Academic Courseware Animation by Joyce Ryan
Copyright 2001-2004 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved. The content of this document and the associated Corel Painter software are the property of Corel Corporation and its respective licensors, and are protected by copyright. Corel, the Corel logo, Corel Painter, and Corel PHOTO-PAINT are trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel Corporation and/or its subsidiaries in Canada, the U.S. and/or other countries.
Table of contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii Jargon 101: The Technical Terms Every Animator Needs to Know1 The Storyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Digital Ink and Paint Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 The Background Art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 The Write-on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Foreword In 1972, I got my first taste of “computer art.” My husband John and I were students at the Rhode Island School of Design. John got involved in an experiment at the Rhode Island School of Design, and Brown University had started to encourage art students to collaborate with computer science students. John was led into a frigid room that housed gigantic machines that seemed to eat punched cards for fuel. Most of the artists in the program quickly lost interest.
who had written this wonderful software. I had ideas for tools I wanted them to make especially for animators. My next stop was the Time Arts offices in Santa Rosa, California, where I first met, among many talented artists, programmers and engineers, John Derry, who was destined to become one of the co-creators of Painter. The people I met were pursuing a goal—to replicate natural media with a computer.
Chapter 1 Jargon 101: The Technical Terms Every Animator Needs to Know Always check to make sure you are working at the right size before starting any project. Check the preset sizes in your editing software, or talk with your video editor, film editor, Web developer or service bureau. Before beginning an animation project, you must consider the final format your work will be displayed in.
A field guide or “graticule” helps the animator plan a layout. 35mm film layout is based on a proportion of 1:1.376 (known as the Academy Ratio). This typically yields a size of 12 x 8.72 inches. For television, this format varies slightly. Typically, an aspect ratio of 4:3 corresponds to the NTSC standard. The degree to which TV cut-off crops the field depends on the make, model, and age of the TV set.
Each scanner has a different interface, so you may have to explore a little to find the settings you need. If you have to increase the size of an image, the best place to do that is on the scanner; blowing up a bitmap in a software program is always a bad idea. What size should you work at? That depends on your finished product. Will the artwork ever be used for other purposes? Remember, it is always easy to make the image smaller, but it is very difficult to make it bigger.
The finished design created with vectors. Unlike vector images, bitmaps cannot always be easily resized without loss of quality. Bitmaps are resolutiondependent. If you blow up pixels, they just look more obvious. Note what happens to the letters when they are blown up. It is all right to reduce a bitmap, but it is almost never acceptable to enlarge one. Understanding vectors A vector is a mathematical description of a location in space; as such, it has no actual size.
(RIP) usually handles that task. The display adapter in your computer interprets the image as a bitmap of pixels on your monitor. Some “Paint” programs like Corel Painter and Adobe® Photoshop® let you import vector graphics and turn them into bitmaps (“rasterize” them) so they can be embellished with paint effects. Corel Painter combines the best of both worlds by letting the artist work with both bitmaps and vectorbased objects. Vector-based graphics are easy to resize with no loss of quality.
Resolution The word “resolution” can be used to describe different things. Spatial resolution — describes the dimensions of an image in width and height. Color resolution — often referred to as “color depth” or “bit depth”; refers to how many colors are available to define the image. Some software, games, and Web sites will stipulate the ideal settings for your monitor, so that you can see the images as they were intended. Scanner resolution — refers to the number of dots per inch (DPI).
• the requirements of any systems that will process the animation when you are finished with it in Corel Painter, • the final delivery medium of the animation (video, film, Web, CD, QuickTime, AVI, etc.). Dimensions or spatial resolution Bitmaps have two dimensions. They are grids containing picture elements (pixels). The dimensions of a bitmap are described by the number of pixels the bitmap is high and the number of pixels the bitmap is wide.
for all the colors. But what does it mean when you are working with a 32-bit image? What are those other 8 bits for, if they’re not needed to display the RGB colors? They are used for transparency. Certain file formats support “alpha channels.” Having an 8-bit alpha channel means that you can have 256 levels of transparency in your image. Color resolution, or bit depth, affects not only the file size (fewer colors means fewer bits), but also the smoothness of the color gradations in an image.
A common trick used to save on file size is to lower the color resolution of an image. Depending on the image, it can be hard to tell the difference between an 8-bit image and a 24-bit image on the screen. This TIFF file takes up 600 KB of storage space. This GIF file takes only 60 KB of storage space. Compare output colors Let’s look at an image at different bit depths in Corel Painter using the GIF file format. 1 In Corel Painter, open a new file, 100 x 100 pixels at a resolution of 72 ppi.
NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) is often jokingly referred to as “Never Twice the Same Color.” Video can’t display the pure bright red you see on a computer monitor. That is why you want to look at your work on an NTSC monitor if you are working for video. Corel Painter has a special filter that ensures your animation will be compatible with both NTSC for the U.S. and Pal (Phase Alternation by Line) for European video systems. 3 Go to Effects > Tonal Control > Video Legal Colors.
in the graphic until you find the minimum number of colors necessary for adequate display of your image on a Web page. 4 Choose an Imaging Method. Choose Quantize To Nearest Color if you want Corel Painter to look at each pixel for which it doesn’t have the exact color and pick the nearest color for it from the available colors. Choose Dither Colors if you want Corel Painter to apply a pattern to the colors chosen to generate a more accurate, less banded result.
Create a grayscale gradient In Corel Painter, open a new file, 640 x 100 pixels at a resolution of 72 ppi. Fill it with a grayscale gradation from white to black. How many shades of gray can you see? Zoom in on the gradient and examine it closely. If you have your own printer (ink-jet, laser, etc.), you should know the printer DPI. If you don’t, check your printer documentation or the printer properties, or check with the manufacturer.
Use photo quality paper for high-resolution printing. It has a coating that enables it to handle more color and detail than plain paper. This printer has a maximum resolution of 600 dpi.
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Chapter 2 The Storyboard There are two types of storyboards: the production guide and the presentation board. A good presentation board helps you sell the client on your idea. It should communicate the look and feel of the animation. Presentation board created in Corel Painter using Watercolor variants and the Sargent Brush from the Artists category. The production storyboard serves as a visual road map for the production crew, making it clear how the animation will work.
Box and arrows indicate zooming out from a tight close-up. Created using fills and layers in Corel Painter. Blur filters were used to create shadow masks.
This storyboard for “Mission Health” was created using the Sargent Brush from the Artists category in Corel Painter. Working out a detailed storyboard in advance of production helps predict the costs involved in the production. The producer may use the storyboard to estimate costs prior to starting production.
1 In Corel Painter, create a new file. Set your image size to 720 x 486. (D1 NTSC uses a spatial resolution of 720 x 486 at 72 ppi.) 2 Set the resolution to 180 ppi. The storyboard panels have to be printed out in color for a presentation to the client and the advertising agency for their initial reaction. Therefore, it is a good idea to roughly double the resolution to 150-180 ppi, depending on your printer. This will yield a printed panel that is 10 inches wide by 6.75 inches high.
The more you work with Corel Painter, the more you will develop your own techniques.
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These storyboards were created using the Watercolor brushes in Corel Painter. Before Corel Painter, the artist, John Ryan of DAGNABIT!, says he would have used markers on paper. What he especially liked about using the Watercolor brushes in Corel Painter was that they left his lines undisturbed: “Painter gave me a very facile watercolor look without the fuss and muss of the real thing.
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Chapter 3 Digital Ink and Paint Techniques Once your storyboard is complete, it is time to create the art for the animation. You want to create the art as efficiently as you can, and that takes planning. Reusable elements, color palettes, naming conventions, and file folder structure should all be thought out before creating any of the final artwork. The following is a typical production workflow for a 30-second commercial: • Create model sheets for all the characters. • Read the audio track for timing.
Simplifying the character and breaking it down to show how it is constructed helps the animators to maintain the proportions and volume of the character. The model sheet serves as a reference for the animators. It is critical they stay “on model” so the character doesn’t lose its original look and feel. Assignment 2 Creating a model sheet for your characters Using a pressure-sensitive stylus, start sketching with a brush variant that feels comfortable to you.
It is a good idea to start any sketching session by going to Corel Painter IX > Preferences > Brush Tracking (Mac OS®), or Edit > Preferences > Brush Tracking (Windows®), and setting the sensitivity of your pen. This is especially helpful if you have a light touch, or if you prefer different settings with different variants. Some artists even like to tape sketch paper to their tablets so they feel the “tooth” of the paper.
aligning your character in the front, side and back views. Use the guides to line up the views of the character. A complete turn-around of the character gives a sense of the character’s volume and proportions. It is an invaluable aid to drawing the character from a variety of angles. Most artists use reference material as a starting point. Try using a digital camera and the Cloning tools in Corel Painter to create your characters if your drawing skills are not up to the task.
Coloring your characters Make a palette of colors that is specific for the job, so you can stay consistent from frame to frame. You don’t want your characters changing colors! You may also have an assistant helping you, who will be working on the same storyboard and will need to use your palette. Corel Painter offers an almost unlimited number of options to paint your characters. Traditionally, animators inked their drawing onto clear celluloid or acetate sheets called “cels.
3 Select the black lines by using the Select > Auto Select > Image Luminance command. Copy the lines and choose Edit > Paste In Place to paste your lines on a new layer. 4 On the canvas layer, choose the Paint Bucket tool. Set the Fill to Current Color on the property bar, and fill the drawing with the appropriate colors. Depending on the tolerance and feathering settings, your fill will antialias to the line.
Experiment with the many ways there are to mix color. There is no right or wrong way. Corel Painter allows many different approaches to match your personal preferences. Colors were mixed using the Mixer palette and the Color Info palette, and sampling scanned watercolor studies. Reading the audio track If the character is to talk, the drawing of the character’s mouth must synchronize with the dialogue. This process is called “lip synching.
Create an exposure sheet or “dope sheet” to track your audio and match it to your animation. Sample exposure sheet with indications for lip synch.
B (“buh”) C (“ss”) Practice lip synching Make a simple sock puppet. Practice making it talk believably. Try to “speak” your dialogue with the puppet, videotape your efforts and critique the results. How could you have emphasized important sounds? Did you open the puppet’s mouth on the vowels or the consonants? Create a phoneme chart as a custom Image Portfolio 1 Photograph your mouth and chin forming basic phonemes: A, B, C, D, E, F, G . . .
3 To create a new portfolio, click the palette menu arrow, and choose Open Library. 4 In the Choose Image Portfolio dialog box, click the New Library button. 5 In the New Image Portfolio dialog box, choose a location and enter a name for your image portfolio. Click Save. 6 To add an image to the new image portfolio, select a layer, and do one of the following: • To cut the layer from the current document, drag the image from the document window to the Image Portfolio palette using the Layer Adjuster tool.
A rough key pose sketched in Corel Painter. Inbetweening Producing the drawings “in between” the key drawings is a skill unto itself. Traditionally, one would place a key drawing onto a light box, the next key drawing over it, and then another sheet of paper over that. On the top sheet, the animator would figure out the position between the two key drawings and sketch it. We can do something very similar in Corel Painter using layers.
Example of inbetweening with layers in Corel Painter. Drawing the inbetween using layers in Corel Painter. Pencil-test your motion 1 Open a new file in Corel Painter, the same size as your inbetweens. In the New dialog box, set the Picture Type to Movie, and set the number of frames to match the number of inbetweens you have. 2 Paste your inbetweens into separate layers in your movie file. 3 On the first frame of your movie, shut off all layers except the one you wish to have showing.
4 Move to the next frame and turn on the next inbetween, turning off everything else. 5 Repeat until you have an inbetween on each frame of your movie— your layers have become frames. 6 Shut off all your layers. 7 Play back the movie to test your motion. 8 If your computer plays back too quickly, save your movie as an AVI at a frame rate of 12 to 15 frames per second and view the AVI, or save it as sequential TARGA® files to edit in a video editing program.
4 Open the Nozzle Selector again, and click the selector menu arrow. Choose Add Nozzle To Library, and save the nozzle. 5 From the Brush Selector bar menu, turn on Record Stroke. 6 Paint across the canvas with the Walkbrush. 7 Close the file (there is no need to save it). 8 Return to your movie. Choose Movie > Apply Brush Stroke To Movie. Corel Painter applies your stroke to the frames of your movie.
Chapter 4 The Background Art Now that the characters have been drawn, cleaned up and painted, you need to create your backgrounds. Imagine your character is driving along the road. How do you make the view outside his car window appear to move? With a moving background. Creating a moving background A “pan” in animation refers to moving a background painting under a camera to create the illusion of motion. In live action, the camera would move, “panning” across a background to create the same effect.
A wide image for the background is the equivalent of a pan cel. It will be moved through the scene to create the illusion of a moving background. Create a moving background 1 Assume you are creating an animation that is 320 x 240 pixels at 72 ppi. Create a new file that is 640 x 240 pixels at 72 ppi. 2 Paint the background. Once the background is done, click Select > All, and then Select > Float. This moves your painting up on a separate layer above the canvas. Save this file and leave it open.
Compositing Next, we want to combine our character with the moving background. This process is called “compositing.” To create the composite, start at the first frame of the movie. Open the file that contains the elements you wish to composite. Pull the elements into the movie file. Hold down the Step Forward button until you reach the last frame of the movie, then click Layers > Drop All. Here is how the composite is created for the Vince movie. First, the movie is set on frame 1.
When the movie is played back, it appears that Vince is driving along in his car. For added realism, Vince can be moved up and down a bit as each frame is advanced to make his ride look a bit bumpy.
The importance of backgrounds Creating beautiful backgrounds for animation is a career path in itself. The background fills most of the screen. In many cases it does not move (unlike our car window example), so your audience has plenty of time to appreciate the quality of the background painting. In creating an effective background, the mood, lighting and texture are critical. The background painting sets the mood for the animation.
Photograph by Joyce Ryan, 2004. 1 Choose File > Clone. Click Select > All, and then press Delete or Backspace to delete the image from the clone file. 2 Using a brush variant from the Cloners category, brush in the background. For this example, I used the Watercolor Wash Cloner. Set your opacity low so that you can build up the effect. Try experimenting with several cloner variants. 3 Go to Effects > Surface Control > Apply Lighting. Experiment with a variety of preset lighting effects.
Creating the effect of dawn breaking using lighting effects. This background for a 30-second commercial was created using brush variants from the Felt Pens and Watercolor categories in Corel Painter.
Create background depth Objects that are closer to you appear to move more quickly than those far away. For this exercise, you will make it appear that your background has depth. In this example, the image is separated into two different layers, foreground and background. The foreground was selected and pasted into a new layer. The lake was cloned to fill in the foreground.
1 Create a background image with two layers, foreground and background. 2 Open a new movie file, 640 x 480 at 72 ppi and 10 frames in length. Using the Layer Adjuster tool, place the background layer onto the first frame of your movie. 3 Press the left arrow key 4 times, forward to the next frame and repeat until you reach the final frame. Drop the layer. 4 Next, place the foreground layer in the first frame of your movie.
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Chapter 5 The Write-on Every animator at some point in his or her career is going to have to create a “write-on.” A write-on is a word or an image being magically written across the screen. In this chapter, we are going to explore several techniques in Corel Painter for creating different styles of write-on. We will create a write-on for the name of a radio station. My radio station is called WHEW! 98.6 FM.
Play the Clouds script to see how the sky and clouds were created. Create the text 1 Open a new file, the same size as your Sky file, and name it Whew.rif. Click the Text tool in the toolbox, or press “T” on the keyboard to activate the Text tool. Select a bold font and type “WHEW!.” Use the Layer Adjuster tool to adjust the height and width of the word to your liking. Kerning refers to adjusting the space between letters. Kern type for television carefully.
5 Open your Sky.rif file. Open a new movie file, 720 x 486 at 72 ppi, 60 frames, and name it Skytitle.frm. Leave the default setting for the layers of onion skin at 2, and the storage type at 24-bit color with 8bit alpha. 6 Copy the gradient layer from the Sky file and paste it into your movie. Hold down the Step Forward button on the Frame Stacks palette to deposit your gradient on each frame of your movie. When you have finished, drop the gradient layer.
2 Using the Layer Adjuster tool, pull your text on top of the final frame of your animation. You may want to adjust the brightness and contrast of your letters in relation to the sky by using Effects > Tonal Control > Brightness/Contrast. I also chose to add a very thin drop shadow from Effects > Objects > Create Drop Shadow. 3 On the Layers palette, make sure the Preserve Transparency check box is disabled, and the Pick Up Underlying Color box is enabled.
the background clouds. When you reach frame 60, drop the cloud layer or delete it before playing back your animation. 7 Play your animation. You may now export your animation in a variety of formats. Play Skytitle.mov to see the final animation. Save your animation as sequential TARGA files 1 Choose File > Save As. The Save Movie dialog box appears. 2 Select the Save Movie As Numbered Files option.
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Chapter 6 Saving and Exporting Movies Once your movie is finished, you can save it or export it in various file formats. In this chapter, you will find out about the different saving and exporting options you have for your movie. Corel Painter provides several options for saving and exporting your finished movies. Some file formats (such as QuickTime and Video for Windows) have compression options available.
The compression ratio is inversely proportional to image quality. The Quality slider allows you to set an optimum level between the amount of compression and image quality. For most work in Corel Painter, you’ll want Quality set to High. Animation This compression method works well with areas of continuous tone. If you set Quality to Best and make every frame a key frame, this compressor is lossless. For most Corel Painter animations, this compressor is a good choice.
Export a Corel Painter movie as a QuickTime movie 1 Choose File > Save As. 2 In the Save Movie dialog box, enable the Save Movie As QuickTime option. 3 In the Enter Movie Name dialog box, choose a location, enter a name for the file, and click Save. 4 In the Compression Settings dialog box, choose a compression method from the pop-up menu. Specify the options you want. Exporting movies as AVI movies (Windows) If you are using a Windows system, you can export your movie as an AVI movie.
Export a Corel Painter movie as an AVI movie 1 Choose File > Save As. 2 In the Save Movie dialog box, enable the Save Movie As AVI option, and specify the number of frames per second. 3 In the Enter Movie Name dialog box, choose a location, enter a name for the file, and click Save. 4 In the Video Compression dialog box, choose a compression method from the Compressor pop-up menu. Specify the options you want. For some compression methods, you can click the Configure button to specify additional options.
3 In the Save Image As dialog box, choose a location and file format, enter a name for the first file. You must begin or end the filename with a number—for example, “01Movie” or “Animation14.” 4 Click Save. Import numbered files 1 Choose File > Open. 2 In the Select Image dialog box, enable the Open Numbered Files check box. Double-click the last numbered file. (You can also select the file and click Open). Most Web visitors will not wait a long time for pages to load.
It is advisable to create images for the Web using Web-safe colors from the beginning. That way your image will not change, and it will not need dithering. To use Web-safe colors, open the Netscape Navigator color set by going to the Color Sets palette drop-down menu and clicking Open Color Set. Choose Netscape Navigator 216. Load the color set and make sure you select your colors from it while creating your Web graphics. Limit the number of colors you use. Fewer colors lead to smaller file sizes.
If your animation promises to be entertaining, rather than essential, you can give the user a choice whether to open the animation. Under those circumstances, you can get away with a larger animation file. Use a preview of the animation that the user can click on to open the larger animation. Wherever possible, give the user a choice, and provide an estimate of the time it will take to load large files. Web banners are a situation where the user is not given a choice.
You can set animation-specific GIF options—Frame Delay, Disposal Method, and Loop. Frame Delay allows you to specify a pause (in 100ths of a second) between each frame. Without a delay, the frames appear as quickly as the system can load and display them. The display of each image (especially with larger frames) will vary among computer systems, so the actual animation display rate may be lower. Allow more time for display.
Assignment 4 Animating a Web banner Using the write-on techniques you learned in the previous lesson, create a Web banner announcing your new Web site. Keep the following in mind: If you limit your color palette, your file will be smaller. If you stick with Web-safe colors, you won’t have to dither the image. The fewer the frames, the smaller the animation file will be. Design your animation to loop so it looks good running continuously. 1 Create a file folder to hold all the elements of your Web banner.
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Chapter 7 Animating with Strokes Imagine being able to animate simply with a stroke of the brush! Now imagine creating a brush that consists of the stages of a man walking. Imagine recording drawing with that brush, and automatically creating an animation of your character walking wherever your brush wandered! Working with the Image Hose To begin, we will create a simple cycle of a butterfly flapping its wings. Cycles are great for animating anything that needs to be repeated.
4 Paint your butterflies. Try using and making patterns for filling the wings. I used a pattern to make textured fills on my wings. I reproduced the pattern in different colors for different parts of the wings. To save time switching fills and colors, paint with one color or fill at a time on each layer. Shut off all the layers but the one you are painting on. Fill with one color or pattern. Shut off the layer and click on the next layer to fill, turn it on and paint.
4 Open a new movie, 320 x 240 at 72 ppi and 60 frames. Name the movie Flight. 5 Select Movie > Apply Brush Stroke To Movie. Sit back and watch your butterfly flit across your movie! Play the Flight QuickTime movie.
Animate the butterfly through a field of flowers 1 Open a new file, 640 x 480 at 72 ppi, and call it Flowers.rif. 2 Using a variety of tools in Corel Painter, create a field of flowers for your butterfly to fly through. Create some of the flowers on a separate layer so the butterfly will appear to fly behind some of the flowers. Save the file and leave it open. 3 Create a new movie file of 60 frames at 640 x 480 and 72 ppi. Name it Lazyday.frm. 4 Copy and paste the background into the movie.
Assignment 5 Animating a walk cycle 1 Draw a walk cycle. Use the inbetweening skills you have learned in earlier exercises. 2 Clean up your drawings and place each pose on a separate layer. 3 Group the layers of all the walk positions. 4 Make an Image Hose nozzle out of your walk cycle just as you did with the butterflies. Save the Image Hose file as Walk.rif.
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Chapter 8 Rotoscoping with Corel Painter Just tracing animation is never enough. The animator still has to make important aesthetic decisions. Animation is about exaggeration, not about mimicking reality. You will find that you have to tweak rotoscoped animation so that it does not simply look like processed footage. The trick is to make use of the reference without being a slave to it. Tracing with a color not found in the image makes it easier to select the tracing afterwards.
Get in the habit of using the layer shortcut buttons at the bottom of the Layers palette to access the most commonly used layer commands. Don’t forget you can zoom in on the area you are working on—a big help when you are tracing. Remember, you can use other tools along with the Pen tool to clean up your tracing. If you start to paint on a shape layer, it will automatically collapse to a regular layer! 4 Proceed to the next frame and repeat steps 1-3 until you have the mouth traced in every frame.
5 Set the foreground color to white and choose Effects > Fill > Current Color to fill everything but the lips with white. 6 Stop recording the script and name it Lips. 7 Undo the changes you made to the first frame of the movie. 8 Go to Movie > Apply Script To Movie. When the dialog box opens, select the Lips script and click Playback. The script will now play over the entire movie. You should be left with just green lips on a white background.
2 Make a new file the same size as the movie (320 x 240 at 72 ppi). Choose Edit > Paste In Place to paste the strawberry. Drop the strawberry layer to the canvas. Save the file as Strawberrybackground.rif and keep it open. 3 In the movie file, delete the strawberry layer. 4 Start recording a new script. 5 Choose the Magic Wand tool from the toolbox. In the property bar, make sure the Contiguous box is checked and the tolerance is set at 16 or less.
Combining the best of both: Rotoscoping 3-D 3-D animation programs have changed the face of animation. Some of the best films are made by artfully combining 2-D and 3-D animation. Corel Painter can be used in many ways to tweak the look and feel of animation done in a 3-D program. The following image of a swordswoman, created in a 3-D program, was combined with a background created in Corel Painter. Combining 2-D elements with 3-D animation can save a great deal of time.
The photograph was cropped, and cloning tools were used to remove John, the power lines and other contemporary objects from the picture. Next, the Effects > Surface Control > Sketch function was used to transform the photo into a line drawing. Photograph transformed into a sketch using the Effects > Surface Control > Sketch function in Corel Painter. Next, the original photograph was cloned into a new file using watercolor cloners.
3-D programs can save sequentially numbered files that are easily opened as frame stacks in Corel Painter. The swordswoman was brought into Corel Painter for further rotoscoping. Completed background painting composited with the 3-D animation. The road needed some texture to match the rest of the background. In this case, I used the Magic Wand tool to select the road.
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Chapter 9 The Power of Scripting There are two kinds of scripts in Corel Painter. One type you use with the Record feature. The other automatically records your work session. Should your computer crash, there is a good possibility you can retrieve your work session in Painter by playing back the script from the time of the crash. You can specify how many days Painter keeps the automatically recorded scripts by specifying the number of days in the Preferences > General dialog box. The default is one day.
4 From the Script Selector, choose another script and play it back. 5 Click the Single Step button to see the steps the script is following. Recording a script Before recording a script, stop and think about what it is you want the script to do. Write down your steps, then record. As an animator, I am constantly making storyboards. I find it convenient to have a script that will automatically create my storyboard templates. In this exercise, we will script a typical video storyboard panel.
Editing scripts Scripts are flexible. For example, you can play a script one instruction at a time. You can also edit scripts by opening them in the Scripts palette. To open a script, click the palette menu arrow, and choose Open Script. In the dialog box, choose the script and click Open. You will see all the steps and information about the script listed. You can edit a script to change the order of instructions, remove an instruction, or add a segment from a different script.
To cut, copy and paste parts of your script, select one or more instructions, then click the palette menu arrow and choose Cut or Copy. Select the instruction before which you want to paste. Click the palette menu arrow and choose Paste. Corel Painter stores copied instructions in the Clipboard, so you can close one script, open another, and paste the instructions there. Recording a painting Imagine recording a drawing, then playing the drawing back with a different drawing tool.
Sketch played back with a different pattern brush. Record a painting 1 Open a new file. Pick your color and your drawing tool. 2 On the Scripts palette, click the palette menu arrow, and choose Script Options. In the Script Options dialog box, disable the Record Initial State option. This will allow you to change art materials on playback. 3 Start recording. 4 Make your sketch, but be careful not to change colors or drawing tools. 5 End recording and name your script Sketch.
Choose how many tenths of a second you want between frames. Corel Painter defaults to ten 1/10ths of a second. The lower the number, the more frequently a frame is created and the smoother the animation will be. More frames, however, use more disk space. If you are turning a long script into a frame stack, be aware that it may result in a very large file. If you recorded the act of painting a highresolution picture, the frame stack will have to create frames the same size and resolution as the picture.
7 Choose Select > All again to select the entire canvas. The rectangle recorded at the outset of the original script is referenced to the selected rectangle in this document. Do not try to render your painting at more than 2 to 4 times the original size. 8 Now play back the Hi_rez script you created. Corel Painter will play back the script in the new document while automatically scaling the brushes to fit the higher resolution.
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Chapter 10 3-D Effects Many animators today find themselves moving back and forth between their favorite 3-D program and a paint program for creating textures and bump maps that they will use in their 3-D creations. Earlier, in the “swordswoman” animation sample, we looked at using Corel Painter to create a background for a 3-D footage. Working with Bevel World Corel Painter has tools that utilize 3-D principles in modeling, texture mapping and lighting.
Bevel World controls The Bevel World dialog box includes the following controls in the Bevel Controls area: Preview — shows a real-time preview based on the options you set. Off — prevents Corel Painter from applying the settings to the image. You can later turn the bevel back on by disabling the check box. Bevel Interior Edges — lets you add beveling on the interior edges of the bevel area. Bevel Width — describes the width of the bevel in relation to the layer diameter.
Cliff Height — specifies the vertical distance between the base level and rim level. Cliff Slope — describes the angle of the cliff (middle portion) of the bevel. Base Slope — describes the angle of the base (outermost portion) of the bevel. Smoothing — controls the roundness of the transitions between base, cliff, and rim, as well as the sharpness of the resulting ridges. Create buttons for a Web page 1 Open a new file, 50 x 50 pixels at 72 ppi. Name it Buttonup.rif.
7 Repeat steps 1-3, call your new file Activebutton.rif, and match these settings to change the color of the button: You can change the light color by clicking the Light Color chip and using the Color dialog box to set the color.
Refer to the Help in Corel Painter for detailed instructions on how to create rollovers with your buttons. You should now have three buttons suitable for creating a rollover button that can show three different states. Light controls Lighting changes can make a huge difference in the 3-D appearance of the bevel. In addition to the light color, you can change the other properties of the light as well. Light Direction — controls the light’s angle.
Patterns are created by repeating a rectangular image tile across an area. When you develop patterns, you’re creating images that will be tiled. Ideally, those images must tile seamlessly. That is, the eye should not be able to distinguish tile edges. Corel Painter provides ways to help you generate images that will tile easily. Create a seamless tile 1 Open the Brick.jpg file and make a selection around some of the bricks.
a seam will appear, with another copy of the image attached to it. Drag the image in the document window to bring the seam to the middle. 6 Using the cloning tools, touch up your pattern to eliminate the seam. 7 From the Patterns palette menu, choose Add Image To Library, and name the new pattern. 8 Open a new file and fill it with your seamless tile.
If you have access to a 3-D modeling program, create a simple model and apply your seamless tiled image as a texture map. Using the Kaleidoscope dynamic plug-in The Kaleidoscope dynamic plug-in in Corel Painter allows you to make seamless tiles from any type of source image with beautiful and unexpected results. This tool is simply fun to play with! Create seamless tile with the Kaleidoscope 1 Open the file Lazyday.tif. 2 On the Layers palette, click the Dynamic Plug-ins button.
Think about the endless number of wallpaper and textile designs that can be quickly generated using the Kaleidoscope. Each image was generated using the kaleidoscope tool over the same background to create a variety of patterns. Assignment 8 Creating a movie with the Kaleidoscope 1 Open the Lazyday.tif file. 2 Create a new file, 200 x 200 at 72 ppi, and paste the Lazyday image into the new file. 3 Open the Scripts palette and start recording.
4 Press the left arrow key on the keyboard 10 times. Stop recording, and name the script Move. 5 Create a new frame stack with 30 frames, 200 x 200 pixels at 72 ppi, and paste the Lazyday image onto the first frame of the movie. 6 Choose Movie > Apply Script To Movie. Select the Move script and play back the script to move the background. Drop the Lazyday layer. 7 On the Layers palette, click the Dynamic Plug-ins button and select Kaleidoscope. Set the size to 200.
Vocabulary 24-bit Color — Also called “true color.” Specifically, 8 bits are allocated for each of the Red, Green and Blue values, permitting 256 levels of intensity per color. This translates into the ability to produce 16,777,216 different colors. Alpha Channel — 32-bit graphics reserve 8 bits for transparency information (alpha channel), and 8 bits for each of the three RGB colors. Each element is represented by its own channel—Red, Green, Blue, and Alpha channels.
DPI — Dots per inch. The resolution of output devices (printers) is measured in DPI. Field Guide — Traditionally, when animation is created on cels and shot with a camera, the area of the picture that is framed by the camera is known as the field size. Field guides (also called graticules) are used by animators to plot the proportions of artwork to film frame. File Size — The amount of storage space, measured in kilobytes, that your file will take up on a storage device.
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