Is it possible to have a typing character in iclon?


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By animasyoncugu - 4 Years Ago
Is it possible to animate a character writing on board, paper or anything in iclon? Will he write on a piece of paper with his hand and his hand will be synchronized with what he is writing? Is this possible ?
By justaviking - 4 Years Ago
Only with a great deal of pain.

It would be best to "imply" what is happening without having to see a close-up of the action.  Think about when a "real" movie has an actor play a piano but doesn't know how.  Block the hands with a clever camera angle and you'll see some arm/head/shoulder movement and you know what is happening, but he doesn't have to hit all the right keys.

Perhaps you could see the back of the hand and the top of the pencil moving, but don't actually show the lead making letters appear on the paper.
By Kelleytoons - 4 Years Ago
This used to be asked all the time in the 3D Max forums.  Obviously completely different software and different set of tools, though.  IIRC, the answer there was you could map the "writing" (which was in essence a long string) and then scroll an opacity map down its length.  Because of the tools you could also attach an object to the writing object at whatever point you wanted, so you put it on the same point as the opacity mapping (so if the map went from 0-100 you had the object follow that percentage of the writing).  Thus a pen would draw (back then we had no or very little characterization, so having a character write wasn't even on the table).

iClone doesn't have those kinds of tools, but I'm wondering now if Blender does.  IF it does, and if you could have such an object follow the writing path, then in iClone it would be trivial to link that object to the hand.  You'd still have to deal with some upper body movement but that wouldn't be difficult.

However - I'm no Blender expert, not by far.  You might try asking on the Blender forums, or somewhere else there might be those kinds of experts to see if they could create it for you or give you help.  Then we could finish the rest up here after import.
By justaviking - 4 Years Ago
KT reminded me of a "Substance" I created a couple years ago that used a gray-scale gradient to "animate" a texture.  I used it to simulate electricity flowing in a circuit board (for effect, not reality of course).

The question is how necessary it is to SEE the writing or typing up close, and how many hours/days/weeks do you want to devote to that effect when you could spend you time doing other things to help finish your project.

Either way, "Good luck" and remember to have run.
By justaviking - 4 Years Ago
Speaking of spending time on details, I have an excellent video that does pertain to the subject.  It is a good reminder for all of us, myself included.

DO NOT SKIP THE FIRST THREE MINUTES.  It seems completely unrelated at first, but it makes a good point.
By Kelleytoons - 4 Years Ago
I saw all the changes AND I knew how they did it (it actually annoyed me that the camera kept cutting away because as it did I said "hey, they can EASILY change things then, not fair!".

But it's the old Sherlock line - "You see, Watson, but you do not observe".
By AutoDidact - 4 Years Ago
To the thread OP:
If indeed you need to show animated hand writing
then your best option is to 
send your Character from CC3 pipeline to blender with the Free CC3 Blender tool 
 and use the grease pencil to animate the writing under his moving hand.
@Justaviking,
Thank you for this important reminder!
This why I am glad to be retired and will only take 
on client directed freelance projects that I deem worth the 
bloody hassles.. AHHH !!the stories I could tell.:crazy:
 
There were many instances, while making my feature length marvel Fan film
"Galactus Rising", That I had to stop myself from animating and rendering
entire scenes( at 7-10 minutes per frame in C4D on a really old Mac),
because I realized I was either being anal retentive about some detail
or just inserting some gratuitous VFX shot that
 did not convey any new information the the viewer or further the story narrative.
So much production time is wasted on things like this.