camera
The Increment Editor: planning spacing on screen in Dragonframe
Dragonframe / Timing, spacing and arcs in stop-motion animation
Definition
The Increment Editor is a Dragonframe drawing-layer tool that divides a line or shape drawn over the camera view into a chosen number of one-frame increments, spaced along a position-over-time curve that the animator can ease. The result is a set of on-screen tick marks the puppet can be animated to: a spacing chart laid directly over the live view, rather than a separate drawing of the move.
Overview
Spacing is the part of stop-motion timing that the camera never forgives: once a pose is shot, the distance it travelled from the previous pose is fixed (see timing-spacing-arcs-stop-motion). Animators have long handled this with spacing charts, marks on a monitor, or a surface gauge pointed at the last position. Dragonframe's Increment Editor moves that chart into the software, inside the same Animation View the animator already watches. It is not motion control and it moves nothing physical. It is a drawing that tells the animator where the puppet, or the trackable point on it, should be on each frame.
The tool belongs to Dragonframe's drawing layers. These are overlays for marking the screen, with freehand, line, polyline and shape tools, hash marks, text and an eraser. They sit alongside the media layers, which hold the captured frames and any reference footage.The manual describes the procedure. The animator draws a line, polyline, rectangle or circle along the intended path, selects it, opens the Increment Editor and types the number of one-frame increments the move should take. Ticks appear along the shape. The editor's position-over-time graph then decides how they are distributed. A straight graph gives a linear move with even ticks. Adding handles and bending the Bezier curve bunches the ticks at the ends, which gives an ease in or ease out, or adds an inflection point mid-move. A play control runs a green circle or blue diamond along the path, looped or ping-ponged, so the animator can preview the move before touching the puppet.
The point of the tool is that the plan stays on screen while the animator shoots. With the increment marker shown in the drawing properties, the animator steps it along the ticks by hand. They can also sync the marker to the playback frame, so it advances as they step or play the animation. Each captured frame can then be checked against the tick it was meant to hit. The drawing can be shown during playback, saved as a .dfdraw file and imported into other scenes, so a planned move survives a reshoot or a pickup. Dragonframe also keeps two separate official tutorials for the tool: 106 Increment Editor, and a later 109 Increment Editor Update.
Our reading: the Increment Editor is most useful for moves whose path the animator can state in advance. Examples are a prop sliding across a table, a head turn, a flying object, or an ease into a hold. On these, an even or eased distribution is the whole performance. It does not plan the overlapping timing of a full-body acting shot, and the manual does not claim it does. For those shots it is one guide among several, used with onion skinning, reference layers and the animator's own judgment of weight.
Workflow
- In the Animation workspace, add a drawing layer with the + in the Drawing Layers group header.
- Draw the intended path over the live view with the line, polyline, rectangle or circle tool, and select it.
- Click INCREMENT EDITOR, type the number of one-frame increments the move should take, and press ENTER; the tick marks appear along the shape.
- Shape the position-over-time graph: double-click the line to add handles, then drag the Bezier handles to ease in or out. Double-click the increment line to add an inflection point. Reset restores a linear move.
- Choose whether the ticks follow the curve or stay horizontal, vertical or diagonal, and preview the move with Play (loop, or ping-pong with Alt/Option).
- Close the editor, turn on the increment marker in the drawing properties, and either step it with < and > or sync it to the playback frame so it advances as you step through the shot.
- Animate the puppet so that its tracked point lands on each tick in turn, and save the drawing (.dfdraw) if the move may need to be reshot.