Technology Query: Making Animation?

The book-in-production will be released eight months from tomorrow, which means that I'm thinking of ways to promote it on-line. One obvious possibility would be some sort of YouTube video type thing, showing a conversation with the dog about physics. This runs into problems, though, given that the dog is, well, a dog, and thus doesn't take direction very well. It'd be really difficult to get the right sort of video of her.

One solution to this would be to get some really basic video of me talking to her as a frame for the conversation, and do some sort of animation to fill in the rest. So, for example, the Bunnies Made of Cheese conversation would start with her staring out the window, wagging her tail, and then when we start talking about the physics of virtual particles, switch to animation of virtual pairs appearing and disappearing, and cheese bunnies in the backyard, etc. Then it would end with me asking if she wants to go outside, and her running for the back door.

This, of course, presents problems of its own. Namely, I have no idea how to do this sort of thing. My video-making skills are limited to piecing together clips in Movie Maker. And while I suppose it would theoretically possible to make an animation by piecing together umpteen still frames, there are more pleasant ways to drive myself completely insane.

It occurs to me, though, that there are probably software tools that could be used to make this process simpler. And it also occurs to me that I probably have readers who know something about this. So, two questions:

1) Is there software that makes it easy to put together little animated movies? This would need to run under Windows (Vista or XP), and ideally should be either free or relatively inexpensive. I'm not looking for anything too fancy-- something that generated a South Park/ Monty Python sort of moving clip art look would be fine for my purposes.

2) Is there an easy way to turn animations in VPython into movie clips? I probably ought to just email this directly to Rhett from Dot Physics, but somebody else might know. I use VPython to do physics simulations for the intro class I'm teaching this term, and it ought to be possible to use it to do animations of the physical processes I'm interested in. I have no idea how to get those into a form that could be incorporated into a movie clip that could eventually end up on YouTube, though.

Any pointers you can provide to software that can do what I want would be much appreciated. Or, for that matter, if you happen to be a person who does this sort of movie-making, and you work cheap, email me, and we'll talk.

More like this

If it's a talking dog you want then you might look at Poser. Poser 7 includes both a dog model and a lip syncher. Might be too complicated for casual use, though. It's a middle-weight animation program, I'm using at the moment.

It should probably be pointed out that southpark is done in Maya, which is very expensive.

Flash movies can be viewed on multiple platforms and the player is fairly ubiquitous. Although the Flash authoring software is expensive, educational discounts are available for university employees and some institutions procure site or package licenses. Movie clips can be imported into Flash and graphic overlays, (or additional movie clips,) added. I'm not familiar with VPython, but if it provides the ability to export clips in a common digital video format, you should be able to import those clips into Flash.

By ancientTechie (not verified) on 21 Apr 2009 #permalink

As an alternative to animation, you could do the old "Mr. Ed" trick and get some footage of Emmy eating peanut butter. When you need Emmy to speak, cut in the footage of her eating peanut butter (without sound) and add a voiceover.

As an alternative to animation, you could do the old "Mr. Ed" trick and get some footage of Emmy eating peanut butter. When you need Emmy to speak, cut in the footage of her eating peanut butter (without sound) and add a voiceover.

Yeah, but you can only do so much of that before it gets really silly. I'd like to minimize the amount of that sort of cheesey stuff.

People use FRAPS to capture game footage. If vpython uses opengl or direct3d, I am pretty sure it will capture the renders to an avi file.

You know it might not be as expensive as you think to get some semi-professional help with this. Student animators and filmmakers are often happy to help with this sort of project for little or no money in order to expand their portfolio and can sometimes get course credit for it. I have a couple of friends who have had music videos made in this way that they used for online promotion. My advice would be to contact the nearest college with a film or animation program.

Hey Professor. If you can make animations using VPython, you could use a screencasting program to record the animation, and save the recording as a movie file. Screencasting software is something that's pretty useful too for a whole bunch of professor-ish stuff. I'm sure there's a ton of screencasting programs for windows xp. Have a great day.

minimize the amount of that sort of cheesey stuff

Unless you're talking about bunnies, of course.

By Michael I (not verified) on 21 Apr 2009 #permalink

I didn't post this earlier because I didn't think it was what you wanted. But if you want to capture output from vpython and make it a movie, here is a FAQ

http://vpython.org/contents/FAQ.html

Also, as others pointed out, you could screen capture it. I like to use the free, online, screentoaster (http://www.screentoaster.com/)

But if you want to do something like flash, but free and easier, scratch is what you want. It is similar to the lego robotic programming, but does a ton of stuff. I am really surprised at the way kids (all sorts of kids) use it to make animated pictures and animated short stories. Plus it is embedable as a java applet in a webpage. Win win.

Toon Boom Studio (or Express which is cheaper $150). Vista or Mac. All-in-one, will import drawings, produce Flash output the whole lot)

It's a little pricy, but it is the industry standard (Disney use it I believe) and animators out of the arts faculty will be grateful for the experience. I got it for my daughter who's into anime and she loves it.

Accept no substitute http://www.toonboom.com/buy/onlinestore/customer/product.php?productid=…

(Failing that, Blender which is open source might do it for you. Blender also has physics models - ie, it'll calculate motion for you - so you may prefer it)

Toon Boom Studio (or Express which is cheaper $150). Vista or Mac. All-in-one, will import drawings, produce Flash output the whole lot)

It's a little pricy, but it is the industry standard (Disney use it I believe) and animators out of the arts faculty will be grateful for the experience. I got it for my daughter who's into anime and she loves it.

Accept no substitute http://www.toonboom.com/buy/onlinestore/customer/product.php?productid=…

(Failing that, Blender which is open source might do it for you. Blender also has physics models - ie, it'll calculate motion for you - so you may prefer it)