I am currently trying to animate a logo consisting of two main actions:
1: a tree grows upwards, from nothing into a full adult tree
2: an arrow encircles it, you know, circle of life and all that.
These actions will overlap, but if I am unsure exactly what timing will work best for the animation, how can I best give myself options to be able to adjust the timings of the two actions? Sliding waypoints around will not work as there will be too many.
See attached project for an idea - the current scale effect on the tree is just to show that it will be animated asynchronously to the arrow - obviously I will properly ‘grow’ the tree by animating the paths, but I wanted to ask for advice first.
My ideal situation would be to animate the tree, and set a keyframe at the start and finish of the action which only affects the tree, not the arrow, and also set start and end keyframes which only affect the arrow, not the tree. That way I could play around with the rhythm and timing until it feels right.
My understanding of waypoints and keyframes within Synfig is that waypoints are too fine an adjustment for my current needs and keyframes are too broad, as they affect the entire canvas. Is there another way?
So far the best method I have found to achieve something like this is to have three Synfig projects open: Tree, Arrow, and Combined. All the same length (5 seconds)
Then I animate each component and set keframes, then copy both and paste into the combined project. If the timing is out, I adjust keyframes in individual projects and repeat copy/paste, replacing the old versions. This works, in a way, but it is incredibly awkward and I’m sure there must be a better way.
Even with this awkward method, I would like to have the three canvases at least contained within the same project, but I don’t understand how to use the Canvas Browser (wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Canvas_Browser_Panel)
Can anybody suggest a more sensible workflow for me?
treecycle.sif (634 KB)