Synfig/C3/Plant-animation/English-timed

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Time Narration
00:00 Welcome to the Spoken Tutorial on “Create a Plant animation” using Synfig.
00:05 In this tutorial, we will familiarize ourselves with animating shapes in Synfig.
00:11 We will learn to- draw shapes and group layers,
00:15 add a vertex by using Insert item,
00:18 split tangent option,
00:21 mark active point as off option and
00:24 animate the shapes.
00:26 Here we will create a Plant animation.
00:29 To record this tutorial, I am using-
00:31 Ubuntu Linux 14.04 OS,
00:35 Synfig version 1.0.2
00:39 Let us open synfig.
00:41 Go to Dash home and type Synfig.
00:45 You can open Synfig by clicking on the logo.
00:50 Now, let us start creating the Plant animation.
00:54 We need to first create the graphics in Synfig.
00:59 We will create a plant with a flower.
01:02 Let us save our Synfig file.
01:05 Go to File and click on Save
01:08 Select the folder in which to save.
01:11 Type the filename as Plant-animation and click on the Save button.
01:16 Draw a white background layer before you draw any other shape.
01:21 Change the name of the layer as Background.
01:26 Go to toolbox. Select Spline tool.
01:30 Make sure that only "Create Region Layer" is selected.
01:35 In the toolbox, set the fill colour to green.
01:38 Now, draw a triangle with the Spline tool as demonstrated here.
01:43 We should close this shape after drawing the 3 vertices.
01:49 To do so, right-click on the first vertex and choose Loop Spline.
01:55 This will trace a green triangle shape.
01:57 To make a rounder triangle, we have to tweak the tangent handles a bit.
02:03 Click on Transform tool and then right-click on each vertex.
02:09 Select Split tangents so that the tangent handles of each vertex can be moved separately.
02:18 Observe the Layers panel.
02:20 A new layer is formed. Let’s name it as Stem.
02:24 Press Ctrl and S keys to save the file.
02:29 Now, we will learn to animate the shape of the stem.
02:34 Click on Turn on animate editing mode icon.
02:38 Select the shape by clicking on the Stem layer.
02:42 Make sure the Toggle tangent handles option is ON at the top of the canvas.
02:50 Then, go to the Time track panel and place the Time cursor on the 24th frame.
02:57 Select the Transform tool.
03:00 Click on the top vertex of the stem and drag it upwards on the canvas, as demonstrated.
03:06 You can use + and - sign for zoom in and zoom out respectively.
03:13 Next, go the ruler.
03:17 Drag five Guidlines on to the Canvas as shown.
03:24 Press Ctrl and S keys to save the file.
03:29 On the Toolbar, click on the Transform tool.
03:32 On the canvas, right-click on the shape.
03:36 Then click on Insert item and keep shape.
03:40 Add 10 more vertices on the Guidelines as done here.
03:45 Do this by clicking on Insert item and keep shape.
03:49 Now, right-click on each vertex.
03:53 Select Split tangents so that the tangent handles of each vertex can be moved separately.
04:00 Then go to the Time track panel and place the Time cursor on 23rd frame.
04:06 Go to parameter panel.
04:08 Click on the triangle icon of Vertices to open the group.
04:13 Check the newly added Vertices.
04:15 We have to make them inactive on the 23rd frame.
04:19 Right-click on the newly added vertices.
04:22 Click on Mark active point as off.
04:26 Do likewise for all the newly added vertices.
04:39 Press Ctrl and S keys to save the file.
04:43 Once again, go to the Time track panel and place the Time cursor on the 30th frame.
04:49 Come back to the canvas.
04:50 Move the vertices to create the starting part of the leaves, as demonstrated.
04:57 Again, go to the Time track panel and place the Time cursor on 37th frame.
05:04 Let’s come back to the canvas.
05:06 Move the vertices to create the leaves, like this.
05:11 Remember mark active point as off for newly added vertices only.
05:18 Back to the Time track panel.
05:20 Place the Time cursor on the 45th frame and move the top vertex, as shown here.
05:30 In the same way, we will add two more leaves in the Stem layer itself.
05:35 Go to the Time track panel and place the Time cursor on the 80th frame.
05:40 Move the vertices of the stem to form the green coloured sepals around the bud.
05:53 Once again, go to the Time track panel and place the Time cursor on 90th frame.
05:59 Then go to Keyframes and add a new keyframe.
06:02 Now, click on the Spline tool.
06:05 Make sure that only "Create Region Layer" is selected.
06:11 In the toolbox, set the fill colour to pink.
06:14 Then draw a bud with the Spline tool, as demonstrated.
06:19 Remember to close this shape after drawing the 3 vertices.
06:25 To do so, right-click on the first vertex and choose Loop Spline'".
06:31 Note that the trace of the form is now closed.
06:36 Adjust the vertices and create bud shape.
06:40 Change the layer name as Bud.
06:43 Place the Bud layer below the Stem layer.
06:47 Again, go to the Time track panel and place the Time cursor on 99th frame.
06:54 Move the top vertex of the bud, as done here.
06:58 Press Ctrl and S keys to save the file.
07:03 Now, go to the Layers panel and select the Stem layer.
07:07 After this, come back to the canvas and right-click on the stem shape.
07:13 Add a vertex by clicking on Insert item and keep shape.
07:18 Likewise, we have to add 4 more vertices.
07:22 Place the time cursor on 98th frame and mark the active point off for these vertices.
07:33 Move the vertices as demonstrated, so that we get a shape like this.
07:41 Press Ctrl and S keys to save the file.
07:45 It’s a good habit to save our work frequently.
07:49 As we proceed ahead, I won’t mention this explicitly.
07:54 Please do so yourself at regular time intervals.
07:58 Go back to the Time track panel and place the Time cursor on 100th frame.
08:03 Go to the Layers panel and select the Bud layer.
08:06 Click on Duplicate twice.
08:10 Name the layers as petal_1 and petal_2.
08:19 Place the Time cursor on the 108th frame.
08:22 Move the nodes of the petals as demonstrated.
08:26 Go back to the Time track panel and place the Time cursor on the 115th frame.
08:34 Go to the Layers panel and select both the petal_1 and petal_2 layers.
08:40 Click on Duplicate.
08:43 Name new layers as petal_3 and petal_4.
08:47 Let’s come back to the Time track panel.
08:52 Place the Time cursor on 120th frame.
08:56 Move the vertices of the 3rd and 4th petals, as demonstrated.
09:03 Go to the Layers panel and select both the petal _3 and petal_4 layers.
09:10 Click on Duplicate.
09:12 Name the new layers as petal_5 and petal_6.
09:17 Back on the Time track panel, place the Time cursor on 140th frame.
09:23 Move the vertices of the 5th and 6th petals, as demonstrated.
09:33 Again, go to the Time track panel. Place the Time cursor on the108th frame.
09:42 Then go to the Toolbar and click on Transform tool.
09:46 Select the stem part of drawing.
09:48 And move the vertices of green sepals of the bud, as shown here.
09:55 Back on the Time track panel, place the Time cursor on the 128th frame.
10:01 Move the vertices of green sepals of the bud, as demonstrated.
10:13 Place the cursor on 0th frame. Select Bud layer.
10:17 Go to Parameters panel. Change the Amount to 0.
10:20 Similarly do for petals layers.
10:34 Let us do the same for 89th frame.
10:46 Click on Turn off animate editing mode icon.
10:51 Click on Seek to begin at the bottom of the canvas.
10:55 Play the animation by clicking Play icon.
10:58 Now, let's add a gradient in background layer.
11:02 Select Background layer. Click on gradient.
11:06 Draw gradient on the Background as demonstrated.
11:11 Set the outline colour to brown and fill colour to blue.
11:15 Let us now save our Synfig file.
11:18 Now, we will check the preview.
11:21 Go to File and then click on Preview.
11:25 Set the Quality as 0.5 and Frame per second as 24.
11:30 Click on the Preview button and then click on the Play button.
11:35 We can see a preview of the animation on the screen.
11:40 Close the Preview window.
11:42 Now, let us render the animation.
11:46 To do that, click on File and then on Render.
11:51 Click on Choose and open the Save render as window.
11:56 Click on the location where you want to save the rendered file.
12:00 Change the name to plant-animation.avi
12:05 Click on Target drop down menu and select the extension as ffmpeg.
12:10 Next, click on the Time tab and change the End time to 150.
12:16 Then click on Render.
12:21 Let us check our animation.
12:24 Go to Desktop.
12:27 Open the folder in which we saved our file.
12:31 Now select the plant-animation. avi.
12:35 Right-click and play the animation using Firefox web browser.
12:48 With this we have come to the end of this tutorial.
12:51 Let us summarize.
12:53 In this tutorial, we learnt to animate a plant in Synfig.
12:58 We also learnt to:
13:00 draw shapes with Spline tool,
13:03 add a vertex by using Insert item,
13:07 split tangent option,
13:09 mark active point as off option,
13:13 animate the shape.
13:15 Here is an Assignment for you.
13:17 Draw a simple cartoon face with long hair filled with different colors
13:22 and animate the hairs.
13:26 Your completed assignment should look like this.
13:29 Cartoon face with animated long hairs.
13:33 The video at the following link summarizes the Spoken Tutorial project.
13:37 Please watch it.
13:40 We conduct workshops using Spoken Tutorials and give certificates.
13:45 Please contact us.
13:47 Please post your timed queries in this forum.
13:51 Spoken Tutorial project is funded by NMEICT, MHRD, Government of India.
13:58 This is Shital Joshi along with the Spoken Tutorial Animation Team from IIT Bombay, signing off.

Thanks for joining.

Contributors and Content Editors

Arthi, PoojaMoolya, Ranjana, Sandhya.np14