Animation of sculpties

I seen Vlad's movie animated sculpty and i must say i was quite impressed ( went back after he left and stared at it for hours (it's better than a lava lamp, hehe) it's reminisent of Odo from Star Trek DS9. Just tweek the surface color a bit... : )

So ya for a parcel confine object (for the movie file) Vlad's method is the best i've yet seen.

All i need now is access to a .mov editor.

Flash will create .mov as well as .swf... .swf is much smaller that is why I chose to use it.

AVID free DV was another tool I came across.

other paid apps:
-QuickTime Pro (obviously)
-Adobe premier

The key is finding one that will work efficiently with the small 64px size.


-whyroc

Thanks Zen. I am working on some texture options for the sculpture, prolly just a random texture applied from textures in the objects inventory.

Anyone who's interested can see my morphing sculpty expermient on my parcel in the Caledon Highlands. Touch the sculpture to start the animation. You'll need to have your movie options enabled in preferences, as it uses the video stream to change the shape of the sculpted prim.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Highlands/41/204/39

I'm not sure I understand, Vlad, how you can drive a sculptie animation off a QT .mov...? I have an animated sculpture I'm working on with quite a long sequence of images.

I've been trying to generate intermediate states so that the jerkiness of the image goes down. If I understand the posts here, people are using morphing software to generate the inbetween images... any suggestions on how small a change needs to be incorporated into the sculptie textures so that the result looks smooth? I'll figure it out eventually, no doubt, but it takes such a long time to change the objects in blender, then produce the sculptie series, import ithem into 2nd life, test them out, and so forth. Every time I break the pieces up into smaller changes I get some improvement, but I'm still a long way from a smooth animation.

I don't understand how I can use a QT mov to drive the animation. Could you spell it out?

And yet this process, Sayonara, that you are using with blender is one that will work Anywhere in SL(that allows scripts). Whereas, this .mov flash method is parcel bound(the way SL works right now)

So keep on with the Blender, keeping in mind that smoother in terms of more frames "inbetween" absolutly also means slower.

HEY, THERE IS NO FORUM FOR SCULPTIES, SO THIS WOULD BE THE MOST LOGICAL CHOICE

Sure, for this experiment I:

+ Created 12 different sculpted prims shapes - 12 different sculpt maps

+ Took those sculpt map images into my video editing program

+ Created a movie that blends one sculpt map to the next, creating smooth transitions of colors between each sculpt map.

+ In-world I created a sculpty prim and set the sculpt map to the first shape in the series

+ Set the land parcel media option to use the movie I created.

+ Set the land media texture option to the exact same sculpt map that I used on the prim.

+ Set up a script to force the sculpted prim shape to update. Unfortunately the prim shape must be updated via script - it does not update automatically as the movie changes.

That's it really, besides some scripting to turn the updates on/off and start/stop the movie.

As Zen mentions, because of the use of video, this technique will only work easily on land that you own. It'll work on group owned land as well, after being deeded to the group.

This technique could work without the 'tweening' between frames. Say you had 100 individual frame of sculpty animation. You could compile all 100 sculpt map images into a sort of slide show abd use this same technique to animate the object.

I'm not sure if this way is more efficient or faster or anything, but it sure is neat.

Great explanation Vlad..

One question, did you have any issues if you used a non-square video file?

I know some of the better DV apps can produce square videos (my nearly free apps don't).

-whyroc

I used a square video format, 128x128. For my normal sculpties I use 32x32 maps, but I went for a large one on the video to counteract some of the extra video compression.

I think that a standard 4x3 format would be fine, as long as you stretched the sculpt maps to fill the entire frame.

I have had mixed results with the stretching the sculpt maps, it works but it seems to loose some precision.

Which app are you using , Quicktime Pro?


-whyroc

Yes, I can see how the compression and stretching would introduce some artifacts into the sculpt map. I am seeing that on the video I have made as well. I am going to try a 32x32 movie with no compression to see how that works vs. the larger compressed version.

I just made a bit of a breakthrough while brainstorming with BenG who had stopped by to see the effect. Now the morphing takes place at about twice the rate as before, I'm guessing 8 frames a second.

It now uses 2 separate scripts to update the sculpt shape - timed so the updates happen twice as often. Prolly twice as hard on the client and/or sim, but it looks MUCH smoother now.

edit: I did try the 32x32, uncompressed movie. HUGE difference in the smoothness of the individual shapes. File size is about 3.5 MB for the uncompressed, 2.5 MB for the 128x128 compressed.

excellent idea.. 2 scripts!!!

-whyroc

I use Sony Video Vegas for most of my video work. If you haven't tried the free Avid DV software, you might want to check it out. It has a pretty full feature set and I'd be surprised if you couldn't create video of various sizes. Mac and Windows versions, too.

http://www.avid.com/products/freedv/index.asp

ok..

but someone did a smooth & fast animated sculpt..
and i think without using flash or mov cause its seems to be used everywhere..

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=283346

Yes, he must be using a similar script to what Zen posted in post #16 of this thread.

The discussion has moved on to discuss using the parcel media.

I think I have found the best solution for my needs anyway... it was sitting right there in front of me all along - Adobe Image ready!!!

Very similar to creating an animated gif, image Ready can tween or interpolate, you specify the number of frames, duration of each frame. Then save a .mov with a .tga color scale and you're set!!! This has produced a flawless sculptie 'movie' with no distortion and is much faster than piecing it together with flash as I was doing before.

I have an example running in world if anyone is interested, follow the sURL in my siggy.
(don't forget to click play in your movie tab)

Also an example of my previous flash method is there, not as clean..


-whyroc

Great idea, whyroc. I may just try that myself. A 256 color animated GIF may even work, if Quicktime supports that format. The uncompressed video file makes great , smooth sculpties - maybe even better than a standard sculpt map.

yes I visited your place in Caledon earlier today.. was that the uncompressed movie? it really did look smooth...

-whyroc

Avid sounded compelling untill they ask for too much info for a free product. my telephone # my address? hello?

Thanks Vlad, for your very detailed reply... I am looking forward to trying it out. I understand the limitations. BTW, I saw your vid on youTube... absolutely delightful! Thanks again.

Thanks Sayonara, and have fun experimenting.

whyroc - Yeah, that is the 32x32 uncompressed video file. It looks much smoother than the larger, compressed file.

As soon as I get a chance I will clean up the scripts I've written and post them in the scripting forum.

I cant find this samples in world anyone has a link?

anyone else figured out how to make smooth animated sculpties without using any kind of video?

You can't make it perfectly smooth, but you can animate without video. The smoothness depends on how far the movement and how fast each "frame" is played. It can tend to glitch too, skipping a frame here and there and reverting the sculpty to a round ball. It's quite heavy on resources.

You need to make each frame as a separate sculpty map then in a script list the uuids in order and have the sculpty switch to each on a timer.