smooth movement in animations

[professurreal]

Hello all!

just started using Madelbulb 3d a few days ago and I have to say lots of thanks to Jesse for this great program.

I have a question though:

Can anyone recommend settings or things to look out for in order to get smooth movements in animation. In my first few animation attempts the movements are often a bit jerky and suddenly speed up or slow down...

thanks in advance!
professurreal

[Madman]

I advise trial & error... 

The problem is that the closer you are to certain "objects" the smaller the steps will be taken by the program, even when the "objects are hardly visible. One way to get at last a feeling for it is by using the navigator and see how far you are "clicking" into or out of the scene.

Secondly, use "Render preview" often! I mostly use a setting where I render every frame, but scale down a factor 9 or 10. It doesn't look pretty but you get used to it quickly and it is an easy way to see accelerations and decelerations quickly, before having to rechoose 60 keyframes...

[Jesse]

Hi,

are you using the quadratic bezier interpolation?  (You should)

And don't zoom to much between two keyframes, it might be better to handle with some more keyframes.

By adjusting the subframe counts you can also influence the overall timings.


Just some hints, hope it helps.

[professurreal]

OK thanks for the tips I'll just play around with it a bit more then

just one question: what exactly is the difference between the "bezier interpolation" and the "linear" setting?

[hobold]

Bezier interpolation is a particular type of spline curve. And a spline is a particular way of building smooth functions. In other words, Bezier interpolation should make for animation paths that vary gradually and don't have drastic sudden changes.

(More details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spline_(mathematics) )

[professurreal]

OK thanks. I read the article and think I kinda get it. Will try it out when I get home from work this evening