Today was mainly a workshop day working on our Morph project and shooting the group cutout project. Was introduced to the ever handy VideoRT line-test program running on an Amiga 2000! Would you believe it after all these years.
The lecture was about pose to pose animation with the following course notes:
http://www.rmit.edu.au/aim/a_notes/anim_pose.html
First day of the Story Telling classes with Robin Blake. The Story is probably the most important thing in any production because no matter how much is spent on the special effects and the look of the film if the story is not right then it will not be a memorable experience for the audience they might enjoy it but will not remember it after a short time.
Where do ideas for stories come from? Often ideas come from interests of the creator or the skills that they have and there are a number of techniques which can help with capturing ideas and generating them. Keeping a visual diary and recording everything will be a great help in the flow of ideas, writing things down will keep the ideas churning around in your mind and there they will combine with other ideas and maybe blossom into new directions and possibilities. When recording ideas it is helpful to ask yourself “What if … happened?” this will open up new possibilities.
Writing “morning pages” can help clear out all the stuff in the mind and pave the way for new ideas. Reversing a situation can generate new possibilities. Keeping a diary of your dreams can help generate ideas and also encourages remembering more dreams.
Other ways to stimulate ideas is to use a dictionary and randomly looking up words, the mind automatically tries to create relationships between the words which could lead to a situation or an idea for a story. If in a group, a round-robin game can be played where each person adds a little bit to the story as it goes around.
Here are some of the elements of memorable movies:
If you believe in the world that you are creating in withing the story and you keep the rules govering this world consistent then the audience will believe in it no matter how outlandish the situations maybe.
We looked at a great short film called “Balance” in order to better understand the Narrative Structure. The basic structure can be divided into:
The beginning setups up the premise, why the story is being told, and establishes where the story will go. A Plot Point is a point where the story changes direction, if the story didnt have the Plot Point then everything would go on as it was in the Beginning resulting in a very dull story! The first Plot Point leads the audience to the conflict which is contained in the Middle of the story, it is here that the audience will want to know what will happen next. After a plateau in the emotional flux of the story we reach the second Plot Point which leads us to a climax where the issues which were introduced previously are resolved in the End of the story.
http://aim.adc.rmit.edu.au/kcawley/
In the animation lecture David introduced another animation principle: follow-through which can breath life into the most limited animation. Various technical details such as pegs, exposure sheets, field charts and screen ratios were discussed: http://www.rmit.edu.au/aim/a_notes/tools_of_trade.html. We then went on to look at metamorphosis which is something that animation is very good at, and our new project was assigned: http://www.rmit.edu.au/aim/a_notes/02_morph_project.html
We are really diving into everything and things are flying past very quickly! Hang on tight…
Today was the first day of my course and what a whirlwind of a day it was too.
After doing the sitting around the circle and introduce yourself sort of thing and getting introduced to more lectures we got some advice about how important it was to learn by doing and using the group as a sounding board for our ideas. It’s important not to become isolated from the group and fading into the background specially now that the group has become bigger than the previous years. We will have guest speaker every Thursday with a dedicated group of “Hunters and Gathers” finding and feeding people for us to network with.
After that the lectures proper started, Introduction to Animation. Beginning with latin word ‘anima’ meaning ’soul, spirit or to give life to’. Humans have tried to bring life into their surroundings since cave men captured the moment before the kill on a hunt or the Arabic fountains bringing life to the surroundings by the way water moved in them. Humans like to play god and animation is the perfect media to create an alternate4 reality where everything and anything is possible. This facts attracts many live action directors to the medium (e.g George Miller, Happy Feet).
The history of animation goes back to the thaumatrope in 1824 and then the Phenakistoscope in 1832 and onto Zoetrope and Praxinoscope in 1877.
After seeing some animations from Emile Cohl we went on to watch a stampede scene from the Lion King, it is a very well thought out and put together scene which gets the audience emotionally involved in the story. Many devices are used in this scene such as Scar appearing out of the dust and Scar ewalking on the cliff edge with under-lighting, there is no reason light coming from underneath since it is day and the sun is shining but these devices are used for the purpose of the film, to further the story and communicate more clearly.
For contrast we then looked at some of Jan Svankmajer’s work and then the bus stop scene from Miyazaki’s Totoro, where the animation is ms more contamplative and is simply showing a mundane moment as opposed to a Disney film where everything is in the service of the story and anything which is not furthering the story is not included in the film. Disney films also spoon feed everything which is needed to know and there is no room for reflection or contemplation.
The next example was another extreme where limited animation is used to still communicate effectively in Roger Ramjet. Limited animation is used to suggest movement of characters and often clever devices are used to tell the story. Norman McClaren’s experimental animations showed what a fine artist could do when elements of time were added in to their work.
Animation reduces unimportant elements and refines to be left with the essence of something and it is this abstraction of a series of images which can be used to tell a visual poem, or to create a perfectly timed gag, or a surreal world which would not be possible with live action.
On we went to the principles of animation and explaining the different frame rates and how they originated and 1/25 or 1/25 sec being the smallest sample that the animator would need to concern with. Because we leave in the physical world we will respond to elements which seem to obey physical laws such as weight, gravity and inertia. This leads us to easing in and easing out which describe the way objects change speed in an animation.
Other principles which were mentions were Squash and Stretch where the volume of an object retains its volume while changing dimensions. And anticipation where a preliminary preparatory actions setups up an expectation in the audience about what is going to happen next.
Having touched on a couple of animation principles we jumped straight into some cutout animation working in groups of 3s with shooting to be done by Friday.
Here are some of the thumbnails and doodles I did while trying to figure out what would be the best way to build an eclosure for my home-made Cintiq.
I decided to use MDF to build the enclosure because it is easy to work with and will give pretty accurate rebates when a router is used.
So the top is half way there I think, still have to get some 2mm glass and also some type of ply wood which is 2mm thick for surrounding the glass. The glass also needs to be painted on the back so the circuit boards wont be visible, and of course the whole thing has to be cut into a disk so it can be rotated. Then there is the issue with the base, I want something which I can change the height of and at the same time stable enough so there wont be any chance of things accidentally falling down.
Now I am going to plug everything back in after doing all this fiddling to make sure I didn’t break anything in the process, fingers crossed.
After waiting for an eternity for the computer retailer to get its act together, my Wacom Intuos3 has finally arrived! This is a beautiful piece of equipment:
The Dell 1503fp that I stripped before (see previous posts) had been sitting in the corner collecting dust and now it was time to fire it up again to see if it would work with the new tablet. As I mentioned before the 1503fp was working with the Wacom Intuos2 6×8 with a little bit of jittering but since this tablet is smaller than the screen area for the project to be usable I really needed 9×12 tablet since I am using a 15″ display.
I placed the new Wacom still in the case under the stripped monitor and after checking that there was nothing touching or shorting any part of the monitor circuits, I plugged everything in, and IT WORKS!! Even better than the smaller Intuos2, there seems to be no jitter!
Next step was to strip the new Wacom and place the LCD directly onto the sensor and calculate how much room I have to play with when deciding on a protective glass or acrylic layer for the LCD.
There are some screws on the back of the Wacom and a single plastic tab which needs to be pressed before the back will work free a little then I had to carefully peel off the metallic ground tape that was stuck to the back cover and then I could move the back cover away, the USB lead still goes through it so it can not yet be completely removed.
With the back cover out of the way I started pulling at the actual sensor but it is stuck with a seriously strong double-sided tape. This tape it just too strong I think, I was bending the circuit board and it still wouldn’t budge, I would probably break the board or maybe damage the components if I kept bending it. So first I pulled back the circuit board a little bit until I could see the FFC cables which connect the sensor board to the touch strip which is a new feature of the Intuos3 tablet. I open the ZIF socket and pulled the tiny FFC cable out of the socket using a pair of tweezers. I couldn’t do the same for the other side because the ZIF socket is out of reach.
I grabbed the ever handy Utility Knife and extended the blade to maximum, then as I pushed the circuit board away from the plastic casing, I slid the blade of the knife in and carefully cut the foam-double-sided tape. And then the other side but this time being even more careful because the FFC was still connected to it’s socket on this side.
That was the most painful part of the whole process, finally everything came apart.
Testing the LCD with the stripped Wacom showed a little bit of interference on the LCD. So I put the LCD back into its plastic cage which increases the thickness but it is very convenient because it holds all the guts of the LCD together and also compensates for the tapering of the backlight slab. I tested the unit again this time with a thick stack of paper on top of it. I kept removing paper until the pen started to be read by the sensor again. The thickness of the paper was 10mm so if I use a 2mm piece of glass to protect the LCD from pressure and straches, I still have 8mm of space before the pen stops being read.
The intuos3 tablets have a number of customizable buttons and 1 touchstrip on each side. The first problem is that the row column drivers get in the way of these buttons a little bit, the solution for me was to turn the table sensor 180 degrees and then use the drivers to flip the orientation. This works very well and helps put the row column drivers away from most of the Wacom logic.
The next problem is with the buttons, after placing the LCD on top of the Wacom and building an enclosure around it, plastic buttons will not reach the circuit board and whats more these plastic buttons seems to be partly build into the Wacom case which would mean that I would have to damage the Wacom case to get them. It might be better if I could find different button to replace the Wacom ones.
Now that I have proof of concept, I have started to think about building the enclosure.
Firstly a little bit about the Dell 1503fp before we get into the stripped version.
Operating side-by-side with the Samsung 152T, this monitor is not very bright and the colours look muddy, the Samsung picture looked sharper, more contrasty and vivid. But if this means that I will have an operational unit then I will be happy with animating on that and using a second monitor for colours and things.
The stripping was very straight forward and much easier than the Samsung, most things came apart by undoing screws, only got to clicked-in things when I got to the metal cage protecting the LCD unit. I didn’t take any photos because this monitor has been stripped and documented by many other people.
The LCD panel in this monitor is a HannStar HSD150MX12, the date of manufacture of the monitor is 06/2002. The panel has one CCFL and the backlight slab is tappered just like Robcat’s, in fact I think that these are the exact same monitors just re badged. Which means that I have to be very careful with the row column drivers because two people have ended up with dead monitors because of the row/column drivers breaking away from the LCD unit. Comparing these connectors to the ones that I saw in the Samsung, the Dell ones look a bit cheaply made, so I will try to be as gentle as I can with them.
The controller to column driver cable is a normal ribbon type cable with enough room for me to be able to put the controller underneath a 9×12 tablet and the backlight cable is just long enough to reach around the other side.
There is a FFC connecting the column drivers to the row drivers. This is a 20pin 0.5 pitch FFC which is thankfully the same as what I used for the Samsung so I am happy that I didnt have to order another FFC kit.
The monitor has VGA and DVI inputs, although I don’t notice as much difference in the VGA to DVI picture quality as I did with the Samsung 152T. It has an external 12V power supply rated at 3Amps.
Trying Bhraaz’s Opening Gambit, which is placing the turned off LCD on the tablet to see if the tablet could read the pen through the unit, resulted in a fail. There is a piece of metal shielding at the back of the LCD unit which stops the pen from being read so you need to strip further and remove the cage and protective plastic casing to remove this shield.
Ok so it is completely stripped now and sitting on top of the UC-Logic PF1209, I turn on the monitor and straight away the computer starts receiving random click! :( I tried various things like removing the CCFL but the random clicking stays. Very disappointed by this result, so after fiddling around a bit more I decided that I would try putting my Wacom 6×8 (still in it’s case) under the LCD to see if that work.
After wrestling with Win XP to uninstall other tablet drivers and then reinstalling the new ones, I turned the unit on, no random clicking, no cursor flying to one side of the screen! I draw on the LCD and it shows up on the monitor just as I drew it, no crazy wiggles or bird droppings! I couldn’t believe it! It was working! :D
If I touch the pen on the screen and old it there, there is a tiny bit of a jitter but when I am drawing at speed I don’t notice it and the lines are almost the same as how I drew them (with a tiny bit of snaking), what’s more there is no shielding or earthing at all in this test, just put one thing on top of the other. I tried the test with drawing white on black and no noticeable difference.
I’m very happy about this, I just hope I will get the same result with a larger Wacom.
So here is my conclusion:
Now I have to wait for the 9×12 Wacom to do more tests.
Alright I tested as much as I could with the Samsung 152T and now I am going to try something else, so I put the Samsung back together. Here is the result of UNstripping:
It is harder to put the thing back together than stripping it! Specially because I had extended the controller cable and wrapped all this aluminum and electrical tape around it so it wouldn’t fit any more. I had to get rid of all the alu wrapping so that the cable was thin enough to close the case. Phew…. I am glad that is back together and there were a couple of times when I thought I had stuffed the monitor, I plugged it in to check and was getting nothing. I was convinced that I had finally killed the poor bugger but then I realized that the computer had gone asleep so that’s why there was no display! :)
Ok so now I start with “Samtiq II, the return of the jitters” or maybe “Samtiq II, the jitterminator” :)
I have decided to go with the monitor that Drew has used for his build the Dell 1503fp. Here it is:
Unfortunately as soon as I bought it these messages started appearing on Bongofish about jitter problems with the 1503fp! Lucky aren’t I? Anyway the strip will begin soon. I just hope that the FFC is a 20pin 0.5pitch so I can use my extension from the Samsung.
Recently I purchased a UC-Logic graphics tablet and while giving feedback about the product to the company representative, I brought up the issue of tablet resolution. This is often measured in lpi or Lines Per Inch with some tablets going as high as 5000 lpi. My concern with the UC-Logic tablet was that it had a quoted lpi of 2000 while the Wacom range quote figures as high as 5080 lpi.
The response that I received from UC-Logic was that some companies use the lpi figure as a marketing trick, by using the maximum reachable lpi instead of the normal operating one. On the box of the UC-Logic tablet the resolution is quoted as 2000 lpi and I have now been informed that this is the resolution at normal operation but a maximum resolution of 4000 lpi can be reached. I am still not sure how this resolution is changed or under what conditions.
The representative explained to me that resolutions higher than 1000 lpi don’t mean anything in real life applications. For example at a resolution of 2000 lpi, each inch has 2000 lines and the width of each line should be 0.0127 mm (1 inch = 25.4 mm, 25.4/2000=0.0127). The pen tip diameter is about 0.5mm and has covered more than 39 lines already, that means if the lpi is over 1000 then it will be sufficient for all practical uses.
After carrying out a lot of tests on the Samtiq and finding problems with the jittering I started to shield various parts of the unit to see if that remedied the problem. Here is the extension cable which runs from the controller to the column drivers on the LCD. I have wrapped aluminum foil around the cable and in this shot I am part way through wrapping it with electric tape:
Here is a close up:
It was a bit tricky to shield the row and column drivers so I decided to wrap aluminum foil around the tablet instead. This is ok in my case because the tablet reading height is 25mm and I can leave the tablet in its case.
Once I had covered all the non-active area of the tablet, I wrapped a layer of tracing paper over the top to insulate the LCD from the aluminum foil:
With these tests I decided to use the DVI input of the monitor and I think that helps, I dont have any jittering problems at all. The tablet seems to work great except when the pen is lifted off the surface to a height close to its reading limit. In this situation the tablet will sometimes register false clicks, they seem to occur close to the middle of the screen but not the same spots all the time. This is very annoying and seriously affects usability, I did a lot of tests without much success, here are some of my findings:
grounding the shields on the tablet, controller cable didn’t make much difference
This last point indicates that it is actually the liquid crystal unit which is intefering with my tablet (wacoms may be different). To display black the LCD has to supply power to a bunch of pixels so that they stop light passing through, this voltage is interfering with the tablet.
I am very close with this project but yet so far…. everything is working except when the pen is lifted. I am wondering if UC-Logic uses a special pen for their tablet modules which is not as prone to the inteference from the LCD. Or maybe they specify to the developers what LCDs are suitable for use with their modules. I would love to get some more info about this.
In the meantime I might have to keep sliding my hand across the LCD. :)
