Part 1_Sketchbook Setup

Illustrated Animations for Virtual Reality_Using Adobe After Effects & Autodesk Sketchbook

Published in

CIEproductions

5 min readMar 20, 2018

Here the main things to think about for us at the moment are the following:

From this Sketchbook, Stuart can export layered photoshop files, however, what happens is that, well, it’s a Samsung Note 3 that Stuart sketches on (yes, a newer phone might have better capabilities and less constraints than this older version — we have done some browsing here and there and saw some vague mentions, haven’t gone into other phones’ capabilities much because we’re mostly considering our current set of capabilities and how we will create a workflow around this job’s setup). Anyways, so let’s take a look at the capabilities that we can work with —

Autodesk Sketchbook for Samsung Note 3 will gives us the following to work with:

From left to right: Basic Canvas Size Options; Custom Selection dropdown menu; Video & Film dropdown menu

To change the canvas length, select Image > Image Size. In the Image Size dialog, change the value for Document Size. Then select Image > Canvas Size. In the New Size dialog, tap the center of Anchor, then change the value for Document Size.

Our Chosen Settings:

From the above options, we decided we will work with the largest canvas size as default canvas for Stuart, this allows us to have some safety when it comes to adjusting the size of the illustrations, to make it fit in the final 3d environment we created in the AFX composition (cause this composition’s canvas is double or even triple the size of the small illustrations, it is important to “count the pixels” if I may say so — what I mean by this is that you have to kinda balance the pixels and aspect ratio/proportions of the illustrations’ sizes in relation to the main canvas’ size. Cause enlarging images to a size bigger than their original will result in a pixelated image, and we do not stand for that kinda thing you know…

So we will work with the following preset:

- 2560 x 2560

As you can see here, this size option allows us 3 layers only.

*Might this be a problem we wonder? Here is the follow up blog on this test.

We suspect that we can manage comfortably with 3 layers, if we work consciously — planning every layer. This means that we need to plan what animation work we want done with each drawing. Only after all this planning is done, can we commit to refine the final drawings. Well we can always do 2048 x 1556 in order to get more layers when we need them. See here for the blog that follows on this:

Illustrated Animations for Virtual Reality_Using Adobe After Effects & Autodesk Sketchbook_Part 2_Animation Planning

Learning Curves we experienced during the process:

So the process that @Studoodle follows in Sketchbook has left us with some technical complications, very simple to resolve though.

So problem 1)

Transparency:

We want lines to be atop, with a wholly transparent background, like this:

But now, the drawing process involves using drawings interdependently, as references for proportion — so what happens is that files get imported to act as references. And then you might sit with a small problem, major lines get mixed up with wrong layer properties and you are stuck with an incoherent transparency.

So first thing to note is that every element that needs to be placed and scaled separate to other elements, need to be provided to the AFX motion team via seperate PSD files.

Then 2nd thing, when importing another file as a reference within a new project file, make sure to draw the new lines on separate layers, that’s applicable to the current project’s key illustration element plan.