insert this into your video project. You can easily have your animated characters interacting with video footage in no time. Having this feature I’m sure will help all video editors.
When using this technique in FCPX, my pipeline is as follows:
Design in Photoshop, bring my character into Cartoon Animator as a PSD, animate in CTA, then simply export as a QuickTime using the ProRes 444 codex, import my character’s QuickTime file like I would with any other video clip, and layer up the layers to help embed my character into the sequence.
HitFilm Express
I have to be 100% honest. I’ve been a die-hard Adobe user for years, and am a big fanboy of the creative cloud. I’ve been using After Effects for 15 years now, and will never really use anything else… However, HitFilm Express is really something people should seriously look at when it comes to compiling together sequences from footage created in CTA. I haven’t really played around with HitFilm much, but I have seen many CTA users use this and they have created mind-blowing sequences. So I would highly recommend looking into this as a tool to use with CTA. Oh, did I mention, IT’S FREE!!! Well, the basic version is, however, you can upgrade and I would highly recommend doing this.
With HitFilm, as with After Effects and FCPX, I simply import my transparent QuickTime file and layer up the scene with additional elements. However, you can do lots of special effects (like you can with After Effects) such as shadows, lighting, and more. Definitely check it out as it’s a fantastic tool to help add an extra level of sparkle to your animations.
Conclusion
What I love about Reallusion, the company making Cartoon Animator, is that they are always updating the software, constantly making it better for users to create fantastic animation sequences.
Exporting as a transparent QuickTime for Mac and PC is a great addition, especially now you’re also able to export to After Effects as a QuickTime as well as a .png sequence via the AE plugin. This, for me, helps improve my pipeline, and I’m sure, helps other users quickly and simply create broadcast-quality animations. Download the free trial and see for yourself.
Greetings, my name is Peter Alexander (aka Mythcons). I’m a digital freelancer specialized in illustration, graphic design, and 3D modeling.
I’d like to share how I create an exaggerated character using Character Creator and Blender 3.0. Character Creator supports base character with evenly distributed quad surfaces, which allows me to touch up the mesh in Blender 3.0 based on this to create a facial and body animation-ready character.
I also use a free Blender 3.0 add-on called ‘Blender Auto Setup‘, which is developed by Victor.Soupday, to simplify the process of file transfer between two programs.
In this video and text below, I’m going to walk you through some of my steps. You can follow me by using the free trial of Character Creator.
Export Base Character from Character Creator
I start by exporting the CC3+ base mesh as a Nude Character in Bind-Pose, which can be accessed by the OBJ export options.
Import Character in Blender 3.0 via Auto Setup
In Blender 3.0, with the Blender Auto Setup add-on installed, go to the CC3 tab and choose the ‘Import for Morph‘ option. This imports the mesh as a single object with the appropriate groups for import back into Character Creator. It also generates the necessary OBJ key file when you export the file.
Tips in Sculpting
I would call this step a problem-solving exercise. I found the easiest way to set up my proportions was to go into Edit mode, select the vertices, with symmetry enabled on the X-axis, and move large portions of the mesh to approximately where I need them to be. You may find a more manageable way to move the mesh around.
I mostly use the Grab, Inflate, and Smooth brushes with symmetry enabled to relax the stretched vertices and move everything into place. As Character Creator provides most of the normal maps through SkinGen, there’s less need to sculpt in high resolution as you would in a typical creation process.
Export Sculpted Character via Auto Setup
When the character is ready for export, choose the ‘Export Character Morph’ option from the CC3 menu provided by the Blender Auto Setup add-on.
Import Character in Character Creator as Flexibly Controllable Morph Slider
Import the saved character using the Morph Slider Editor. Import the OBJ file under Target Morph, and the OBJ key should be loaded automatically. Check the ‘Adjust Bones to Fit Morph‘ option, and if you want to see immediate results, also check the ‘Auto apply to current character’ option.
Tips in Eye Relocation, Teeth and Lip Correction
When I imported the character, the eyes didn’t follow correctly. This is probably due to something I neglected during the process. If this happens to you, it’s easy to fix. Select the eyes, and in Edit Mesh mode, move at least one of the eyes into place.
When you’ve done so, go to ‘Adjust Bones’, which will align the bones to the mesh. Also choose Symmetry and the direction you want the symmetry applied to. This will align the other eye to the proper position.
Make any other adjustments necessary to the mesh. In this case, I had to correct the teeth and the lips.
Touch up Character with Skin Details and Clothing Library
Finally using SkinGen, apply a skin base, normal maps, and any other details you think are necessary for your character, as well any hair, clothing or accessories within your library to accommodate your character design.
Send Character Back for Blender Eevee and Blender Cycle via Auto Setup
With your character complete, you can export him or her back into Blender in FBX (with the Current Pose option, or with animations depending on your rendering goals). This time choose the ‘Import Character’ option, which will automatically translate Reallusion’s Digital Human Shader and parameters to Blender Eevee and Blender Cycle. You can further adjust SSS skin, eyes, teeth, and hair dynamically for rendering in Blender Eevee and Blender Cycle.
I am Declan Walsh from Dex Art. I have been an animator of special effects for a long time. I started out in Sullivan Bluth Studios in Ireland, creating animated special effects for Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. I moved to Arizona where I worked as a director for 20th Century Fox animation, creating titles like Anastasia and Titan AE, then later I worked on projects for Disney, Marvel, Star Wars games etc.
But back when I started, everything was animated on paper and transferred to cell and painted. It was a huge task to create even a few seconds of animation. It would have been impossible back then to do what we can do now with computers. With software such as Cartoon Animator 4.5, it allows everyone to be an animator. This software gives you your own studio from your laptop or PC, no matter where you are in the world.
But now, with the new addition of Cartoon Animator 4.5, Reallusion has extended the capabilities of the software and has broken ground into a very exciting time in animation once again with transparent video compositing.
Why not check out my content store at Reallusion. You’ll find it under DexArt. There you will find all my animated EFX, from water, magic, fire. Anyway, go and explore, DexArt.
When I was asked to create this animated video and article, I was very excited to explore what transparent video compositing could do and the avenues this would open up for us all using Cartoon Animator 4.5. So this article will show you my workflow on how to combine 2D animation and VFX with live-action video compositing.
Importing a Movie Clip
You can import animated video clips straight to Cartoon Animator 4.5. I used this feature to reference the motions of the girl dancing. The video imports like you would any prop and as a prop it has all the attributes of one. However, I was not using the video for lining up or for final output, in this case, it was purely for reference. Note: This is a great tool for anyone struggling with animating their character motions. With a quick action on your mobile, you can import the video for reference.
The imported video will loop on the timeline so setting the start and end values can help keep the track organized.
Bringing the Character to Animate
I used one of my own characters, Mia. She’s in the Reallusion store as are thousands of characters and props that you can build your animations with. When you bring in your character it’s always a good idea to have the play headset to one to avoid any animations being created. The character can be placed in front or behind the video and anywhere on the stage to suit your needs.
Let’s take a quick look at the 2D motion key editor.
There are two views that can be used to select bones for animation: the “Image View” and the “Hierarchy View”. Personally I always use the “Image View” as it makes more sense to my visual personality.
Each yellow dot represents a corresponding bone on the character. Selecting those turns them blue and the bone on the character also turns blue so you know which bone you are working with.
Using the locks on the hands and feet can help with sliding and griping and can be keyed on and off giving you more control over your character animation. Before starting an animation I always set a full body key on Frame 1 and then use “selected part” for each key after that. There are times I will set full body keys during an animation if I want to reset the character from a pose and start a new action. Note: If you use the flip hip like I did, the bone selection is reversed.
Setting Keys and 2D Animation Concepts
The animation starts with broad strokes. It’s always a mistake to try and create a finished piece in one sweep; you end up placing keys all over the timeline and confusing yourself.
So let’s look at some traditional methods. Film passes the gate at 24 frames per second (FPS), that’s one frame of film per second that you can see. Frame speed can be set in Cartoon Animator 4.5 from 1 frame per second to 30 frames per second. What does this tell us, well it’s all a matter of timing. If you think in footage or feet which is 16 frames of film or in seconds it helps to break down the animation into manageable bites.
Standard keys are set on 1- 9 – 17 – 25 etc. and these are the key poses or extremes. You can also use 1 – 10 – 20 etc., but having an idea of what a movement looks like at these timings can help you have an understanding of the motion before you animate.
Mia’s hand is up on frame 1 and down on 17. This would be an extreme, the extreme point of the motion. Although not all her body parts will land on these timings, it’s a good practice to move from pose to pose as close as you can at first.
After the main poses are placed I go back and place the breakdowns. The breakdowns are not always a direct smooth motion between the keys. If they are, Cartoon Animator 4.5 takes care of that motion for you. You just have to use the curves to get the motion you desire.
Once all the keys and breakdowns are set I go in and swap out hand gestures, facial motions, and any other small details you want to place in your animation.
Duplicating the Animation
Cartoon Animator 4.5 has a great feature to save off a character’s animation and reuse it on another character. So if I wanted to have a bunch of characters dancing in this clip I just have to save the animation and drop it onto the new characters in the scene.
Note: Not all characters are rigged or designed the same way so you may have to go in and change out some animation details. So if you are planning this, it’s best to try and have the same structure in the characters.
Transparent Video Compositing
Because I used the girl dancing as a reference for the animation, I don’t need to render her out. I have that clip to work with later. But I do want to render out Mia’s animation.
Normally I would render out .png files, in this case, 318 of them, and import them into an external program for adding additional glitz and glam. But now we can render a video with transparency, just one file to work with.
But what if I did have other props and characters in the scene? Well, the clever people at Reallusion have included a tick box for that too. Under “Object Sequence” there’s a box for Export into separate files. And this renders out each file into folders. All animation clips are separated and put into one folder and non-animated into another folder.
So you don’t have to go breaking up your renders; it’s all taken care of for you.
Importing Transparent Video into After Effects
Once my renders were done I brought the transparent video into After Effects. When importing you get a dialogue box where the alpha channel has been detected by After Effects. This is interesting because it gives you options on import.
Straight unmatted brings in the video as Reallusion intended.
If you tick the invert alpha box, this gives you a mask of the prop or character you are importing.
I was very impressed with the quality of the render from Cartoon Animator 4.5. There were no edge problems at all. Usually I would have to use a matte choker to eliminate artifacts on an image, but this came in nice and clean.
EFX Renders
I went back in and rendered out my EFX, fire electricity, pixie dust etc. and because they were movie files, I didn’t have to deal with tons of .png files. It was a lot more straightforward. I imported these files, in the same way, I did with Mia and lined them up in place.
There were a few final touches I made like adding a drop shadow in After Effects and lighting the character to match the environment more, and to be honest, the options are endless.
I found as an EFX guy, I wanted to do so much more and had to hold myself back or this would never have gotten done. I could also imagine so many environments and stories that this could be used for. I feel we have been given the tools to create very high-end 2D animations. Not just for toon environments and interactions but scenarios that the creators of Who Framed Roger Rabbit would have melted a toon for.
For me, the big takeaway on this project was being able to capture a video, import it into Cartoon Animator 4.5, and use it as a reference for animation. Rendering out characters and props became organized with fewer files to manage. The ability to add production values that would have been out of reach before this.
I really hope this is a help, and I have learned so much from this process and look forward to exploring further with Cartoon Animator 4.5.
