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It's already happening. Auto-tweening has basically displaced hand animation for most TV cartoons.

Retric 4y ago
100% animation of each frame died a long time ago, because people don’t notice much about individual frames. But as shown in the video you still need to hand tweak a great deal even if you don’t mess with individual frames. Suppose someone is jumping through a window, you need the sound of breaking glass to sync with the glass being broken. It’s hard to explain why some things the article suggests are really easy and other stuff is difficult, but context is still a hard problem for AI. https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/
- ranguna 4y ago
  Really? Most or all top anime content is still hand drawn, even the in between frames.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Try to name 3 top anime that was completely hand drawn and released in the last 5 years. It’s extremely rare for even key frames to be completely hand drawn, let alone every frame.
    - ranguna 4y ago
      Shirobako, Violet Evergarden, Edge runners Mind you there is CGI in these animes, but the frames themselves are still hand drawn. How else would you expect them to be done? There's no magic here. Cartoons can do it because they just use rotations, translations and skews, anime does not have that luxury. The pro is that, imo, when done right, anime is just beautiful to see, mesmerising even.
jrk 4y ago
This has been true for decades and has nothing to do with “AI,” it’s just classic computer graphics.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  It's algorithmic replacement of human artistic skill in the animation field. Nobody said it was AI, it's an indication of how flexible the industry can be when it comes to cost cutting.
travisgriggs 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbetweening https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbetweening
jfengel 4y ago
Is that AI driven, or is it just "here are the control points on the key frames, make them go"? It would be neat to be able to have fewer key frames and better in betweening so that more storytellers could have access without a team of CalArts grads. That doesn't seem unreasonable given what we've already seen, but I'm neither an animator nor an AI expert so I'm curious.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Both. It's currently mostly interpolation driven, but there are already added smarts and heuristics in the algorithms, and AI work is done to make it even better looking.
objclxt 4y ago
> Auto-tweening has basically displaced hand animation for most TV cartoons. That's got nothing to do with AI, it's just economics, and it's been like that for years. Everybody doing animation on the cheap wants to avoid drawing every frame. Prior to digital animation you used other techniques, like recycling frames or tracing over existing drawings (Disney used to do this all the time in their films). What digital animation really allowed to happen was 2D puppeteering, where you could rig puppets and animate them in two dimensions without having to draw the key poses or the in-betweens. Now we're at the point where the standard way to do 2D animation is via puppets, rather than any sort of hand-drawn (be it key poses or full tweening)
numpad0 4y ago
I can't seem to substantiate this for anime. There was an app launched in 2018, and it's still priced at $399/seat/year, not acquired by neither Autodesk nor Adobe. I suppose the distinction between cartoons and anime is substantial? 1: https://cacani.sg/product/cacani-teams/?v=24d22e03afb2 https://cacani.sg/product/cacani-teams/?v=24d22e03afb2

100% animation of each frame died a long time ago, because people don’t notice much about individual frames. But as shown in the video you still need to hand tweak a great deal even if you don’t mess with individual frames. Suppose someone is jumping through a window, you need the sound of breaking glass to sync with the glass being broken. It’s hard to explain why some things the article suggests are really easy and other stuff is difficult, but context is still a hard problem for AI. https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/

ranguna 4y ago
Really? Most or all top anime content is still hand drawn, even the in between frames.
- Retric 4y ago
  Try to name 3 top anime that was completely hand drawn and released in the last 5 years. It’s extremely rare for even key frames to be completely hand drawn, let alone every frame.
  - ranguna 4y ago
    Shirobako, Violet Evergarden, Edge runners Mind you there is CGI in these animes, but the frames themselves are still hand drawn. How else would you expect them to be done? There's no magic here. Cartoons can do it because they just use rotations, translations and skews, anime does not have that luxury. The pro is that, imo, when done right, anime is just beautiful to see, mesmerising even.

jrk 4y ago

This has been true for decades and has nothing to do with “AI,” it’s just classic computer graphics.

pessimizer 4y ago
It's algorithmic replacement of human artistic skill in the animation field. Nobody said it was AI, it's an indication of how flexible the industry can be when it comes to cost cutting.

travisgriggs 4y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbetweening https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbetweening

jfengel 4y ago

Is that AI driven, or is it just "here are the control points on the key frames, make them go"? It would be neat to be able to have fewer key frames and better in betweening so that more storytellers could have access without a team of CalArts grads. That doesn't seem unreasonable given what we've already seen, but I'm neither an animator nor an AI expert so I'm curious.

coldtea 4y ago
Both. It's currently mostly interpolation driven, but there are already added smarts and heuristics in the algorithms, and AI work is done to make it even better looking.

objclxt 4y ago

> Auto-tweening has basically displaced hand animation for most TV cartoons. That's got nothing to do with AI, it's just economics, and it's been like that for years. Everybody doing animation on the cheap wants to avoid drawing every frame. Prior to digital animation you used other techniques, like recycling frames or tracing over existing drawings (Disney used to do this all the time in their films). What digital animation really allowed to happen was 2D puppeteering, where you could rig puppets and animate them in two dimensions without having to draw the key poses or the in-betweens. Now we're at the point where the standard way to do 2D animation is via puppets, rather than any sort of hand-drawn (be it key poses or full tweening)

numpad0 4y ago

I can't seem to substantiate this for anime. There was an app launched in 2018, and it's still priced at $399/seat/year, not acquired by neither Autodesk nor Adobe. I suppose the distinction between cartoons and anime is substantial? 1: https://cacani.sg/product/cacani-teams/?v=24d22e03afb2 https://cacani.sg/product/cacani-teams/?v=24d22e03afb2