Bone morph dials script

Moho allows users to write new tools and plugins. Discuss scripting ideas and problems here.

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chucky
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Post by chucky »

Just having a rant Rudiger, you know I love to test the boundaries as much as the next animator. :wink:

I just keep finding all new boundaries on the rather baroque edges of ASPRO's functions, and being that I can't script, pushing the edge is not possible I just have to look at it and curse.
I'll be posting my findings on a physics related thread later on.
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funksmaname
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Post by funksmaname »

no tool is perfect... at least there IS scripting functionality - the 'out of the box' AS is almost a different package to what's available through scripting... maybe that's why AS hasn't been taken up in the mainstream? but if a studio with animators and a full time LUA programmer took AS up i think they could really make some waves...

I'm with Ruddygurr - every tool has limitations...
chucky
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Post by chucky »

Let me rant Dammit !!! :D :twisted:
DarthFurby
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Post by DarthFurby »

Rudiger - Another artist designed that character, but I also thought it was really cute. I've been using MorphDials on a freelance job and love it! Also, it's easy to demo the script to just about ANYBODY, and they will totally get it. I don't remember if I've seen that Simpson's episode or not, but now I have to watch it. In my case I came up with the name DarthFurby about 13 years ago as a dumb throwaway name to play Starcraft, a popular online realtime strategy game. I don't do gaming anymore, but unfortunately everybody knows me as DarthFurby, and now I'm stuck with it! If I had to do it all over I would've come up with something original and less embarassing. The first time I introduced myself as DarthFurby in real life was when I met Heyvern at a comic book convention. "Hi, I'm DarthFurby!" and immediately thought "Please excuse me whilst I crawl under a rock!"

madrobot - The render bug in ASP 7 is disappointing(I do all my morphdials stuff in 6) but feel free to post questions or issues I'll try to help.

Chucky - I also agree that ASP is full of amazing, and often unfulfilled potential, tho there are so many crazy things people are doing with this program that there is no way anyone could have anticipated features to accomodate them. But what other animation program does the crazy stuff that ASP can do? Does anything even come close?


Anyway back to MorphDials. For the dance animation below(2 seconds, 12 fps), I spent 2 hours animating the stick figure in Flash, five hours animating the body in AS 6, and FIVE MINUTES animating the head with Rudiger's MorphDials script:

Image
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funksmaname
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Post by funksmaname »

Nice job Furby! :)
DarthFurby
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Post by DarthFurby »

Thanks!
Rudiger
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Post by Rudiger »

That's a very cool animation, Darth! We just need to extend the script to get the body animation to 5 minutes as well, then we'll be ready to take over the world :lol:!

I wonder how well the model would hold up if you had two different facial expressions, one at the bottom of the jump and one at the top. It would be interesting to see how well the changing expression gets mixed with the head rotation.
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funksmaname
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Post by funksmaname »

do it darth, i double dare you... :)

in other news, turns out the multiproc issue is breaking meshinstance as well *sob* i really hope they fix it soon :(
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neeters_guy
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Post by neeters_guy »

That's a terrific example of using stick figures to solve movements without getting distracted by the details of the character. I'm reading Walt Stanchfield's Drawn to Life book right now and he really hammers on the point of capturing the essence of pose, gesture, and action.
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funksmaname
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Post by funksmaname »

i think this is one of Anime Studios biggest problems (and I fall into it constantly) - you draw and rig a character, then let him decide what he wants to do instead of the other way round! Although, having said that the reason I fall into this trap is because all i seem to do is straight ahead test animations without any forward planning - which is probably one of MY biggest problems :P
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madrobot
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Post by madrobot »

funksmaname wrote:in other news, turns out the multiproc issue is breaking meshinstance as well *sob* i really hope they fix it soon :(
I had a thought yesterday in a script meeting, and haven't had a chance to test it yet. (Haven't had a chance to open AS all week to be honest, the boss at the residential unit got sick and I was shanghied into clinical work for the week. Well, supervising a clinical team, which is not so bad but still kept me from pre-production :( )

Instead of using meshinstance, what if you set up your actions on a vector layer which has all your geometry, then duplicate that layer in the layer pallette - do the new layers created this way also have the keys for that action? If so, it could then be used to set up shapes for masking, shading etc? The actions would then drive the keys on all these layers created this way, without need for meshinstance?

Just a though, fire up the flamethrowers...
Rudiger
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Post by Rudiger »

madrobot wrote:
funksmaname wrote:in other news, turns out the multiproc issue is breaking meshinstance as well *sob* i really hope they fix it soon :(
I had a thought yesterday in a script meeting, and haven't had a chance to test it yet. (Haven't had a chance to open AS all week to be honest, the boss at the residential unit got sick and I was shanghied into clinical work for the week. Well, supervising a clinical team, which is not so bad but still kept me from pre-production :( )

Instead of using meshinstance, what if you set up your actions on a vector layer which has all your geometry, then duplicate that layer in the layer pallette - do the new layers created this way also have the keys for that action? If so, it could then be used to set up shapes for masking, shading etc? The actions would then drive the keys on all these layers created this way, without need for meshinstance?

Just a though, fire up the flamethrowers...
Yes, actions are copied along with the layer, but not sure if you are then suggesting using my MorphDials script to control the actions simultaneously. That's exactly what I did with the sample MorphDials.anme file included in zip file. The layer TestHeadMask squashes and stretches with the original TestHead layer, by virtue of it having the same actions defined.

However, if you weren't using my MorphDials script, you would be limited to adding keys to the main timeline by selecting the parent group layer and inserting action keys. Seems like it would be a fairly awkward way to animate.

Hehe, maybe we should bring Fazek out of retirement, so he can add a bake function to his meshinstance script :P?

Seriously though, for people that rely on embedded scripts a lot, I think this bug is worse than the switch layer bug. If we didn't report it in time to make the 7.1 update, it should be fixed very soon after, I think/hope :)!
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madrobot
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Post by madrobot »

I'm away for the next 9 days - it's a shame I'm going to have my fingers crossed that this bug has been addressed by the time I get back, or Morphdials might not be an option for this project.

My options then are - just shut up and use morph sliders (thanks Chuck)
or
Morphdials in AS6? Does it work fine in 6?
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funksmaname
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Post by funksmaname »

totally fine in AS6... its a multicore rendering bug - AS7 only
edwin111
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Post by edwin111 »

Nice post.
EDWIN
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