Tutorials and Documentation¶

• Dragonframe tutorial videos
• Dragonframe 4 User Guide
• Dragonframe Camera Support Guide
• Dragonframe Sony a6000 Camera Guide

General Stop Motion Tips¶

The clothes you wear matter. Some animators wear all black to minimize how much their movements create variations in lighting.

Beginning stop motion animators should work at 12 frames per second and plan to conform their final film to 24 frames per second. To do this shoot two frames per position. If you want something to hold for a “beat” that equals about 0.5 seconds. Which means you would shoot 12 frames for that position. You never want to hold single frames in post due to slight atmospheric fluctuations.

Don’t forget to shoot at least 24 frames at the beginning and end of a sequence to leave room for editing.

Pay very close attention to framing and camera angles. For best results storyboard your sequence in advance. Do not overemphasize wide angle shots. Use a variety of camera angles including close-ups.

Dragonframe in the IDeATe Cluster¶

We have Dragonframe 4 installed on ten of the IDeATe cluster MacBook Pro laptops, currently available on laptops MAC-06 through MAC-15.

Dragonframe Sony a6000 Camera Setup¶

A detailed checklist for setting up our course cameras can be found in Recommended a6000 Setup for Stop Motion.

Three-Axis Stepper Motion Control Setup¶

The Dragonframe ARC Motion system can control a set of stepper motors by directly communicating with an Arduino running the DFMoco firmware. For this course, we use a slightly modified firmware configured for our three-channel driver boards.

You will need:

1. Arduino Uno with CNC Shield on top
2. 12V power supply
3. long USB cable
4. one to three stepper motors

Setup procedure:

1. Plug the Arduino into a laptop using the long USB cable.
2. Download the DFMocoCNC sketch from this site and use the Arduino IDE to download it to the Arduino. This is a modified version of the Dragonframe DFMoco sketch, customized to use our CNC Shields and up to three stepper motors.
3. Set up the stepper motor(s) in your scene.
4. Attach the stepper motor(s) to axes X, Y, and Z, which will correspond to motor channels 1, 2, and 3 in Dragonframe.
5. Attach the 12V power supply to the CNC Shield.
6. Launch Dragonframe 4.
7. Open the ARC MOTION CONTROL workspace; this is found on the Window menu, or with keyboard shortcut Option-Command-5.
8. Open the Connections dialog, found on the Scene menu.
9. Click Add Connection. Select “DFMoco Arduino” as the device, and choose the appropriate Arduino USB device as the Location. It is recommended to enable “Connection required for shooting.” Then click the CONNECT button at the right.
10. For each stepper motor, select Add Axis, found either on the menu or button within the toolbar above the axis list.
11. Configure the name, channel, and steps per unit as appropriate. The default calibration for our hardware is 0.555 steps/degree (200 steps/360 deg) or 6.25 steps/mm (200 steps/32 mm of GT2 belt).
12. The new axis should appear in the axis list. It can be individually jogged and keyframed. For more detail on the process, please read “Chapter 15: Motion Control” of the Dragonframe 4 User Guide.

Mini Maestro Servo Motion Control Setup¶

Dragonframe cannot directly control our Mini Maestro servo interfaces, but the course Python software includes several programs which can use the DFMoco protocol to receive Dragonframe commands and then translate them to the interface.

Setup procedure:

1. Plug the Mini Maestro into a laptop using the long USB cable or hub.

2. Attach the servos to the Mini Maestro, starting with channel 0.

3. Attach a 5V power supply to the Mini Maestro.

4. Locate the mini_maestro_dfmoco.py script within the scripts/ folder of the Python Libraries and Examples.

5. Start the program from the command line (e.g. Terminal.app). If you aren’t sure of the USB port name for the Mini Maestro, start with a –list option:

   python2.7 mini_maestro_dfmoco.py --list
   

   Examine the output for the serial port names (e.g. /dev/tty.usbmodem00146911). You will use the lower-numbered of the two Mini Maestro ports. To run the server, use something similar to this:

   python2.7 mini_maestro_dfmoco.py --maestro /dev/tty.usbmodem00146911 --servos 3 --verbose
   

   That will start a server that waits for a connection from Dragonframe, and then acts as a three-axis motion control device.

6. Launch Dragonframe 4.

7. Open the ARC MOTION CONTROL workspace; this is found on the Window menu, or with keyboard shortcut Option-Command-5.

8. Open the Connections dialog, found on the Scene menu.

9. Click Add Connection. Select “DFMoco Protocol/TCP” as the device, and choose 127.0.0.1:9999 as the IP address and port. It is recommended to enable “Connection required for shooting.” Then click the CONNECT button at the right.

10. For each servo, select Add Axis, found either on the menu or button within the toolbar above the axis list.

11. Configure the name, channel, and steps per unit as appropriate. The approximate calibration for our hardware is 22.22 steps/degree (4000 units/180 deg).

12. The new axis should appear in the axis list. It can be individually jogged and keyframed. For more detail on the process, please read “Chapter 15: Motion Control” of the Dragonframe 4 User Guide.