MOVING BACKGROUND TUTORAL

The Tapptoons Animation Studio has provision for creating either still backgrounds or continuously repeating, moving backgrounds. You may have noticed that many tv cartoons featuring chase sequences have the characters running against a moving background and that they keep running past the same objects or landscape features over and over again. This is particularly true with low budget tv cartoons and simply avoids having to draw enormously long background artwork. Using traditional methods and rostrum film cameras the usual methods of achieving this effect was to make a background drawing which featured exactly the same image at each end of the drawing as rather crudely shown below

The image shown is made up of two bitmaps. The first bitmap is used first and last to make up the complete background.

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If you are drawing on paper and scanning the work into the programme there is a quick and easy method provided by the Tapptoons Animation Studio to do this.

From the Main Scanning and Editing Form, go to the top left of the screen and left-click on the Background > Create menu option as shown below

This will open the Background Specifications Form

For the purpose of this example the options chosen are for a HORIZONTAL, CONTINUOUS background in which the width of the background is going to be three times the final image width of the current project. If you`re working on an image size of 640 x 480 the background will need to be 1920 pixels by 480 pixels. The resizing of the imported images will be done automatically by the programme.

The other options include backgrounds that moving up or down or backgrounds that are the same size or bigger than the final image size. Movement can be created on any of these background types.

 

If you need to create backgrounds that are larger than the field size you can do that with the above settings. If you are working with High Resolution bitmaps because you will be creating a track-in shot at a later stage then the backgrounds will also be double the sizes shown. For example, a background for a project in which the Final Image Height and Width are 640 x 480, will be 1280 x 960 in a High Resolution scene when you set the Image Width for Final Image Width and Height. A background that is 2x the Final Image Width but for which the height is set for Final Image Height will be 2560 x 960 for a High Resolution scene.

These are large bitmaps! On some systems you may find that you can`t go beyond 2x Width or 2x Height when using High Resolution bitmaps without a system crash.

If you intend to scan the various elements of your background into the programme you may need to rotate the scans, if they`re from an A4 scanner particularly, so provision is made for this as shown above.

When you`ve selected the various options left-clicking the Continue button will take you to the Draw Frames Form and you can then left click on the Scanner menu item as shown below

 

If the bitmaps already exist you can choose the Load Bitmap menu item

In this example you will either be present by three scanner panels or three load picture dialogs one after the other. Scan or load the left hand side image, then the middle image and finally the first image again. These will be combine together to give the finished background image as shown below

You will need to save this background now. It will designated as the Current Background by the programme. If you wish to edit the background image further leave the Draw Backgrounds Form and return to the Main Scanning and Editing Form, choose the Backgrounds > Edit Exisiting Background menu item to return to the Draw Frames Form, left click the Load Bitmap menu item and reload your saved background.

When you`re happy with the created background image save it again and exit the Draw Frames Form.

We now need to build the movement into the sequence. Left-click the Backgrounds > Combine menu item on the Main Scanning And Editing Form.

This will take you to the Combine Backgrounds with Animation Form and you can load your background using the Background > Load menu item as shown below

The image will not show at this point. You need to left-click the Select Start Position menu option to complete the loading if the background is a newly created one. The image should load as shown below, the blue frame superimposed on the image will be centred on the picture. The lowest of the sliders will show the current frame.

Make sure that the Create Continuous Background checkbox is checked as shown above.

Most background moves don`t begin with a sudden jerk, unless it is done for deliberate shock effect. To ease into or out of a move check the Cushion Start and/or Cushion Stop checkboxes as shown above. This need to be done before selecting any start or stop position.

You can now move the sliders to position the blue frame in the starting position for your background movement. Left click on the Set Start Position button to set the beginning point for the pan.

 

 The Set Start Position button will change its label to Set Stop Position.

You now need to move the lowest of the sliders to the frame where you want the movement to finish. In this example the slider is at the end of the current dope sheet run, but it doesn`t need to be. You can then move the frame to the final position you require and left click the same button again which will then `grey out` and the details of the move will be displayed as shown below.

As this example is a continuous move, the Pixels Per Frame movement will be displayed in Edit Boxes for Horizontal and Vertical movement. The vertical setting need not be changed but you may want the horizontal movement to be faster than the default which merely uses two thirds of the image shown as travel over the frames selected. The number you choose mustn`t, of course, exceed the width of the background image.

 

Now you can left-click on the Process Background > New Event menu item and the programme will build the moving background frames and store them on the hard drive.

When the background images have been built, choose to combine the background with either the current dope sheet level or with a merged level sequence if one has been created. The programme will then build a Finished Scene of the chosen level(s) combine with the moving background.

Continuous moving backgrounds only allow one background `event`. If the background movement is non-repeating you can build several events into a given dope sheet run. The Select Start Position button will become active again if you move the frame slider forward one frame. In this way you can have an initial movement, followed by a static run of frames ( selected with the Set Start/Stop button, but without changing the frame position sliders), then another move to follow.

 

 

 

The example shown above is of a horizontal 2x background using the same principals as the repeating background but this time the Pixels Per Frame indicators are labels which cannot be altered by the user.

The background image can take up the entire `window` of the form and allow the frame to be moved to any position for start or finish settings.

The moving backgrounds created by this process will be automatically used in later parts of the programme when creating Track-in and Track-Out pan and track sequences and also when produces semi-transparent levels for finished scenes.

 

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