Ballet Animation in Prep

electric pi

Ballet Animation in Prep

by Stuart Bonwit

Washington Apple Pi Journal, reprint information

I had been thinking that it was time to make a new ballet animation with a new ballerina. My last ballet
animation was made with Swivel 3D Pro. The ballerina can be seen in Fig. 1. As you can see, she is not
particularly attractive and the joints look as if they were on a wooden marionette. This is a canned figure
that came with the program. It was the "Barbie." Her partner was the "Ken." I changed her hair, made the
headpiece, the tunic, and the tutu and did the animation all in Swivel 3D Pro.

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step 1:MAKING ANIMATION IN POSER step 4:COMPOSING IN AFTER EFFECT
step 2:EXPORT THE ANIMATION IN SEQUENCE PICTURES step 5:RENDER IN AFTER EFFECT
password:
step 3:IMPORT FILES TO AFTER EFFECTS
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Tutorial by bobo (2004-02-09) Skill Level: 1

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INTRODUCTION
In this tutorial, I will show you how to use Poser and After Effect to make a fully scenic animation.

TOOLS NEEDED
Poser
New Tutorials Songbird
Character use & Creation After Effects
Backgrounds & Lighting
Pre & Post Production SUPPORT FILES
scene.zip
DAZ|Studio & plugins
Mimic
STEP 1 MAKING ANIMATION IN POSER
Other Applications
Models & Morphs
Textures & Maps
Miscellaneous
Bryce 5

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New DAZ Original Items Open Poser, Select Songbird from Figure Library.
New Published Items
New Platinum Club Items
Platinum Bonus Pack
People
Clothing
Hair
Animals
Scenes and Props
Motions/Poses
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Software
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Click Pose Library , Select a suitable flying poses for Songbird.

In animation controls, set frame 1 as SB-Flight2, frame 5 as SB-Flight3, frame 10 as SB-Flight2, frame 15 as SB-Flight3….. frame 205 as SB-
Flight2.

Import a background picture (picA in scene.zip ). Adjust the Light Controls of Songbird, to make it more similar to the background picture.

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STEP 2 EXPORT THE ANIMATION IN SEQUENCE PICTURES

Export the animation in sequence pictures.

STEP 3 IMPORT FILES TO AFTER EFFECTS

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Open After Effects, click [ Composition ••New Composition ] to create a new composition that’s 8 seconds long, has a screen size of
427x320 and a frame rate of 25 fps. Name it something suitable, such as “bird”.

From the File Menu, click [ File ••Import ••File] .

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To import the sequence pictures.

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Separately import the front and back pictures.

STEP 4 COMPOSING IN AFTER EFFECT

A. Drag them onto the timeline.

B. Position the back layer in the top left-hand corner.

C. Select the back layer in the timeline and Press P to access the position twirly.
Placing one key frame at each individual second( from 0 second to 8 second ) and decreasing 400 pixels per key frame.

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D. Select the front layer in the timeline and repeat the process B. and C. as above.

E. Now add some special effect to the front layer:

Click Effect••Blur & Sharpen••Gaussian Blur (scale blurriness to 3 )

Press T, and scale to 80 per cent. (Optical)

Press S, and scale to 110 per cent. (Size)

STEP 5 RENDER IN AFTER EFFECT

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Now we’ll render the movie.

From the Composition menu, click Add To Render Queue.

Click on Current Settings.This brings up a new dialog box.

From the Quality dropdown, select Best.
From the Resolution dropdown, select Full.

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Click on Output Module Lossless. This brings up a new dialog box. From the format dropdown, select Quicktime movie.

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Then click OK and Render.

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Ballet Animation in Prep

Figure 1

I have since graduated to the modeling program Ray Dream Studio 5 and the animation programs Poser 3
and Poser 4. (All of these programs are now "out of print.") My work at an earlier stage on the new
ballerina can be seen in Fig. 2. Note that the tutu, the leotard, and headpiece are bright red in the original
picture. Also note that this ballerina is considerably better looking than the first one! This is a canned
figure that came with Poser. The leotard also came with the program. I made the headpiece and the tutu.
(Interesting side story: We were at a group dinner recently. I was describing my latest venture into
animation to my next seat neighbor. I mentioned that I had just made the tutu for the ballerina. A
neighbor further down the table, apparently coming in late in the conversation, said, "Oh, do you sew?")
The missing ballet shoes were modeled later.

Figure 2

The rest of this piece will describe in fairly low-tech (I hope) how this creature and the stage were
created.

Ray Dream is a modeling program. Modeling is the creation of 3D objects. The program can also do
animations. However, since I use figures and some objects from Poser, I do my animation in Poser. Poser
is NOT a modeling program; you cannot create objects or figures in Poser. However, objects created in
Ray Dream can be imported into Poser.

Poser is an amazing program with a wide variety of figures, human and animal, a variety of clothing for
the figures, and a number of objects (props) - all loaded with the program on the hard disk. More figures

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Ballet Animation in Prep

and objects are available on the program CD. The clothing for the figures can be made to "conform" to
the figures. This means that when the figure arms, legs, and body move about, the clothing comes along
with them in a natural looking way. Poser does this by incorporation phantom body parts inside the
clothing. These phantom body parts match the corresponding figure body parts and move with them.

In a previous animation my animated opera diva needed an appropriate gown. There was only one dress
in the Poser collection that came close. Poser has no clothing appropriate for a ballerina. The software
house Zygote made the orignal figures for Poser. Zygote also sells a very large number of figures,
objects, and clothing that can be used in Poser. However, they have no ballet costume.

The tutu in Fig. 1 has as its "parent" the figure's hip. This means it is attached to the hip and moves with
it. If the ballerina leans forward, her hip (that is, the portion of the body called the hip in Poser) rotates
and the tutu rotates with it. One problem: the tutu is a solid block. It might as well be made out of
concrete! When a ballerina moves about, particularly in jumps, the tutu should flit up and down and even
flutter. Not with the concrete block! By comparison, the movie Shrek has animated clothing that flows
and ripples most naturally. Jealous, jealous!! I created the tutu in Fig. 2 that is "flexible." It is made of 30
separate elements whose parent is the figure's hip and are free to move up and down independently. An
element is seen in Fig. 3. It was created in Ray Dream starting with the zig-zag line and extruding a shape
forward (perpendicular to the grid surface). The near end was squeezed down. This element was
duplicated to make the 30 elements.

Figure 3

One may note in Fig. 2 that certain details of the figure's body shape are not quite appropriate for a
ballerina. In Poser the figure's body can be corrected (er, changed). However, the leotard, which imitates
the body's uncorrected shape, cannot. Sorry!

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Ballet Animation in Prep

Figure 4

The more I thought of having to move (animate) 30 pieces of the tutu to simulate flexibility, the more I
thought I'd never get done. (A common problem in animation!) So, I made a solid (concrete?) tutu seen
(in a much later stage of development) in Fig. 4. This was made in Ray Dream as seen in Fig. 5. A cross-
section was drawn: the dots in the figure. The cross-section was then swung around a vertical axis in the
process know as lathing. You say, "What about a hole in the center for the ballerina?" In 3D modeling
one of the laws of physics is disobeyed: two things *can* occupy the same space at the same time! In Fig.
4 the tutu has no hole, but you can't tell. And, besides, who will ever know?

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Ballet Animation in Prep

Figure 5

I thought that, since Poser has "morphing," i.e. shape changing in animation, capability, I could _just_
morph the tutu to exhibit flexibility. It turns out that all the morphing instructions in the Poser manual
referred to morphing parts of human or animal figures. There was no mention of morphing props, items
introduced into the animation that are not figures. The tutu is a prop; the headpiece on the ballerina is a
prop. I created a near copy of the tutu curved upward as seen in Fig. 6 and "duplicated by symmetry" to
make the tutu curve downward as seen in Fig. 7. With a single click I can make the tutu look like any of
the three pictures. That sure beats having to manipulate the 30 elements mentioned above!

Figure 6

The shoes in Fig. 4 are canned in Poser as "dress shoes" and if nobody looks too closely, I say they are
ballet shoes. The ankle straps are "texture maps" the making of which is enough for another whole story.
The floor design is another texture map. It was made from a grid pattern I made for another purpose. I
filled it in with a medium gray in a checkerboard fashion, duplicated it several times, and "tiled" it into
the texture map.

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Ballet Animation in Prep

Figure 7

The balcony view of the stage is seen in Fig. 8.

Figure 8

The curtains were made in Ray Dream similar to the making of the tutu in Fig. 3. A zig-zag line was
drawn and the shape was extruded. A long extrusion produced a side curtain element and a short
extrusion produced a top curtain element. The elements were duplicated to produce the width of the

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 Ballet Animation in Prep

curtains. The stage lighting had a problem: the stage lights cast horrible shadows of the curtains across
the stage. Poser fortunately has a solution: lights that cast NO shadows! You may notice in Figs. 4, 6, 7,
and 8 that a spotlight plays on the ballerina. It can follow her motions.

The house lights dim; the opening credits appear - Fig. 9. All I gotta do now is the animation!

Figure 9

Return to electric pi
Revised September 15, 2002 Lawrence I. Charters
Washington Apple Pi
URL: http://www.wap.org/journal/

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