How slow is too slow -what is the minimum frame rate you can work with?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I’ve been trying to figure out how slow is to slow, for an animator to do their job?

During the recent “Animation Review: Cart Fighting” video posted on Blender Cloud (it’s free), Hjalti opens up a blend file that is huge. Before showing anything, he hides most of the stuff in the scene and switches a few of the final quality meshes over to their layout placeholders. The reason he does this is obvious, Blender is too slow and the scene is too cluttered with all that stuff being visible.

I am hoping that this thread can put some numbers to the problem. Specifically, I hope to provoke a few thoughts:

  • in what situations would you put up with a slow program (is it ever worth it)?
  • what is the minimum frames-per-second you can “reasonably” animate with. Feel free to give different answers for blocking, adding breakdowns, and tuning splines.

I would love to know how you all feel! Beyond me, I know at least five Python developers who would appreciate having a number useful as a rule of thumb - useful when testing plugin speed and such.

(First thread. Sorry if I did a no-no, just let me know and add/remove anything against the rules).

2

Minimal frame-rate we were animating at was 8 fps (usually sprite animations for social network games). Also 12. Mostly 24, 25 and 30 though:)

3

With opensubdiv you should be able to max your frame rate no problem.

In my opinion anything slower than than the final frame rate is too slow.

4

Agree with Cyaoeu! You can always to a quick playblast to view your work and adjust from there. Unless your a magician, I don’t see how you can animate at say 8 fps and then get good results when it is rendered at say 24 fps. At least myself, I can’t differentiate between .01 seconds vs .03 seconds just by judgement. I thinks it is ok to set up say a storyboard, but otherwise I think your wasting time.