How to Make Smooth Animations

Development Cinematics & Media
,
1

I feel that I must be missing something when it comes to animating and keyframes. when doing complicated camera paths around a project using keyframes, the resulting animation is very jerky and multi-speed. I realize that speed etc. is based on how far apart the keyframes are, but if you move and rotate your view from keyframe to keyframe it is very easy for dodgy and jerking animations to occur, am I missing a tool or something in the process? I waste a lot of time tweaking keyframes to get a barely acceptable animation in TwinMotion and I use to do character animation using reverse kinetics and nail rigs.

Even if there was a relaxing tool for camera animation that relaxed things into a more equally spaced distance and the movement and view-changing function relaxed as well.

Is there a secrete to this that I am just too dense to realize? It seems like all the examples of nice animations break them up into multiple smaller ones, that is a band-aid not a solution IMHO. Thanks in advance for your time, truly a great program, just needs some polishing.

2

Hi. I have the same Problem and now i think i switch to d5 render. In D5 you have tools vor easy in an out an keyframe controll.

3

I don't think you are missing anything, the animation control in Twinmotion is severely lacking, almost to non existent unfortunately.

Ideally we would have:

  • Controls for ease in or out during movement.
  • Transition matching between clips.
  • Animation curves graph for editing animation timing, length and ease in/out.
  • Dope sheet for animation keyframe timing.
  • Decoupled camera object from views to animate without having to move the camera from a first person view.
  • Decouple the camera animation from the current "add keyframe" system.
  • Camera roll functionality.

etc. There are probably other things as well but this is from the top of my head.

Currently we hesitate a lot to use animated sequences in Twinmotion due to the unpredictable nature of it.

Unless we use like you say from the examples , cut together short simple sequences.

I'm hoping there is currently ongoing work to revamp the animation system in Twinmotion, it really needs improvement.

Improving these tools would make Twinmotion a much stronger product.

4

Thanks both of you for letting me know I am not getting old and senile, and the answer was staring me in in the face.

Yes, there are a lot of features that are needed as far as animations go, but as I said even a relaxing tool that evened out transitions to be a more uniform speed and transition view and direction rotations would be a major breakthrough, should have a way to control how much it relaxes..... The real benefit to TM for me is the animation, the stills are a bonus, but not as good as traditional renderings and the entourage is lacking, but the ease of producing animations allows another offering to our clients that doesn't require a lot of time.

Lots of wish items, but I try to mention the ones that I think will assist the greatest audience and make the software even more competitive.

5

I agree with both assessments - Animation used to be TM's 'cool factor' before pathtracing came along. I used to animate all my projects, but now rely on path traced stills to tell the story. Ease-in/ ease-out should be an essential tool.

6

I also agree with all of these comments. Camera speed between keyframes is particularly counter-intuitive. A VERY detailed webinar from Martin addressing some of these issues would be a tremendous help.

7

I agree, i spend sooo many hours trying to rework simple camera moves because of jerkyness or the whole timing of the scene is eaten up by a simple change camera focal length.

8

I definitely agree. How many updates will we have to wait until these fundamental animation tools are integrated? Lumion has had some of these capabilities for a while now and at least gives you timing control between keyframes. I really want to be able to use Twinmotion for animating, but it is way too tedious.