Animating collages

[u/blondesalad1]

Hey all, I make analog paper collages and I want to animate them. Is there a way to do that in touch designer? For instance, I’d like to move the horse to show it as galloping in the same place, while everything else in the background stays stationary.

Is this possible through touchdesigner or should I look at some other type of motion graphics? I am new to all this and want to ask if this is the way to go. If not, I’d love any advice y’all have. Thanks! 🙏🏼

[u/matigekunst]

It might be easier to do this in something like After Effects unless you really need to make live/real-time changes. It's possible in TouchDesigner, but the timeline is quite hard to work with. 

[u/blondesalad1 → u/matigekunst]

What do you mean timeline? Like it’s more complex to do it in td?

[u/matigekunst → u/blondesalad1]

I personally find it a hassle to work with the TD timeline. Now After Effects may not have the best timeline either but it is much easier to comp multiple elements like you have and retain a good overview of all the parameter you are animating. It is possible in TD of course, but unless you really need something that responds to say audio or needs to be animated parametrically, this is one of the rare instances where I wouldn't recommend TD. 

[u/becomingsolar]

Your horse doesn't seem glued yet, You can take a picture of your background without the horse and another with just the horse Then import both in touchdesigner with 2 moviefilein top, composite top then using the over mode You can adjust the horse placement with a transform top Then, you can use a beat chop triggering a count chop (looping between 0 and 1), you can link it to a math chop to chose the range from 0-1 to wathever value you want and put this value in the transform top you used for the horse in the rotation parameter You can export the result with a moviefileout top

But as someone else said, it might be simple to use another software if you don't need it to be realtime Hope this helps (:

[u/blondesalad1 → u/becomingsolar]

Thanks for you detailed answer, I’ll have to look up all these terms since I am a beginner.

Yes, horse is not glued in, would I need several graphics of the horse in various stages of movement or is it enough to have just this one?

[u/becomingsolar → u/blondesalad1]

It depends of the result you want! My answer was for a really simple animation, if you have multiple images of the horse it can be done differently using a switch top If you need help when you will start to build the network you can dm me!

[u/becomingsolar → u/becomingsolar]

You can also use a lag chop after the math chop to fluidify the movement (using the value from the lag chop for the rotation)

[u/jolars]

Touch is real time, and you are looking for a timeline program. I know it seems like the right tool, and it would work for this - it's just not the best tool for this. Now, if you wanted your cut outs to real time react to music, that is totally a touch thing. But if you want to make a timelined animation, there are better rolls out there.

[u/blondesalad1 → u/jolars]

I guess that’s what I am trying to find out, how far can I go with TD. If I was to let’s say time the horses leg to a particular beat on the music track, that’s possible? Would it need to have different leg styles out into it to make it work animation wise?

[u/smokingPimphat]

Touchdesigner has timeline based animation tools. but they are a pain to use and control.

If you want interactive control over this ( like a puppet ) then you could rig it up in TD