Animating on 2s

[Caveboy]

I just read an article on Cartoon Brew about an animated CG short that was mimicking puppet animation. It had that jerky effect of the Rankin-Bass stuff of the sixties - but it was well done.

Is there a script or process that can convert or create a way to animate on 2s? I can't imagine doing it manually - having to deal with the extra frame as you make changes and tweak things. Also, how is the blending of frames managed - what kind of interpolation should be used.

I haven't done any real character animation stuff outside of walk-cycles.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Stunt Pixels]

Animating on 2's in CG terms just means having a key every two frames. Here's a really good non application specific description.

http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/old/popThru/popThru.html

[Scazzino]

or just reduce your frame rate by 1/2...

Film is 24 frames per second, and animating on twos in traditional cell (or stop motion) just means shooting each cell (or stop motion position) for two frames...

You can get the same effect by just setting your fps to 12 rather than 24... or to 15 rather than 30... This means you only have to render half as many frames too...

:D

[Caveboy]

Doh!

Thanks! I remember that NOW. Of course. Makes sense.

Thanks guys!

[Larry_g1s]

or just reduce your frame rate by 1/2...

Film is 24 frames per second, and animating on twos in traditional cell (or stop motion) just means shooting each cell (or stop motion position) for two frames...

You can get the same effect by just setting your fps to 12 rather than 24... or to 15 rather than 30... This means you only have to render half as many frames too...

:DAgreed. I remember that guy from GMD Three who presented at Siggraph 2007 mentioning that's what they did.

[druitre]

if you want to have a scene where you mix animation on 2's and full animation, you can do this in the graph editor: animate your stuff as usual, open the graph editor for the object(s) you'd like to animate on 2's, select a range of keys, select bake range, then reduce keys with a setting of .5 and finally set interpolation to stepped.