Techniques for smooth continuous motion in a game

Hello all,
I'm working on a brick-breaker variant and all is going well except for the motion of the ball-- it isn't as smooth as I'd like. I've done some reading on the subject and have come away with two promising techniques for smooth continuous animation:
1. Use time based position update functions rather than frame-based. This basically allows you to cheat the SWF's FPS setting and make a certain object move more fluidly without jacking up the entire movie's FPS. This is handy and does have a dramatic effect, but it also costs much CPU and/or battery power to process so it (might) not be suitable for continuous motion. It is better left to tweens and other animations that are both short and critical. Also, I found that in order to get the ball moving at a reasonable speed for difficult gameplay I had to either lower the time delay or increase the velocity modifier to the point that the ball appeared to half-vanish much of the time (presumably) because it was getting too far ahead of the movie's frame renderer. As such, this method really isn't suitable for managing continuous core gameplay mechanics.
2. Convert velocity modifiers to floating point values rather than integers. This worked very well to smooth out the motion a bit, and has had no adverse side effects so far as I can see. It doesn't quite get the ball to the level of smooth animation I'd like, however.
Currently my movie's FPS is set to 45 and I'd prefer not to go any higher than that if possible. With floating point modifiers and 60 FPS everything is very smooth, but I am wary of using an FPS setting so high, particularly as this is eventually going to be a mobile app and therefore battery life is a consideration. Does anyone know any more tricks to smooth continuous, game-mechanics-centric motion?
Is there perhaps any magic that can be worked with the new Stage Video API and/or any other hardware acceleration offered by flash player/AIR? Is Stage Video even usable in iOS and/or Android apps created in Flash CS5?
Thanks,
CCJ

What was the Bit-Rate of your Exported MOV file?
Good luck,
Hunt

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If however I import the 50 FPS video clip and interprett it as 50 FPS, I would have to set the speed of the video clip in the timeline to 50% to get the same level of slow motion.
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I've done some basic tests and so far I can't see any real difference between the two methods. This leads me to beleive PP is effectively using all of the original 50 frames when the 50 fps video clip is imported into a 50 fps timeline and then slowed down in the timeline by 50%. - if this is the case, well done PP!!! If this is not the case, then it would be a welcomed enhancement in future releases.
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1. If I import the 25 fps video into 25 fps timeline and slow it down by 50%, the exported video looks jerky.
2. If I import the 50 fps video clip into 25 fps timeline, the exported video looks smooth motion.
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Thanks

I'm late to the party but somehow I ended up here. I'm reteaching myself this now. I remember Captain Mench had a solution for this on the ProVideoCoalition site at one point for taking 60i footage and conforming to 24p using Shake. The key element was Optical Flow, Motion uses OF as you know. But I've just been doing a bunch of tests all night with some 60p (59.94) that we shot last week. The CrumplePop tut is the one I've been following for Motion 4 and some random youtube stuff using Time Warp for AE tests. The consensus seems to be each technique, including Twixtor, has limitations depending on the footage. AE better in one instance, Motion/Shake/Boris Red in another, Twixtor generally better than everything but still with flaws. Let alone the other factors like did you shoot 60p to begin with? Was the shutter 1/60 or 1/1600? Other great tidbits like this slomo conversion chart and this other Motion tut, 3 steps and bang! I gotta go to sleep, hope this helps.
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Solved!
Go to Solution.

Nick,
as it looks like you have already found all possible solutions for your task. In fact arc moves with a dummy axis would be the only reliable solution for your setup. If you can't afford to waste an axis, the only alternative solution is to switch to a 7344, which supports contouring.
Please note, that the 7330 is our low cost solution for basic motion control tasks with stepper motors. Advanced trajectories are not within the scope of this product, so if this is a requirement, please contact your local NI branch. Depending if you have just recently purchased the 7330 or not, they might be able to offer you a hardware upgrade to the 7340.
Kind regards,
Jochen Klier
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Techniques for smooth continuous motion in a game

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