pivotnoobguy
08-01-2008, 07:27 PM
bleh... sorry about swearing, i prepared this long time ago and dont wanna... change it xD
GhostFrame’s Huge Tips & Tricks Guide for Pivot!
Heres the index (YAY):
1-Stick Making
Invisible lines
Edit Mode
Annoying points
Easy to rotate sticks
Detailed Sticks
Bases
Curves
Spikes
Fills
2-Pivot Saving Functions
Frequent Saving
GIF correctly saving
PIV, GIF, STK and BMP Hosting
3-In Animating
Easing
Fast move Easing
(not so much, i’m recollecting materials)
Last Notes
1-Stick Making
Here are some tips and tricks for the STK maker that Pivot includes
Invisible lines—
This is the way to do invisible lines:
Draw a segment, it can be any size, just draw one
Once you’re done, use the Thickness tool (up-down arrows at the panel) and reduce the thickness to 0
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5333/90992600yz6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Invisible line:
http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/7581/invlinexj4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
That’s it!
It’s useful for:
Background stk making—Objects can be separated this way
Normal Stickman making—Any line that isn’t necessary to appear but that is necessary for the rest of the segments can be kept as 0 thickness.
Others! i will not explain what... who are you? mommy?
Edit mode—
Once you already opened the STK editor, this mode can be activated.
To activate it go to Options and check “Edit Mode” button
So, what it does?
It can edit a segment without having to delete and redraw it.
Remember to uncheck it when you’re done editing, because if you wanna move an articulation, the stick will be messed up already, in that case, you can use the Undo button on Options to go back from that action.
It’s useful for:
Lines—Editing lines
E. G.
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/876/24896521jl2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Articulations—Changing the position of the articulation without having to affect any of the segments around it and without having to delete them
For Example:
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/2701/11673974li5.th.jpg (http://img201.imageshack.us/my.php?image=11673974li5.jpg)
Annoying points---
All the STKs need several segments to be drawn on pivot, but there’s a really annoying thing...
its when you draw a 50 segment stick, and all the friggin points of the articulations pop up around the animation, because you didn’t make the non necessary lines static.
i’ll look like this:
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/1629/70435442qh1.th.jpg (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=70435442qh1.jpg)
Why should you make them static?
because it hides their articulation points and makes it easier to handle than having 50 friggin red points popping out from the screen
How to do it?
Select the segment you wanna make static, and press the button under the “Duplicate segment” button, the one with a segment and a cross on it.
When you’re done, the static segment will be grey, don’t worry, it’ll not be grey on the animation, it’s just to tell us wich line is static and wich isn’t
Example:
http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/9184/10855200vd7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
It’s useful for:
Small circles—making their only segment static, then, they will show only their orange-moving point, so it’s easier to handle them
Tuned stickmans—Making all the added segments static, excepting the necessary ones.
Backgrounds—Stopping those annoying extra points
Fills—you know what, shut up!
Easy to rotate Sticks—
We always know that our sticks must be rotated, at least objects must be!, so, we create our own and universal way to rotate them.
If you do a stick without drawing it with this method, when you move and articulation, it will look like this:
http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/2438/22011774sw5.th.jpg (http://img519.imageshack.us/my.php?image=22011774sw5.jpg)
That’s wrong!
you have to use this method ALWAYS
First, the starting segment must ALWAYS be dynamic
Second, the rest of the segments must ALWAYS start from the FIRST SEGMENT!
Third, all segments excepting the first one (or the articulable ones) must be Static.
Forth:Make sure you didn’t make another segment starting from the moving point (orange one), because if you do, it will not be rotated.
So, why we do this?:
First one: because if it’s static we cant move it and by the way, we cant rotate the figure
Second one: because if we make a segment starting from the orange point, we’re making not-easy to rotate segments, BTW, when we rotate the figure on the anim, using the first segment, those ones will still being static.
Third one: we don’t want those annoying innecessary articulations, plus, we don’t want to mess up our stick, dont we?
Forth: We don’t wanna screw our stick.
So, here should be the finished result:
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/1313/83366114wz1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
It’s useful for:
Stickmans—Making a stickman easy to rotate
Guns, or any object—Making it easy to rotate so it’s more comfortable to handle with it
Detailed Sticks—
When we download a gun from droidz, if we load it on Pivot, we’ll see the gun at a big scale, that’s because at that scale it’s easier to draw detailed sticks, the only thing we have to do with them is to reduce their scale and admiring a really detailed gun.
THE SAME WE CAN DO!!
there’s not a real explanation for this, you just have to draw an object at a high scale, and that’s it
Useful for:
Weapons—Detailed weapons
Objects—Detailed objects?
Hello—What the ****?
Bases—
When we want to make a custom stickman, we just create a random crap without any realistic or basic proportions, we just create a guy!
but that’s not the way to do it, there’s something called BASE, it’s a normal stick that we can edit and create a realistic or cool stick in base to it, it’s one of the most useful tool on STK making.
You can download bases from droidz following this link:
http://www.droidz.org/resources/Dudes,vDudettes.zip
(this is lemonADE’s base pack, it’s pretty good...)
Curves—
How to make a curve?
Well... as we all know, pivot just draws Rectilines for segments, but... what if we wanna make a curve segment?
The answer: It’s impossible, but we can create the “Curve Effect” by making lots of small Dynamic segments, of any thickness, and positioning them correcly on the animation.
yes, that’s what we’ll do.
HUH?
want something else?
F$$$ YOU!! (WTF?)
EG:
http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/7186/65824298ei1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/6237/10tl9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Spikes—
So... let’s go to the friggin point because this tut is pissing me off (Just kidding)... (or am i?)
Spikes are something like this:
a group of small segments, the same way that curves are created (a bit smaller) and a difference of thickness 2.
The thickness will decrease by 2 (or 1 if you want some smoother spike) as it gets closer to the last segment.
Example:
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/5786/11br0.th.jpg (http://img201.imageshack.us/my.php?image=11br0.jpg)
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/7388/12nx6.th.jpg (http://img137.imageshack.us/my.php?image=12nx6.jpg)
That’s it!
Fills—
Let’s be honest, everything has to be transparent and black?
my answer is NO!, nothing should, so, to fix the oldish style we should make some fills for the objects!
How to fill?
Edit your outlined figure (REMEMBER TO SAVE IT SEPARATELY FIRST)
Once you open it, start filling it, yes, it’s easy, it’s just like painting in reality, start making segments going inside of the figure, and fill the figure with long, and really thick segments, but there’s an really really important thing, MAKE ALL THE FILL SEGMENTS STATIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nobody cares on how much segments do you use, or how long they are, WE JUST CARE ABOUT IF YOU FILL IT OR NOT!!
so, don’t worry on a detailed fill, because nobody needs one
Several fills can be done the same way, but remember to colocate the correct depths for each one.
Examples:
http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/7735/15ck7.jpg (http://imageshack.us) http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/2055/14uo4.jpg (http://imageshack.us) http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/4953/13lj9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
2-Pivot Saving Functions
Frequent saving—
We’re never prepared against a crash or an error that pops out from our not stable pivot, BTW, we need to save our files FREQUENTLY, when i say FREQUENTLY, i mean every 1 minute!
Yes, i’m not a vicious, i’m a VICIOUS that prepares himself before pivot gives him a heart attack lol
So, a good technique is to have 2 different piv files for each animation, one is the principal save, and the other is a backup, in this case you can use a separate folder for each animation and its backups
Gif Correctly Saving—
This happens frequently with Pivot 2, we save our gif with the default options, and we watch our anim in slow, slow slow SLOOOOW SLOOOOOW motion.
Why does this happens!!!???!??! WHAT A PIECE OF SH%T!!
First: Because you visualize them with Windows XP’s Image viewer, Xp’s image viewer doesnt recognize the file as well, and just interpretates its own “Framerate”
Second: because the framerate is set up to the default one that peter bone established, that framerate is wrong, because of a bug of pivot, the correct FRAMERATE is 6. no matter what number you introduce, it’ll be played at the same speed, unless you set it to 6, the anim will look the same.
Third: Because merge is set up to ON (don’t really know what it does to the animation but the anim slows down when this option is checked)
So, you should:
Set the framerate to 6
Uncheck Merge
Play the anim with Firefox.
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/5654/16tf3.th.jpg (http://img255.imageshack.us/my.php?image=16tf3.jpg)
that’s it!
PIV, STK, GIF and BMP hosting—
Some people says “Cunvort da fiel ass gif and uplodae it on imgaesck.us”
I DONT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING
plus i will not upload any file on imageshack.us or photobucket (lame)
I WILL USE... PIVOTHOST.ORG!!
you just have to create an account, and you can upload ANY GIF that you want, no size exceptions, no Filesize exceptions and Formats PIV STK GIF and BMP allowed!!!
http://www.animatorhost.com/
3-In Animating
Easing:
To make movements look smooth, you have to move articulations this way
“|” means a frame, “-“ means moves represented on pixels
|-|--|---|--------|---------------|----------------|---------|--------|---|--|-|
Try it! you will get a smooth result
Example:
http://uploaded.pivothost.org/GhostFrame/tut1q625.gif
Fast move easing:
This one is too good for fast movements:
|-|--|---|-------------------------------------|----------------------------------------|---|--|-|
Yes it looks very fast but you will get an awesome result, try it!
Example:
http://uploaded.pivothost.org/GhostFrame/tut2qzia.gif
i suppose thats it
REMEMBER: this is from like 5 months ago
GhostFrame’s Huge Tips & Tricks Guide for Pivot!
Heres the index (YAY):
1-Stick Making
Invisible lines
Edit Mode
Annoying points
Easy to rotate sticks
Detailed Sticks
Bases
Curves
Spikes
Fills
2-Pivot Saving Functions
Frequent Saving
GIF correctly saving
PIV, GIF, STK and BMP Hosting
3-In Animating
Easing
Fast move Easing
(not so much, i’m recollecting materials)
Last Notes
1-Stick Making
Here are some tips and tricks for the STK maker that Pivot includes
Invisible lines—
This is the way to do invisible lines:
Draw a segment, it can be any size, just draw one
Once you’re done, use the Thickness tool (up-down arrows at the panel) and reduce the thickness to 0
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5333/90992600yz6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Invisible line:
http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/7581/invlinexj4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
That’s it!
It’s useful for:
Background stk making—Objects can be separated this way
Normal Stickman making—Any line that isn’t necessary to appear but that is necessary for the rest of the segments can be kept as 0 thickness.
Others! i will not explain what... who are you? mommy?
Edit mode—
Once you already opened the STK editor, this mode can be activated.
To activate it go to Options and check “Edit Mode” button
So, what it does?
It can edit a segment without having to delete and redraw it.
Remember to uncheck it when you’re done editing, because if you wanna move an articulation, the stick will be messed up already, in that case, you can use the Undo button on Options to go back from that action.
It’s useful for:
Lines—Editing lines
E. G.
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/876/24896521jl2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Articulations—Changing the position of the articulation without having to affect any of the segments around it and without having to delete them
For Example:
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/2701/11673974li5.th.jpg (http://img201.imageshack.us/my.php?image=11673974li5.jpg)
Annoying points---
All the STKs need several segments to be drawn on pivot, but there’s a really annoying thing...
its when you draw a 50 segment stick, and all the friggin points of the articulations pop up around the animation, because you didn’t make the non necessary lines static.
i’ll look like this:
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/1629/70435442qh1.th.jpg (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=70435442qh1.jpg)
Why should you make them static?
because it hides their articulation points and makes it easier to handle than having 50 friggin red points popping out from the screen
How to do it?
Select the segment you wanna make static, and press the button under the “Duplicate segment” button, the one with a segment and a cross on it.
When you’re done, the static segment will be grey, don’t worry, it’ll not be grey on the animation, it’s just to tell us wich line is static and wich isn’t
Example:
http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/9184/10855200vd7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
It’s useful for:
Small circles—making their only segment static, then, they will show only their orange-moving point, so it’s easier to handle them
Tuned stickmans—Making all the added segments static, excepting the necessary ones.
Backgrounds—Stopping those annoying extra points
Fills—you know what, shut up!
Easy to rotate Sticks—
We always know that our sticks must be rotated, at least objects must be!, so, we create our own and universal way to rotate them.
If you do a stick without drawing it with this method, when you move and articulation, it will look like this:
http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/2438/22011774sw5.th.jpg (http://img519.imageshack.us/my.php?image=22011774sw5.jpg)
That’s wrong!
you have to use this method ALWAYS
First, the starting segment must ALWAYS be dynamic
Second, the rest of the segments must ALWAYS start from the FIRST SEGMENT!
Third, all segments excepting the first one (or the articulable ones) must be Static.
Forth:Make sure you didn’t make another segment starting from the moving point (orange one), because if you do, it will not be rotated.
So, why we do this?:
First one: because if it’s static we cant move it and by the way, we cant rotate the figure
Second one: because if we make a segment starting from the orange point, we’re making not-easy to rotate segments, BTW, when we rotate the figure on the anim, using the first segment, those ones will still being static.
Third one: we don’t want those annoying innecessary articulations, plus, we don’t want to mess up our stick, dont we?
Forth: We don’t wanna screw our stick.
So, here should be the finished result:
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/1313/83366114wz1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
It’s useful for:
Stickmans—Making a stickman easy to rotate
Guns, or any object—Making it easy to rotate so it’s more comfortable to handle with it
Detailed Sticks—
When we download a gun from droidz, if we load it on Pivot, we’ll see the gun at a big scale, that’s because at that scale it’s easier to draw detailed sticks, the only thing we have to do with them is to reduce their scale and admiring a really detailed gun.
THE SAME WE CAN DO!!
there’s not a real explanation for this, you just have to draw an object at a high scale, and that’s it
Useful for:
Weapons—Detailed weapons
Objects—Detailed objects?
Hello—What the ****?
Bases—
When we want to make a custom stickman, we just create a random crap without any realistic or basic proportions, we just create a guy!
but that’s not the way to do it, there’s something called BASE, it’s a normal stick that we can edit and create a realistic or cool stick in base to it, it’s one of the most useful tool on STK making.
You can download bases from droidz following this link:
http://www.droidz.org/resources/Dudes,vDudettes.zip
(this is lemonADE’s base pack, it’s pretty good...)
Curves—
How to make a curve?
Well... as we all know, pivot just draws Rectilines for segments, but... what if we wanna make a curve segment?
The answer: It’s impossible, but we can create the “Curve Effect” by making lots of small Dynamic segments, of any thickness, and positioning them correcly on the animation.
yes, that’s what we’ll do.
HUH?
want something else?
F$$$ YOU!! (WTF?)
EG:
http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/7186/65824298ei1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/6237/10tl9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Spikes—
So... let’s go to the friggin point because this tut is pissing me off (Just kidding)... (or am i?)
Spikes are something like this:
a group of small segments, the same way that curves are created (a bit smaller) and a difference of thickness 2.
The thickness will decrease by 2 (or 1 if you want some smoother spike) as it gets closer to the last segment.
Example:
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/5786/11br0.th.jpg (http://img201.imageshack.us/my.php?image=11br0.jpg)
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/7388/12nx6.th.jpg (http://img137.imageshack.us/my.php?image=12nx6.jpg)
That’s it!
Fills—
Let’s be honest, everything has to be transparent and black?
my answer is NO!, nothing should, so, to fix the oldish style we should make some fills for the objects!
How to fill?
Edit your outlined figure (REMEMBER TO SAVE IT SEPARATELY FIRST)
Once you open it, start filling it, yes, it’s easy, it’s just like painting in reality, start making segments going inside of the figure, and fill the figure with long, and really thick segments, but there’s an really really important thing, MAKE ALL THE FILL SEGMENTS STATIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nobody cares on how much segments do you use, or how long they are, WE JUST CARE ABOUT IF YOU FILL IT OR NOT!!
so, don’t worry on a detailed fill, because nobody needs one
Several fills can be done the same way, but remember to colocate the correct depths for each one.
Examples:
http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/7735/15ck7.jpg (http://imageshack.us) http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/2055/14uo4.jpg (http://imageshack.us) http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/4953/13lj9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
2-Pivot Saving Functions
Frequent saving—
We’re never prepared against a crash or an error that pops out from our not stable pivot, BTW, we need to save our files FREQUENTLY, when i say FREQUENTLY, i mean every 1 minute!
Yes, i’m not a vicious, i’m a VICIOUS that prepares himself before pivot gives him a heart attack lol
So, a good technique is to have 2 different piv files for each animation, one is the principal save, and the other is a backup, in this case you can use a separate folder for each animation and its backups
Gif Correctly Saving—
This happens frequently with Pivot 2, we save our gif with the default options, and we watch our anim in slow, slow slow SLOOOOW SLOOOOOW motion.
Why does this happens!!!???!??! WHAT A PIECE OF SH%T!!
First: Because you visualize them with Windows XP’s Image viewer, Xp’s image viewer doesnt recognize the file as well, and just interpretates its own “Framerate”
Second: because the framerate is set up to the default one that peter bone established, that framerate is wrong, because of a bug of pivot, the correct FRAMERATE is 6. no matter what number you introduce, it’ll be played at the same speed, unless you set it to 6, the anim will look the same.
Third: Because merge is set up to ON (don’t really know what it does to the animation but the anim slows down when this option is checked)
So, you should:
Set the framerate to 6
Uncheck Merge
Play the anim with Firefox.
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/5654/16tf3.th.jpg (http://img255.imageshack.us/my.php?image=16tf3.jpg)
that’s it!
PIV, STK, GIF and BMP hosting—
Some people says “Cunvort da fiel ass gif and uplodae it on imgaesck.us”
I DONT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING
plus i will not upload any file on imageshack.us or photobucket (lame)
I WILL USE... PIVOTHOST.ORG!!
you just have to create an account, and you can upload ANY GIF that you want, no size exceptions, no Filesize exceptions and Formats PIV STK GIF and BMP allowed!!!
http://www.animatorhost.com/
3-In Animating
Easing:
To make movements look smooth, you have to move articulations this way
“|” means a frame, “-“ means moves represented on pixels
|-|--|---|--------|---------------|----------------|---------|--------|---|--|-|
Try it! you will get a smooth result
Example:
http://uploaded.pivothost.org/GhostFrame/tut1q625.gif
Fast move easing:
This one is too good for fast movements:
|-|--|---|-------------------------------------|----------------------------------------|---|--|-|
Yes it looks very fast but you will get an awesome result, try it!
Example:
http://uploaded.pivothost.org/GhostFrame/tut2qzia.gif
i suppose thats it
REMEMBER: this is from like 5 months ago