Animation - Am I asking the impossible?

[fh1805]

I am working on a sequence about the lead-mining industry in Weardale, in the north of England. I have two images of a "thunderbox"; one with lid open and one with lid closed. They were taken using a tripod so the box is "in register" between the two images. I would like, if possible, to animate the opening and closing of the lid. I have included a link here to a "proof-of-concept" sequence. I reasoned that I would need a "frame" to carry the animated objects, and so used a PTE rectangle to experiment with distorting the frame to fit the perspective of the original images. My problem now is that, whilst I can successfully animate the rectangle to move as I want the lid to move, I don't understand how to add the two faces of the lid - and still retain their existing perspective through the animation. Hence my question in the title of this topic - am I asking the impossible?

I think that the client will be pleased with the effects I have achieved in the full sequence, using the two images and carefully chosen and timed transitions, but if I could get the lid animated I know that would blow the clients mind!

I sense that what I need is to be able to "free transform" a couple of PNG images of the two sides of the lid. But PTE doesn't support "free transform" (i.e. moving just one corner of the object), does it?

Any thoughts, anyone?

regards,

Peter

[davegee]

Peter,

It's just a cube?

I haven't tried anything but my first thought is that you could make a rectangle fit the end facing the viewer and build the (elongated) cube around that. Just use the second image and replace the original seat with your own?

You would not even need all of the faces (4 I think). Make them all transparent via opacity apart from the seat and attach its inside face to hinge around the back side.

The "seat" needs to be a rectangle with a hole cut out of it (or a masked hole) with a wooden texture - it doesn't have to be stretched - PTE will do the perspective bit. Something like the picture frame I did?

One other thing - clone the wall from the first image to the second image.

DG

[Lin Evans]

Hi Peter,

There are a couple ways to approach this. The "easiest" way is to incrementally use rotation and 3D transforms to position the lid visually throughout the rotation. This would entail making a PNG object with transparency for the top and bottom of the lid from the two images (closed and open). The move the center visually to the apparent center of the rotation point on the rear. By using equally spaced keyframes, you then rotate and adjust the XY axis throughout the opening process. This way you won't have to "build" another side view, but it would help the realism if you did.

As David says, it's essentially the same process as a "cube" or more like a "cereal box" which is rotated on the re-positioned center. You might ask Dom for a little help, he does the "box" thing very well and does lots of them.

A little more on this. Think of your lid as simply a rectangle in reality, but with transparency where the dimensions are not regular. So you "create" your rectangle using the visible side top and bottom of the lid. The other three sides are unimportant so could just be transparency rectangles. In essence you are simply manipulating a rectangle with a re-positioned center of rotation. This way you are not "creating" a false lid, but using the actual lid from the "thunder box".

Best regards,

Lin

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Peter

As you know my animation skills are somewhat poor to say the least, however I did do a bit of experimenting some time back & came up with the attached sequence, don't know if it's of any use, however it may raise a smile.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1.

Pictures.zip

[xahu34]

A rough attempt. Things would be easier if PTE would allow to reposition the 3D observation point.

Regards,

Xaver

TBox-Lid-mod_Jan18-2012_17-16-24.zip

[xahu34]

The following project file seems to provide a better solution.

Regards,

Xaver

TBox-Lid-mod2.zip

[Howard Bagshaw]

Hi Peter,

My solution: In Photoshop I cut out the top of the box and then transformed it to a rectangle and saved this as a new, small image (top). I did the same from your second image of the bottom of the lid (bottom). I also took your two images, put one on top of the other as layers and created a new 'scene' which had no lid at all, i.e. replaced the open lid with the corresponding bit of the wall.

I then went back to your PTE file, pasted the 'top' and 'bottom' to your moving frame as 'children', scaled them to fit and set the appropriate 'show front side' and 'show backside'.

There's no thickness to the lid, but it produces a fairly convincing opening lid.

On the other hand, I may have totally got the wrong end of what you are trying to do. Regards, Howard

[Howard Bagshaw]

Peter, Here's a zip of the outcome.Howard

TBox-Lid-hb.zip

[fh1805]

My thanks to Dave, Lin, Eric, Xaver and Howard for all your replies. I finally understood, from Howards post, the step I was missing out. I need to convert the open and closed lids into rectangular form before adding them to my animated frame. I'll not be able to follow up on this immediately as I'm out at friends this evening: but guess what I'll be doing tomorrow!

Once again, thanks for the assistance.

regards,

Peter

[xahu34]

...

My solution: In Photoshop I cut out the top of the box and then transformed it to a rectangle and saved this as a new, small image (top). I did the same from your second image of the bottom of the lid (bottom)

...

I did it in a similar way. The transformed top part looks very odd (in both examples), and I was very surprised that in the scene it actually works not too bad.

Regards,

Xaver

[Lin Evans]

Ideally, you would go back and shoot the lid straight on so you don't have to distort the shape to make a rectangle. On the other hand you don't really "have" to distort it to a rectangle, but it does make it easier.

Best regards,

Lin

[Guest Yachtsman1]

An old Lancashire expression, "don't go down the mine dad, there's plenty of coal in the bath!!!"

Yachtsman1

[fh1805]

Ideally, you would go back and shoot the lid straight on so you don't have to distort the shape to make a rectangle.

Lin,

There is no installed lighting in the mine; it all comes from the flash gun attached to the camera. I wouldn't be able to achieve the same angle of lighting if I shot the lid "straight on".

Peter

[David Porter]

Peter, Here's a zip of the outcome.Howard

Hi Howard,

I thought I would try to improve my skills by following your Box Lid Demo. I assumed the first job would be to place the Rectangle Frame over the box in the closed position and then place the boxlid image in that frame. Without looking at you numbers I failed, so decided to put all your numbers in and watch the result. However when I did that the frame was not the same size as yours. To show this I have added another Rectangle to your demo and put in all the same figures but everything is a different size, close but different. An explanation would stop me having sleepless nights.

BoxLid Mick.zip

[fh1805]

Having spent a good deal of this morning trying to replicate the effect that Xaver and Howard achieved, I decided that I didn't like the wafer thin lid and so have abandoned all thought of going down this route. But I have learned a lot about distorting images in Photoshop Elements and you never know when new knowledge might come in useful!

What I thought Howard was describing, and what I actually did, was to carefully cut out both the open lid and the closed lid into separate PNG files. I then created a new file that was the same size as my full image in the sequence (in the final form sequence that's 1624x1080) and used copy & paste to paste in the two PNG file images as layers - giving three layers in all. I then used Image...Transform...Distort in Photoshop Elements to distort the two PNG image layers to be as close to rectangular as I could get them. I then added these to a new image rectangle and used the Move tool to drag their edges until they completely filled the rectangle. At this point I then saved them under new names as PNG images. I finally added these images to my existing frame to observe the animation result -and at that point decided that a thin lid was not right.

This exercise has been, for me, a typical "learning curve" session. At the end of the day, I haven't used the material - but I've learned much that is new to me and had some fun doing so. Oh, the joys of being retired!

Peter

[davegee]

I decided that I didn't like the wafer thin lid and so have abandoned all thought of going down this route.

Peter

That's why I sent the sides and the suggestion that my photoframe model could be used?

DG

[David Porter]

Hi Howard,

I thought I would try to improve my skills by following your Box Lid Demo. I assumed the first job would be to place the Rectangle Frame over the box in the closed position and then place the boxlid image in that frame. Without looking at you numbers I failed, so decided to put all your numbers in and watch the result. However when I did that the frame was not the same size as yours. To show this I have added another Rectangle to your demo and put in all the same figures but everything is a different size, close but different. An explanation would stop me having sleepless nights.

Sorted it myself. The Rectangle I added started at a different size to Howards Rectangle. When I altered it to 1920 x 1080 it works perfectly.

[fh1805]

I'd just like to clarify the reason for my abandoning the "opening lid" animation (as indicated in post #15 above). After studying the various examples supplied by the likes of Dave, Xaver and Howard, I tried to achieve the result that I had in my mind - and failed. After further thought I realised that what I was envisaging was something akin to a good quality video clip. Of course, that was never going to be achievable for a reasonable amount of effort. I have since investigated how to achieve a similar effect (but one that merely suggests the lid opening rather than depicts it actually opening). I now use a 1-second Advanced Hour Hand Center-Bottom transition, with the default Offset of 20% and a 20% smoothing line. This, combined with a Quick transition to close the lid works very well indeed.

I'm much happier with the suggestion/illusion of opening and closing than I was with trying to actually depict the lid opening and closing.

Once again though, thanks to everyone for the suggestions, ideas and examples.

Peter