Smooth Animation Playback - Tips?

[Matt]

This is probably because I've never been taught 3D / video properly, had to learn most stuff myself or from poaching you guys :)

It's just every time I've finished an animation, after building with whatever codec, playback just isn't smooth (regardless of quality) I'm talking about the actual movement. (Playback for computer BTW, not video/DVD)

It looks fine in LWs preview, but after compression something is lost.

I was wondering to what extent you guys go to to create the perfect playback?

I never know how many 'keyframes' to put in every nth frame, or whether I should have any at all!

Target size is reasonably straight forward.

But datarate is another art in itself.

Anyone like to share some gems of insight into this area of 3D?

This area is just as important as the 3D side of things, yet I reckon is overlooked by most as people, probably because like me they have all these lovely rendered frames and just want to see it animated, so they build it without too much thought.

:)

[Mylenium]

Honestly I do not care that much for playback on computers since I do most stuff for video and TV. I generally only do small previews of that with half or a third resolution and those play smoothly even at 25 fps if you use the proper CoDec. Like for CD-ROM projects I there mostly use Quicktime Sorensen 3 or MPEG 4 with a max data rate of 150 Kbit. Keyframe interval is mostly set to 50 frames and with MPEG 4 you can easily push this to 200 frames. For full rez previews you have to cram everything into RAM and use tools like Maya's fchek or Frame Cycler.

Mylenium