Time Lapse Renders

[Bwana Kahawa]

Hi all,

I've been asked to produce an animation for a fund raising event in the Spring to help secure funding for a building design we won in a competition.

 

The site owners have hired out a cinema for the event so I'm pretty nervous about getting it looking good!

 

One of the things I was thinking of doing was a time lapse effect sequence showing either dawn or sunset over the building. Has anyone had a go at doing this digitally?

 

The two things I need to know are: what frame rate is the finished sequence of stills usually shown at, and at what increments of 'real time' are the shots taken?

 

I figured it would be a slower frame rate than a traditional animation, and the increments of the shots would be roughly every 15 minutes of real time - does that sound about right?

 

I'll be using Maxwell so hopefully the results will be pretty consistent...

[Stephen Thomas]

Not that I have any experience of this, but if you look at it from a purely maths point of view, it depends on the length of time you want to cover and the desired length of your animation. I would imagine the frame rate will be the same 25fps as normal.

 

As an example, say you want to compress a 4 hour period into 30 seconds.

4 hours = 14400 seconds

30 x 25 = 750 frames

14400 / 750 = 19.2 seconds.

 

Therefore, to take the correct no. of shots for 30sec animation covering 4 hours, you need to take a shot every 19 seconds.

 

Hope this helps with getting your head round things!

[Donor]

I recall from school that the framerate depends on what the final product will be shown on... so framerate for a TV would be different from a monitor which would be different still from a projector. I did a quick google search and came up with nothing useful in terms of a simple table to follow... but with some more time spent on looking you may come up with the answer you're after.

 

(I'm almost sure that you won't need to go as fast as 25fps for projection though... but I've been wrong before)

[Bwana Kahawa]

That's what I figured - I'm sure with photographic time lapse footage it's a bit slower than a normal animation. It's going to be shown on a cinema screen then put on DVD. I'll probably just do a quick series of test renders and see how it looks. Cheers for the input!

[colinsmith]

I shoot dslr timelapse seqeunces, so in that real world case.....

 

 

My final playrate is 25fps.

 

Shooting rate for "normal" timelapse cloud movements is about 1 frame every 1 to 5 seconds - it really depends on how fast things in the shot are moving, wide angle shots go better with slower shooting rates, telephots need a faster rate.

 

Cinematic convention would keep the shutter angle at 180degrees, a motion blur time of 50% of the frame rate. So normal shooting is 25fps with 1/50s exposure. To get the same look in a timelapse shot, you need to keep the ratio.... if you shoot at 1 frame each 4 seconds, then the same look will need a 2 second exposure. When the sequence is played back at 25fps, the motion will look "cinematic".... no jerky, stepped movements, 180 degree shutter.

 

Simple changes in light can be faked with gradual transitions between a few shots, but anything with movemtn in it (clouds, sun, people) go with duplicating the real timelapse rates.

[Horhe]

Disney's animations have a 27/s frame rate.

Warner bros have a 24/s frame rate.

 

For info purpouses only

[lyca]

Disney's animations have a 27/s frame rate.

Warner bros have a 24/s frame rate.

 

For info purpouses only

 

In this case if it is projected from a DVD the frame rate is 25f/s for PAL or 29.95f/s for NTSC.

The only time where the frame rate is 24 or other, is when the format is film 35mm, 16mm, 70mm or IMAX

[Horhe]

In this case if it is projected from a DVD the frame rate is 25f/s for PAL or 29.95f/s for NTSC.

The only time where the frame rate is 24 or other, is when the format is film 35mm, 16mm, 70mm or IMAX

 

DvD? Im talking about the good ol' days where everything was pen and paper and then pounded into a VHS casette

[Bwana Kahawa]

Hmm - I was thinking of taking a frame every 15 minutes or so, due to the fact that I'd have to do a Maxwell render for each one... In which case I'd only get a few second of animation for a 12 hour period... Maybe I'll need to think again... Thanks for the help!

[Nils Norgren]

We do time lapses often, almost always at 24 fps, although I would suggest if you are rendering a frame ever 15 min for the time lapse, then you should stretch out the frames in post. Something like After effects would let you bring the frames in as a sequence (At whatever frame rate) and stretch animation to be 3 to 5 times longer and set the frames to interpolate, therefore "Blending" between the frames and getting a smoother animation for the number of frames rendered.

 

-Nils

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I'm a total noob, but:

 

My experience has been that noobs always make things too slow. Go to youtube and look at some editing there. Watch a few music videos and count the cuts. You're not making a music video, but it gives an idea for what people can take. "Gee, they do three shots per second and I was wonder if one shot per fifteen seconds seemed a little speedy."

 

For the timing, yeah... It depends on how long it's going to be on screen. The fund providing people are not going to be studying the specifics of the shadows, they don't need to have time to carefully analyze. What is your time lapse meant to show? The comings and goings of people through out the day? The amount of time the place is in opperation, the beautiful form of the building, the way the light plays off the materials... some of those want faster than others. Bilbao & Shadows, I'd run a little slower as the changing shape of the leading edge of the shadow is where the interest is. This is a happening place 24/7 I'd run faster to show the buzz.

 

> Maxwell

 

Ah, lovely but...

 

Maybe a few well chosen shots throughout the day and some After Effects work (what did they call making an animation out of a bunch of still photos?) will do the job instead.