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[johnar]

 ENSONIQ5. gday m8.  ,

  What you are describing does ring a few bells with me.
 Not so much the 'later' replacing of 'better quality' characters for the sake of cutting immediate workflow, but for the sake of 'easier, faster, 'draft renders'.
 ie: If Mickey was initially a very detailed high poly dude, placed into a really detailed scene, test renders could take hours, only to spot those 'tweeks' that are bound to be more obvious only once you've spent all day rendering. 

 OK. For test renders, the scene can quite easilly be simplified, and a draft render can be done comparitively quickly.
 But it would indeed be a great thing if the high poly charcter could be replaced with something a bit more basic, (stick figure), and that would share the exact same movements as the high poly figure would make in the 'final' render.
 I've been playing with that idea for a while now, and it CAN be done.
 The trick there is that your high poly and low poly characters need to share an identical rig.
 If the rigs are identical, all keys, (sequence and scene), can translate to either figure, no matter what object is attached. (high poly or stickman).

 I'm drifting a bit from your idea here, but the ability to use the same rig on different characters is something worth pursuing, because it can be a real time saver.
 This basic idea has a lot of potential.
 Another 'related' plan, is the use of morph targets.
 If a character is well enough modelled, then by adding some fairly radical morph targets, the whole appearance of that character can be changed, yet the 'new' character can be used with all original sequences.
 
 I'm starting to rave on a bit here. This is all quite far reaching, with a whole lot of potential possibilities.
 Thanks for bringing it up. I'll keep at it, and one day we'll have some solid rules for swapping characters and keyframes.
 Whew.. Better end here...

 Cheers ENSONIQ5.
 cya.

[lizeal93]

its simple. you take your full rigged character and you use melody or another such program to create a LOD model which you import and attach to the skeleton,( which must be an exact copy of the high poly skeleton, ie. same named bones and same bone limits.) then you can animate and render your lower poly one and when you are satisfied you can just attach your high poly one to the skeleton. and do a final render.

i'm sorry if i didn't explain that too well.

any questions?

[johnar]

 Hello lizeal93, ,
 I understand what you're saying, mostly, but aren't familiar with LOD models.
 Sounds ideal
 Thing is, i'm 99% sureyou can already do it with anim8or on its own.
 
 But hey man, if that works for you, then all i can really say is, "nice".  

 Its probly me thats not explaining things very clearly. Sometimes if i 'quickly' drop into an internet cafe, i've gotta be carefull not to get into a rave, coz the clock is ticking, and i rush a bit, and then its not till thinking about it later that i realise what i said could've been explained better/differently.

anywho, Cheers for your input.
  

[hihosilver]

Johnar, those words are something to live by.  In other words I need to start following your advice there.  A lot of people - including me- need to simply take the dive.  Just get into it and develop what you can without worrying too much about perfection (being a perfectionist gets in my way.)  So thanks for the words, I'll do my best to follow them!

[ENSONIQ5]

Nicely put Hiho, that's exactly what I meant.  There seems to be far more effort put into models than motion in most Anim8or animations I have seen, probably as a result of a top-down approach to animation (models > figures > sequences).  Turning the workflow around and approaching the actual motion or animation first, with basic stick figures, would potentially allow more creativity in this area.

On the subject of how to rig basic models, my thought would be to create a stick figure Object and apply it to a bone structure in Figure mode that has all the joints and bones required by the final, yet-to-be-built model.  Some thought would be given to how the final object might look so the stick figure is a reasonably good facsimile.  Once the motion is defined and the final model(s) built, the stick figure object would be removed from the bone structure, and the new object applied to the existing figure.  Bone lengths could be adjusted if necessary without effecting Sequence or Scene mode keyframes.

I am planning a figure-based animation at the moment, and I will definitely explore this back-to-front workflow concept in its construction.

[Arik_the_Red]

Heh, I was thinking just these things the other day, when wanting to put my goblin movies together.

One thing about the replacement of objects on a figure though, it seems that in using painted weights the figure needs to be re-painted any time there is a replacement object since the relationship between object and bones is a bit more... ummm... intimate?  Even modifying the object causes need to repaint areas that are new or reworked.

Then, too, bones used the other way also need adjustments to accommodate the size changes when updating the object to more details.

Of course, the use of morphs is a whole other issue... and I haven't dabbled there enough to know anything of substance.

[hihosilver]

One thing to be careful of when doing preliminary animations is the size and structure of the character, as that will influence the animation a lot.  Therefore, if you are to follow the animation first method, you have to do a very good job of blocking out a basic character.  I would personally say stay away from stick figures, but instead use more basic shapes (don't be afraid to overlap them) and get the correct shapes and volume for the character to make things more realistic and to give a perfect representation of the character for skinning it.

I do admit it's a good method to get into animation quickly, but once you have experience I would personally say it is not recommended if you're going for a masterpiece (this is after your first few films of course).  The method is not perfect as skinning requires a lot of perfecting to get good movement with the actual figure and topology which is why modeling etc. is usually done first and animation afterwards.

Just my 2 cents.

[johnar]

 Hey there guys.
 I've been playing with this, and the answer is actually really simple.
 Don't replace the objects on the figure, replace the whole figure.

The experiment i did is a bit back to front, but;

 I have a file with froyd in it. It  also has  a walk sequence, and a scene, with froyd walking. (added walk sequence).
 Its about 200 frames, and froyd is walking and waving his arms around occasionally.

 I exported froyd figure, and opened in a new file. Deleted all objects from figure mode, leaving just froyds bones. (rig)

 Then i added new objects to the rig, and saved the figure under the same name. (froyd).

 Opened up the first file,. and imported the new fig.
 Anim8or asks if i want to replace froyd (original) with froyd (new). Click yes, and hey presto, theres the new froyd.

 The sequence still works fine, and new froyd is doing everything that the old froyd was doing. Still in scene, walking and waving his arms around, but unrecognizable as the original froyd.

 So, its actually that simple.  I think there may be some issues with object names and materials, perhaps i, but nothing has come up this time.

 notes: adding the new objects to the original froyd rig.
 I added default cylinders and spheres. ie:Figure mode -> select bone -> build -> add cylinder
 I added cylinders to arms, legs and neck, and spheres to torso, chest, head, hands and feet. I left the cylinder/sphere settings as default and just clicked ok.  The result was the skinniest of stickmen, and he moves around at 100mph.
  So, i should be able to do any animating, (sequences and scene) with this ultra skinny man, and replace him with froyd at a l8er date.
 Cool.   I'll try it some more.

[Bobert]

Hey Jonar!

I just wanted to say that your movie project was very clever and entertaining as well. Your work sure paid off!

I wanted to know..what softwares did you use for video processing and audio processing?

[johnar]

 Hi there Bobert.

 For video editing, i always used to use Sonic foundry Vegas video 4.
 (old but xcellent). so excellent, in fact, that it was taken over by sony.

 I've updated my software l8ly, and purchased Sony Vegas movie studio 8.
 Was only about 70$. Got it through newegg.com

 Also, i picked up Sony Sound Forge. Similar price, awsome sound editing software. Have scene it described as the photoshop of sound editing.
 ( and it is that good)

 In Sony movie studio, i use the chromokeyer 'a lot'. 

[Bobert]

Ahh i see very interesting. Once again great job and thank you for replying

[karate5662]

Hey there guys.
 I've been playing with this, and the answer is actually really simple.
 Don't replace the objects on the figure, replace the whole figure.

The experiment i did is a bit back to front, but;

 I have a file with froyd in it. It  also has  a walk sequence, and a scene, with froyd walking. (added walk sequence).
 Its about 200 frames, and froyd is walking and waving his arms around occasionally.

 I exported froyd figure, and opened in a new file. Deleted all objects from figure mode, leaving just froyds bones. (rig)

 Then i added new objects to the rig, and saved the figure under the same name. (froyd).

 Opened up the first file,. and imported the new fig.
 Anim8or asks if i want to replace froyd (original) with froyd (new). Click yes, and hey presto, theres the new froyd.

 The sequence still works fine, and new froyd is doing everything that the old froyd was doing. Still in scene, walking and waving his arms around, but unrecognizable as the original froyd.

 So, its actually that simple.  I think there may be some issues with object names and materials, perhaps i, but nothing has come up this time.

 notes: adding the new objects to the original froyd rig.
 I added default cylinders and spheres. ie:Figure mode -> select bone -> build -> add cylinder
 I added cylinders to arms, legs and neck, and spheres to torso, chest, head, hands and feet. I left the cylinder/sphere settings as default and just clicked ok.  The result was the skinniest of stickmen, and he moves around at 100mph.
  So, i should be able to do any animating, (sequences and scene) with this ultra skinny man, and replace him with froyd at a l8er date.
 Cool.   I'll try it some more.

I knind of experimented like this, I also found that you can use figures under different names, but still have the same sequences work for the new model, handy if you have all of the animations made for one character and need another, similar character with the same animations.

[fireking2009]

i always thought that swine flu and all those bad things are like antiviruses beacause we made to much damage to the world