Synfig/C3/Plant-animation/English-timed

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 on 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	Drag 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