So I have done absolutley zero as far animation in bryce. I have a question, I think it is mostly a theory question... VERY simple set-up. Non-moving camera, with an object in front of it spinning, just on its Y axis. How many frames of animation should the object have to show the object SMOOTHLY spinnig in front of the camera? This being a looped animation to have it end perfectly where it begins, etc. 30? I assume this since this pc stuff normally runs at 30fps.

Well, actually a LONG time ago, I made this little animation, which I made into a gif for my website. It's 15 frames long and it runs somewhat smoothly, I guess. I forgot what I set it to run at, certainly not 15fps, it would be going a lot faster than what it is now. Anyways, this is kinda what I'm talking about, but now I want to take a spinning object into an .avi, mov, etc.

15 fps is often considered the minimum. Ultimately the best way is just to try it at low res (maybe textures and antialiasing off for testing purposes. Additional note. Set your keyframes for the full loop but set your render for 1 frame less. That way your beginning and end frames aren't identical (that looks like a glitch in a looping video because you have two identical frames).

My goodness...How did you create that gif! Did you do that in Bryce? What's the general structure? J

Agent smith: Anyways, this is kinda what I'm talking about, but now I want to take a spinning object into an .avi, mov, etc. It's not too hard to do... I know Animation Shop Pro does a nice job of converting animated .gifs to .avi and vice versa. It's should be with PSP 6, provided that you have that program. I don't know if it does .mov though, may need to use a video editing program for that one. P.S. That structure isn't too hard to make at all. Positive sphere and negative cube grouped together. When you get more familiar with Bryce, that's easy to recognize. L8R!

I found my notes on my gif up there...the gif is "told" to run its animation at 10fps. The gif was originally all done in Bryce, it's actually really simple. That main object comes with Bryce, it's under the "boolean objects" section, and it's called "boolean lesson #3". I made the object reflective gold. Made the word "enter" with the freeware 2D to 3D program "Elefont", stuck that word in the middle of the gold boolean, and then literally stuck a 2D face "sign" right in front of it, so it would reflect the sign and the letters on it. That's all. And (TRY not to laugh) It's not really an animation, I (at the time) couldn't figure out even basic Bryce animation. So, I figured out that this round-ish object spinning on its 3 axis would (if it were to spin for 15 frames) need to turn 6 degrees on each axis in each frame to equal the 90 degrees it would need to turn to create a loop. Whew! So I would render it, turn it manually, by typing in the numbers, render it again and just kept exporting each new render image as a new file (001.bmp, 002.bmp, etc.) (I am only slightly less lame as I was then...) I then later made it into a .gif. Thanks, Bobasaur for the tip about the "1 frame less" aspect, I can see where that would be important! AgentSmith

Oh, I have Quicktime Pro to make the .mov's out of the .bmp image sequence. I just thought that I should make the animation last for 30 frames (instead of 15) and this would make it appear to rotate more smoothly in an mov, avi playing at 30 fps. Then again, I have found that the above 15 frame animation running at 15fps, spins too fast...so I really need the spinning object to have more frames in it than whatever fps I am running it at. Because the above .gif is 15 frames running at 10fps, and I like that particular spin-speed...(as my brain begins to bubble...) I'm really just using this as a basis to learn animation in Bryce, or actaully just animation, period. AgentSmith

The sequence will definately play more smoothly at 30 fps. However, that doesn't mean you should set the loop to be complete in 30 frames. Depending on how it looks as it rotates, it might need to be longer. Your final decision should be based on the medium. If you're wanting to create a .gif for the web, every frame counts toward file size. The web is a constant fight between quality and file size. That's why I mentioned the 15 fps rate. That usually provides a reasonable trade-off between file size and smoothness. You could also try 24 fps. That's the frame rate of motion pictures. I've seen web items played at half that rate (12 fps) and still look reasonable.

Yeah, I originally thought I would be playing it at 15fps, (as a gif) so that is why I originally went with sectioning 15 frames up amongst 90 degrees. I had tried 30 total frames in the beginning, but as you mentioned, the final file size was just really too big for a gif on a webpage. Still is, I think (at 112kb), but ah well. The idea now is to start learning basic animation with the final output being for video. (avi, mov, vcd, dvd) Thanks! AgentSmith

Well, you should be able to render the frames as bmp. files in sequence, and then just batch-convert them to low res gif files in photoshop or equivalent. Then in whatever program you like (I like gifbuilder for mac; free and easy) stitch the frames into an animation. And also, smoth gifs on web pages are usually very small, whereas the larger gifs are somewhat blocky but high quality. Usually it looks fine at 10 or even 8 fps provided that the image quality is good enough so that there are no artifacts. And remember, the fewer colors, the smaller the image file. I rendered a short sprocket animation for my web site. It was 212 kb with a metal material, but only 60 kb with a dark gray material. This blob animation was 72 frames long, and I stitched them together in the quiktime "makeobject" freeware utility so it is controllable by dragging left and right. http://www.renderring.com/hdri/bloblinks.html Oh and it's 15 fps I think.

Ah yes, I remember viewing your blobs before(from talking about global images)(reflection mapping). Thanks for the input!

When I render ananimation that has to go on videotape (You know thos old crappy things we all used before the DVD's came out :) I render at a res of 768x576 or 720x576 with 25 FPS, and that usually looks good enough.

Rayraz, howzit goin!! For Agent Smith's sake I'll point out that your specs are PAL specs. PAL is a format commonly used in Europe and many other parts of the world. In the USA and Japan, they use the NTSC specs: 720 x 480 (DV) or 720 x 486 (BetaSP) at 29.97 fps. The caveat is that those specs are set for rectangular pixels like those of a TV, not the square pixels of a computer monitor. If TV compatibility is desired, the actual render out of Bryce (a computer-pixel based program) would be 720 x 540 (to end up with NTSC compliance). That render would need to be scaled to the final rectangular pixel resolution in a video editing program or After Effects before being dubbed to tape or DVD. That's a whole new subject but it may be in AgentSmith's best interest to know that that needs to be investigated further if the goal is to ultimately output for video.