Archive: 28 posts

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I was thinking about flickbooks we used to make in school and then got thinking about those spinning animation wheels and how to implement one in LBP. So I've made a (very) rough prototype. Keep in mind that I'm no artist, and put this together in 20 mins (I haven't got the mechanical side 100% right yet - the moving boards don't stay in a true line so they wobble around) Anyway, I made a quick video of the results. I have other irons in the fire and I'm no good at drawing so I thought someone more artistic might be interested in experimenting with this. I'd love to implement something like this in one of my levels. Here is the video, you should be able to see a waving skeleton hand and a spinning bow tie: YhKdnU_t56w

2009-01-14 20:49:00 Author: EastwoodAndy Posts: 70

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nice, I think you need to increase the speed of the wheel though

2009-01-14 21:01:00 Author: Trap_T Posts: 431

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Yeah, I couldn't crank it up anymore without it breaking. I'd love to spend more time getting this right (I have a great idea on how to utilise this technique) but I have other LBP ideas to polish at the moment. So I thought I'd share it here and see if anyone else can do better (shouldn't be hard, I've set the bar pretty low!)

2009-01-14 21:08:00 Author: EastwoodAndy Posts: 70

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I wonder if you made the corners of your blocks rounded off if it would reduce that clicking noise that kind of sounds like wind. Looks like there is a little too much slack so you might try moving the top wheel up to tighten it up to reduce the wobble on the part you want people to look at...you could also try making some guides (kind of like a chain rail on a motorcycle) to keep it straight. or you could make the wheels be on the left and right and have a guide on the bottom to keep it straight. If there is a way to shorten the connectors between the plates it may make it look a little better. or use a black background and make the wood your stickers are on black so you don't really see it.

2009-01-14 21:29:00 Author: Mattrick Posts: 214

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theres already a level that does this called "the movies", i'll see if i can find the psn EDIT: PSN - Teebonesy

2009-01-14 21:36:00 Author: Mrgenji Posts: 803

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theres already a level that does this called "the movies", i'll see if i can find the psn EDIT: PSN - Teebonesy Wow, thanks that was fantastic! He's got it absolutely nailed - really smooth transitions between the individual pictures. He must have used a different technique, maybe having them all painted onto a huge spinning wheel?

2009-01-14 22:06:00 Author: EastwoodAndy Posts: 70

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it was either the wheel or emitters, im 90% sure it was the wheel though

2009-01-14 22:16:00 Author: Mrgenji Posts: 803

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pretty cool

2009-01-15 01:45:00 Author: Sonic5411 Posts: 712

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theres already a level that does this called "the movies", i'll see if i can find the psn EDIT: PSN - Teebonesy For a minute I thought that was sarcasm. In fact until you came back with the PSN. I was thinking of making a slideshow with stickered dissolve material and emitters. Actually just emitters. Pretty cool stuff though. Lol I never made those in school.

2009-01-15 16:42:00 Author: Hexagohn Posts: 335

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nope, but sarcasm is another of the services I offer

2009-01-15 17:44:00 Author: Mrgenji Posts: 803

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It's too bad that the movies guy got credit for making animation in LBP when the uy who made Ephemera Two did it first, in a different way. I've been scanning in hand drawn artwork with my eyetoy here and therefor various things, but I've never done anything with animation so drawing that many sketches would be an arduous process for me.

2009-01-15 19:02:00 Author: Unknown User

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You could enter this sort of idea in the "Set the Scene" Contest. There is a link for it in my signature, or you could find it on the contest page. Not many people have entered yet, but this looks like it would fit the bill. There is a deadline though, so you might want to focus on just this for a while.

2009-01-15 22:21:00 Author: Elbee23 Posts: 1280

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It's too bad that the movies guy got credit for making animation in LBP when the uy who made Ephemera Two did it first, in a different way. I've been scanning in hand drawn artwork with my eyetoy here and therefor various things, but I've never done anything with animation so drawing that many sketches would be an arduous process for me. I'll have to check out Ephemera Two. I've now played it, and to be fair I think "the movies" has taken the idea and improved it dramatically with better animation and is using a different technique ("the movies" is a spinning wheel with faster, more detailed animation, "Ephemera Two" is sackboy falling down a dark shaft with a flash of light every so often). I also noticed that Ephemera Two and its creator SubGnosis are on one of the movie posters - I think a mention in the level description was probably more appropriate I'm really fascinated by this whole idea and how it can be incorporated into a level (not just having it as the main focus like "the movies" did) but I fear this would take up all my time and I wouldn't achieve the high levels I set myself (art was probably my worst subject when I was at school). After seeing "the movies" level, I had a quick go at using a large spinning disc with a very basic animation (circle moving from left to right). But I'm still not sure how he got his working so well (I can't work out what speed he is using to get it fast enough for smooth animation but slow enough so the length of the animation is worth the effort) You could enter this sort of idea in the "Set the Scene" Contest. There is a link for it in my signature, or you could find it on the contest page. Not many people have entered yet, but this looks like it would fit the bill. There is a deadline though, so you might want to focus on just this for a while. Thanks for the pointer, but I don't think I'm going to pursue this concept at the moment. I mainly posted this to see if someone else might get inspired (someone who can actually draw or use the stickers creatively!) Plus, I'm in the middle of exams at the moment and the deadline would be too tight even if I wasn't in the middle of revision. (and I haven't even made my first proper LBP level yet! My last exam is 23rd Jan, after that my current work in progress should see some, er, progress!)

2009-01-15 23:11:00 Author: EastwoodAndy Posts: 70

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You should have the boards run through a couple of guides - lines on each side / | | | | / this way they wouldn't wave everywhere...

2009-01-18 22:44:00 Author: dobi6 Posts: 359

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Crap, I should have joined this thread earlier on! I just now joined up, but as I was the guy that made The Movies, I'm more than happy to shed some light on the background of it as well as how exactly to do it. Someone mentioned Subgnosis's Ephemera level doing animation first - and I think you're absolutely right. He was the one who kind of brought it to me. He had posted his method at the workshop, and was looking for new ways to do animation. Another user, Mikey-Flies (a SERIOUS whiz at mechanics in this game, the guy's incredible) and myself, began tinkering. Subgnosis, Mikey, and myself all kind of brainstormed ideas and started contacting each other in LBP. I was trying an emitter-based idea, and Mikey was doing the wheel (a mixture of a zoetrope and a film projector). I gave up on the emitter, as it wasn't working out, and moved onto my own style of wheel. I got pretty close, but just couldn't get some of the speeds and numbers right to nail it. Meanwhile, Mikey nailed it (and Subgnosis was there for all of this as well, as he was the one that kind of broke down the animation barrier in the beginning). Mikey had a tv-sized screen that worked amazingly. I let him know that I had been wanting to do a movies-themed level from the beginning, and set out to do the level with a screen as big as the game would allow for a 20-frame animation. The machine is actually incredibly simple. One giant wheel (the circles are actually 20-sided polygons). I've got the frames on each edge. The motor bolt in the center is connected to a piston engine - one side with a mag key, the other with a switch, set at max speed (.1 sec = 10 full intermittent connects in a single second, so our max framerate is 10 fps. With 20 frames possible, it's a 2-second movie). The mag switch goes out to the motor bolt. There's a second mag switch there as well, same color, which goes down to a couple of lights (that mag switch is set to "inverse" and "speed"), and this causes a light strobe effect that helps the illusion of animation. That's it. Literally, that's all there is to it. One big wheel and one tiny engine. The motor bolt speed is 18, by the way, that took a while to get, and you've got to tinker to get the range just right for the mag switches. Since then, with the help of ZX497 (creator of Anti-Color), we've been able to get a working reel-changing system, allowing longer-than-2-second movies. I have a test room where I have 2 different reels set to change every 2 seconds. I don't know if I'll ever actually utilize this, but if anyone's interested, it's also quite simple to get working. If anyone's interested, I'd be happy to give you all the details. It's pretty simple as well though - the idea is that you create a wheel, include the engine, and then save it as an object. Set up an emitter to emit this "reel", alternately with a second emitter for scene 2, a 3rd for scene 3, etc. To solve the problem of not having to emit lights, put mag keys at each corner of the reel, and put your switch near the edge to pick it up and flash the strobe lights. To keep the emits from causing a blurry fuzziness, you can put either a layer of glass in front of the screen, or a large prize bubble in the foreground (with flat layer of glass behind it, to keep the player from collecting it). The prize bubble is good because it doesn't have the stippling effect of glass, but it is kind of a pain to deal with when building. I also noticed that Ephemera Two and its creator SubGnosis are on one of the movie posters - I think a mention in the level description was probably more appropriate. You're actually quite right, I should make mention of his trailblazing in the description. He did have a much-deserved featured workshop on youtube that walks you through how he did the level, and he obviously includes the animation system. It really is great being able to see his level in create-mode. Anyone interested should take a look here: YouTube - LittleBigPlanet - Making of "Ephemera Chapter Two: A Whisper, Glimpsed" It's actually a really cool level, and he utilizes the animation in a far more artistically sound way than I do. Whereas mine is the most obvious possible use of animation in-game, his is a "transition" into a kind of recreated dream or memory. Very cool.

2009-01-19 04:48:00 Author: Teebonesy Posts: 1937

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Wow, thank you so much for posting the info on how you made your level. You're a very welcome addition to the LBPCentral community, just when I thought this forum couldn't get any better we get another talented creator joining! So the missing part of my spinning wheel is the strobe lighting. I'm thinking of using this as a moving background in my level (attaching lights to a black frame and have them moving outwards from the centre of the frame - it will give the impression of a space craft going into 'hyperspace' like the Millenium Falcon in star wars) I do have on question: How did you get each frame the correct size (matched up with the 20 sided 'circle&apos?

2009-01-19 18:25:00 Author: EastwoodAndy Posts: 70

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I basically made my screens as big as possible on a 20-sided polygon. The way I did it was used the very edge of the circle,and drew a parallelogram (a square or rectangle is impossible because the corners would overlap) on each of the 20 sides. this ensures that they're all equi-distant, being that the base of each one is the very outer edge of the circle. Here's a quick ugly diagram I whipped up: http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i202/teebonesy/animationwheel.jpg by the way, the animated hyperspace lighting sounds like a cool idea! And there are so many possibilities here that I didn't explore with my setup. I just used stickers to make the films - It's possible to do "3d" animation, and have each screen made of multiple layers. You could even get the effect of the lights moving into the DISTANCE, from an LED in the front to a fairy light on layer 1, to another LED on the next layer back, etc, through all 7 layers. This could look so **** cool in fact I'm tempted to test it out myself right now! Looks cool! I just made a quick little thing with 3 "stars" disappearing into the distance, but it looks pretty cool. You don't need strobe lights for this one since you're actually animating with lights. There's a strange glitch/effect that sometimes occurs with this setup, and I'm not exactly sure what the source is, it might be fix-able via some tiny tiny tweakies on the mag switch radius, but something about the massive speed of activiating and de-activating those switches sometimes causing stuttering and jerking in the animation. It actually looks astonishingly like a rollout on a film projector, which makes it perfect for movie implementation, but stands out with more clever outside-the-box situations like this. Also keep in mind that it'll probably never work right in online play. If anyone plays your level online with other people, the lag causes a sync delay, and all the frames will be pretty much split. One solution to this is to make a separate copy of your level for online play, in which the animation splits frames, allowing lag to "re-adjust" it to normal. This would probably still be a bit of a crapshoot though. EDIT: AAAARGH... Jesus Christ. I just spent an hour making this thing look incredible - one tiny little dot spreads out into a bunch of stars which brighten and come closer and glow into a giant supernova-nebula blob of light which fills the screen. It looked incredible. I think to myself, "I should save this." As SOON as I hit the "save level" button, the system freezes. It's amazing. Incredible. Ah well... I wouldn't have used it in a level, but I would have liked to at least show you how it looked. Blargh.

2009-01-19 22:53:00 Author: Teebonesy Posts: 1937

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Thanks for the explanation & diagram. Wow, sounds like you made something really cool - that **** save bug is frustrating! I can't wait to try out this idea at the weekend. I want my level to be one player only, I'm thinking of a way to prevent more than one player playing. Some kind of trap door in the beginning which is sensitive enough to give way when more than one player steps on it - it might get some hate from users so I'm not sure if it's worth the effort.

2009-01-20 10:33:00 Author: EastwoodAndy Posts: 70

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I find a little note in the description, and maybe a magic mouth at the beginning of the level should be enough. As long as the online players know that they're not getting the real deal, they may be tempted to come back later and test it out again on their own. More plays for you! Using lights as stars in an animation really did work wonders (and you don't have to worry about strobe lights). The fairy lights looked the best, set to foggy, and set up with different colors and sizes. It all kind of becomes a nebula-like multi-colored blob of light, which, which animated, looks like nothing else I've seen in the game.

2009-01-20 12:07:00 Author: Teebonesy Posts: 1937

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I've decided to give it a try tonight, but I'm not very good with stickers (why can't we have the same options from materials? i.e. different basic shapes and why can't I click and drag like in MS Paint? Why isn't there a fill option to change the colour of a sticker once it's placed? Think I'll make a separate thread about my sticker issues..) Anyway, I'm having a hard time making these parallelograms especially making each one exactly the same. Did you just use the square sticker?

2009-01-20 19:28:00 Author: EastwoodAndy Posts: 70

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Yeah, start with the square sticker and draw a straight rectangle of roughly the right size, then use the corner editor tool to pinch the top corners in a bit. Keep in mind you don't have to use the parallelogram system, you can make slightly smaller screens that are squares or rectangles. either way, you definitely need them to be a different material than the wheel itself. I think I used sandpaper for mine? Once you make that first shape, just use L3 to copy it and stick it 20 times onto the wheel. Be careful that they don't overlap at all, you want each screen to be completely its own.

2009-01-20 23:14:00 Author: Teebonesy Posts: 1937

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Yeah, start with the square sticker and draw a straight rectangle of roughly the right size, then use the corner editor tool to pinch the top corners in a bit. Keep in mind you don't have to use the parallelogram system, you can make slightly smaller screens that are squares or rectangles. either way, you definitely need them to be a different material than the wheel itself. I think I used sandpaper for mine? Once you make that first shape, just use L3 to copy it and stick it 20 times onto the wheel. Be careful that they don't overlap at all, you want each screen to be completely its own. Ah cool, thanks. I got it in my head that I needed to use stickers because using a material would use up another layer! Completely forgot I could just use a different material in the same layer as the wheel!!

2009-01-20 23:33:00 Author: EastwoodAndy Posts: 70

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Donkey Show (of Azure Palace fame) has a level that uses a similar technique when you view a tutorial. It's rather effective.

2009-01-21 01:07:00 Author: UmJammerSully Posts: 1097

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Donkey Show (of Azure Palace fame) has a level that uses a similar technique when you view a tutorial. It's rather effective. Wow, i'll have to check that one out. I'm really excited to see other people's animations starting to come together. There's an amazing one this guy did, it completely maxed out his profile, but it's WAY more versatile than my setup. It's more complex, and again - it maxed out his profile - but you can do 90 seconds of seamless animation at nearly 7 fps. Which is incredible. Check it out here: YouTube - Littlebigplanet LBP TV Fully working Video Reader/DIsplay Unit MUST SEE!

2009-01-21 06:20:00 Author: Teebonesy Posts: 1937

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Donkey Show (of Azure Palace fame) has a level that uses a similar technique when you view a tutorial. It's rather effective. Indeed it is. As for your creation Eastwood, I couldn't see it that clearly because of the quality... Nice work though. As for "This is Training?" by gevurah - nothing actually moves but it's a really neat effect for a still picture. When I first came across it, I was like "Woah... how did he do that?" until I played The Movies and almost cried

2009-01-21 11:09:00 Author: Unknown User

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Problem solved

2009-05-26 13:40:00 Author: olit123 Posts: 1341

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I've just deleted the innapproriate post. It's likely a spam bot, but it will take a few moments to investigate. I'll lock this thread to stop further comments. If the original poster or other involved people wish to re-open this topic, please contact a moderator.

2009-05-26 13:55:00 Author: Elbee23 Posts: 1280

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I banned it already

2009-05-26 13:55:00 Author: QuozL Posts: 921

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