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June 04, 2005
Motion Blur
Suppose you want to go at a linear rate from point A to point B in four frames. Where would you be at frame 1? At frame 2? At 3? At 4? You probably imagine points along a line similar to one pictured above.
Here's the thing, though: frames are not points in time. Frames are periods of time. It's not even meaningful to use the phrase at frame 1. Saying at frame 1 is like saying at September.
Think of it this way:
Suppose you wanted to walk from New York to Los Angeles over the course of a year. Suppose you set out at the beginning of the first day of winter. Where would you be at winter? At spring? At summer? At fall?
This confusion over how to represent time is why most 3D packages have a "fencepost error" that causes them to handle motion blur in a kludgey way.
Here's a link to an old (pre-blog) web page of mine that develops this motion blur idea further.
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...and while this has nothing to do with time from an animator's standpoint, you might be interested in some thoughts on time from a cosmological standpoint from Peter Lynds
Posted by digital artform at June 4, 2005 09:11 AM