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Home ? How Do I ...? ? Group Movement

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02/03/2012 16:18:22

WozToonsExperimental user
WozToons
Posts: 494 		Hi all, my first question as I've only had Muvizu for a week. It's probably been answered before and I have searched on here but to save me hours reading every forum post could one of the wise and learned members give me a quick answer please.

I have a police car with lights and effects all grouped together so that I can move them around as one object. I wish to animate this moving down a road, preferably with static scenery so that the scene is illuminated by the headlights. I have tried but Muvizu won't let me animate the group.

Please help me great gods of animation in the cloud.
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02/03/2012 18:02:41

DyllyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Dylly
Posts: 555 		Hi there,
You've run slap bang into one of those areas where you have to think a little outside the box as for the minute Muvizu won't let you move grouped objects.

The easiest way around this problem is to leave the car, effects and lights static and move everything else around them. The simplest method is to employ an animated image on a backdrop

A second alternative is to move the camera as opposed to the objects.

By adding a moving backdrop and moving the camera a little more realism can be added.

Another alternative is to shoot everything on a green background and use a video editor with a chromakeyer to 'Greenscreen' the effect.

There are some great animators out there,,,and I'm thinking of Mysto and Drychalice here, that have a knack of moving props and objects independently yet at together.

For my latest project I needed to have a witch fly on a broomstick through my scene. In the end I ended up modelling a whole new prop of a character and broomstick as one unit to get around the grouping problem.

The simple answer is to basically...CHEAT! To be honest Muvizu has the odd idiosyncrasy but then finding a way around them is part of the fun.

I hope this helps Whaaaaa?
Tim
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02/03/2012 23:05:47

DreekoMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Dreeko
Posts: 1257 		As Dylly says, work around the problem.

You will come across a bucket load of these kinds of stumbling blocks.

Problem solving in Muvizu reminds me of the old Hollywood movies and the level of inventiveness they had to employ to create the special effects of the day -

They used back projections to give the illusion of movement (eg driving down a street)...
..and we have backdrops

They had miniatures to give the illusion of great distance...
..We have scale options.

etc, etc.

If fact Muvizu is a digital modern day equivalent of the early days of film with movie enthusiasts seizing a new technology and squeezing the life out of it to create their own little masterpieces.

Years ago moviegoers would watch a film with outstanding special effects and think "how did they do that?"
Nowadays it is just assumed (and rightly so) that it's all down to computers. For me, something is lost from the experience because of this. I want to be initially in awe at the effect, then find myself scratching my head in confusion at the mystery technique. I want to feel that the effect is clever and not that the magician has merely pushed a button.

This is what some Muvizu users (Jonbez, UkBerty etc) have managed to do..and ironically with a computer program!

I have played around with this software since August 2010 so I think I'm fairly familiar until I watch a shiny new Muvizu cartoon with some mystery special effect included and think "how the feck did he do that?" and sometimes when the solution comes to mind it leads me to think of a different effect that could be used at a later date.

Yes problems can be a great thing when it comes to Muvizu


Cheers
D
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03/03/2012 13:57:14

WozToonsExperimental user
WozToons
Posts: 494 		Thanks both of you. I thought that might be the case but asked just to make sure. I have found a workaround with backdrops but its a shame as I had some really cool lighting effects that would only work if the car group was moving. Didn't turn out too bad though..... It's the police car at the start I was asking about.

Thanks again for your speedy advice. I really appreciate it. If only all forums were like this one.

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26/03/2012 14:04:05

fullmetall
fullmetall
Posts: 164 		hello
i am not sure to be at the good place for this question but,

how to move a group of abstracts ?
in a vidéo i make a chessbord whit 64 cubes, 32 with pictures, i group it and impossible to edit a time line.

is it possible?
@+
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26/03/2012 14:21:44

DreekoMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Dreeko
Posts: 1257 		Alas no
Animating a group of objects is not possible in Muvizu

They would all need to be animated separately
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26/03/2012 14:22:20

Luscan
Luscan
Posts: 176 		Hello.

Animating groups of objects isn't currently possible. You can animate each object individually and then line up the movement blocks on the timeline to make it look like the objects were all animated at the same time. Object movement in groups is something that we're looking into but it's another one of those big challenges with the systems we have in place at the moment. Watch this space.
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26/03/2012 14:36:25

fullmetall
fullmetall
Posts: 164 		ok thanks
then I keep it warm (french expressive), imagine a group of planes or cars or... ect....


"to make it look like the objects were all animated at the same time"
is it possible to copy ans past the time line of one abstract ?
@+
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26/03/2012 15:09:27

Luscan
Luscan
Posts: 176 		Afraid not. Copy and pasting object movement paths is something we're looking at.
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