Well, here's my first... !!

Celeryhart · Post by **Celeryhart** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 3:19 pm

Maybe someone can strip my body-legs file down ... delete all my bones etc and do it properly and then send it back so I can try to understand what you did...?? Just rename it ok ? That may help. I"ve just been going over your instructions again 7feet, and trying to fix this mess and I"m still not getting it right.

This is a pain in the butt no doubt and ya'll have spent so much time trying to explain to me..... I appreciate it. Lets hope it might be helping someone else too. I"m not afraid to look like the village idiot if it means I"m learning!!!
Maybe I"ll make it into a swf file and load it into Swish just to test whether it transfers properly there. At least thats one thing I know how to do...??

Okay, check this out. I didn't make an actual shadow on this but I just wanted to see if the shading on her dress came thru... and it did. The thing still isn't right but this is just a test.

http://www.celeryhart.com/BoopMoho/body.htm

Celeryhart

7feet · Post by **7feet** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:44 pm

Sorry, I was talking about heyvern's file, didn't mean to be confusing. Was just trying to explain the theory behind that one, hadn't had a chance to go through your's too thoroughly. And don't worry about the questions. One suggestion (I know your impatient to dive right in), but it might not be a bad idea to step back and really go through all the tutorials, in order, if you haven't. Theres a lot of stuff there you may have missed, and it'll often answer a lot of questions.

Getting close though. I'll look again, but a copy of that last one wouldn't be bad to have a look at, either.

Celeryhart · Post by **Celeryhart** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:02 am

Yes, thats what I"m going to do... !! Put all thoughts of animating anything out of my mind and go thru the tuts one by one again till I have a grasp of the basics.
I will not absorb everything but maybe I need to take it easy a bit. ( I"m a liar... as much as I want to do that... I know I won't....I won't be able to stop... )

Good advice... !

Celeryhart

7feet · Post by **7feet** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:05 am

Okay, I just had to play with it. I worked with your body-legs.moho file, and I got a little carried away. Through Betty's head on there anyway, and played some tricks. If you need anything explained, give a shout. And if you get the proper Betty Boop drawing done up in a pretty finished state, I'll be happy to help you with the rigging.

body-legs-Boop.zip
(with the Moho file in there.

Celeryhart · Post by **Celeryhart** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:22 am

OH MAN... that was too funny. I must go and take a closer examination of all that... I almost wet myself laughing...
Oh mercy.... that is so cute... how on earth did you do that..?
Ok... don't anwer any questions yet cause I'm sure I"ll have lots of them after I look at this many many times...
Okay.. answer this one question... How did you copy Boops head on to that body...?? I was wondering if you could but that was the least of my worries.

That is so cute... good job.. I just love it .!!!!!

Celeryhart

7feet · Post by **7feet** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:45 am

File>Import>Moho Object - pick the Moho file that has the object you want, and you can import any root level layer from it into your current project.

One thing I did you had halfway there. The line you had across the knee shouldn't be just for show. What you want is to create 2 shapes, one for the upper part of the leg (select all the points above the knee, including that line and create a shape) the same for the lower part (also incliding that same knee line). Then in the in the Fill section of the tools is on with a kinda upside-down horshoe shape with 3 points on it. Thats the Hide Edge tool, and you use that to make that line across the knee disappear. It works better on the right leg - if you bend the knee as far as it'll go, you'll see that you don't get that wierd inside-out hole in the leg fill anymore. I made the shape for the upper part first, and then the lower. That means the lower shape is "higher" in the stacking order for shapes, so if they overlap, that one is on top.

The bone outside the body controls the angle and position od the root bone inside the body, so you can move the character around easily. I used the Translate Bone tool on that one to move the whole character around in "space".

Choose the Reparent Bone tool (looks like a barbell, but I think it's supposed to be a few links of chain) and you'll see arrows that will show you how all the bones are connected together.

Also, one thing to note is I added some bones for the "toes". That's what I used to lock the feet down instead of the actual "foot" bones. That's how she can stand on her toes and not slide all over the place.

A lot of the stuff with the skirt was just juggling the point positions relative to the bones, where the bones are, and the bone strength. Small changes in any of them can make thing move completely differently. You get a feel for what works after a while, but there's still some fiddly tweaking for me.

Celeryhart · Post by **Celeryhart** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 4:38 am

Good grief.. you added bones where non existed before... I didn't realize you had to make so many of them... I have copied your instructions and have them in a file so will go over them tomorrow.
I was going to certainly ask you about that bone that seems to be off in mid air behind Boop.... didn't know where that came from. It is attached to the root bone in the body you say... well, I see you have 3 bones in the torso.. a tiny one at the bottom then a bigger one and then the biggest by the neck. So which do you consider the root bone... ? the tiny one..?? Also do those bones have to be touching when you make one after another like that......??

Your little "tippy toes" are just too darling.... Never thought of making tippy toes... good idea..

I am just mentally fried tonight so will give it a rest and then hit it again tomorrow... MANY THANKS for all your tolerance of my stupidity. I know how hard it is to try to explain to someone this way.

It's obvious I know nothing yet... !!! Oh one question... when you say name a bone... do I select the bone and then go to that blank space and name it there...?? Cause what I've been doing is selecting the bone... opening the constraint box... and naming it there.. duh... !!

Well, time to give my brain a rest. I'll be back.. !!!

Celeryhart

7feet · Post by **7feet** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:27 am

The little one at the bottom of the body. I call it the "root" bone because it is the "parent" bone for everything else in the body.

As far as the one just floating out there- that "root" bone in the body has the outside one as it's Angle and Position control bone. So if you grab the outside one, the one in the body does exactly what the outside bone does. It makes it easier (for me at least) when I'm animating, keeps the basic "moveing the whole character around" thing outside the sea of bones I usually end up with, so you don't move something by mistake. If I just have the bone inside the body, I've sometimes gone to, say, move the leg and ended up flipping the character upside-down bu mistake

They don't have to be touching (even the ones in the body). The waist and thigh bones are all parented to that one root bone. So if that moves, they all move relative to it and everything stays in the place that it's supposed to be in the character. Here you can see how they all connect back to that one bone:

It's just important to have a proper hierarchy set up. If I remember correctly, in the original version of that file you had the bone controlling the left side of the skirt parented to the one controlling the right side of the skirt, which made everything go all screwy. I got confused, so the first thing I did was UNparent all the bones. With the Reparent Bone tool selected, I <ALT> clicked on a bone to select it, and then clicked anywhere there isn't a bone on the screen to make it an orphan (awwwww...), all the way down the line. Then I added the extra bones I wanted and hooked 'em back up.

The tiptoe thing was just to see if I could make it work, but it just give you that much more to play with when you get to animating. I try to think of every dang thing I might want a character to do, and then throw it all in there from the git. Then when you get down to animating, it's just good ol' playing with puppets.

And yes on naming the bone, just like that. Name it as soon as you make it (or pretty soon after) and you'll have a lot less trouble keeping track of things. I've done a few with 40-50 bones in them, and that is just too hairy with only numbers. Good, thoroughly descriptive names are good too, for when you put something down for a while. Otherwise you might come back after a time and go "what in the hell is all this stuff?"

Celeryhart · Post by **Celeryhart** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:12 pm

Yes, good idea. I kinda got used to naming things in Swish so I know the importance of that. I brought Boops head onto the body and legs I had made ( thx for telling me how to do that ) but I notice that I can't select the Head folder and resize it to fit the body and legs... is there a way to grab it and resize it to fit ? I don't want to have to resize every little piece of her head... eeeeekkkkk, Now is there a way to Merge all her face pieces onto one layer and if you do that... then does that stop you animating her eyes etc....
Yes, yes, I know.. I want to know about chapter 20 when I"ve barely read page one... !!! Crap why am I like that ... it just makes it harder on myself.

What you said about making her leg into two pieces so it bends better.... well, thats what I thought I was doing when I drew that line across ...

Duh.. goes to show you how much I don't know eh...? I kinda remember a tut on joining parts like that so it's back to the drawing board for me. Learning these basic things so they become second nature is what I need to do.... instead of jumping to animation. ( But I love animation... !!!! )

Last nite I was doing tut 5.6 where Phil waves, walks bends etc... and I thought ... wow... there are actions already programed into this... so I brought in Boop and much to my disappointment there were no actions available.... Huh..... ?? I guess the actions are not interchangeable with other characters eh.. And no where did I find how to even make actions.
See, what I mean.... god, I open a medical book and want to call myself a doctor... !!!!! Doesn't work like that does it...???

I have a feeling "square one" is where I"ll be for awhile anyway...

If I can't even change colors on shapes, and do the basics then I can hardly expect to have Boop blink her eyes, dance , tippy toe, and Lord knows what else.... at least not right away.
I still don't understand that bone you have off to the side which you say manipulates Boops dancing and helps move her around the stage. And I don't see it connected to anything... I see you've named it "Betty" and I see it has no constraints or anything.... I understand why you have it... just don't know how it got there and not connected to anything and not sure exactly how you use it in animating.

Thank God it's the weekend and I"ll have more time to fiddle with this. Just when I think I've learned something... I realize I know squat... !!

Thx for being so patient with me.....you are a doll.

Celeryhart

7feet · Post by **7feet** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 4:04 pm

I'll just hit the first one. Select the group layer for the head, and use the Translate Layer tool to move it around, and the Scale Layer tool to size it. No need to (and you really wouldn't want to) merge everything into one layer. If the group layer doesn't move along with the bone you want, use the Bind Layer tool (bone on a piece of paper) to attach it. A note here for the future - Bone layers are just a specialized form of Group layers, and bones can be handy in heads too, so it's often handy to just put stuff like those head sublayers inside a Bone layer from the start. No need if you're really not going to use it, but if there's a possibility it can save some backtracking.

Actions are specific to a particular drawing, so you can't reuse them that way. I do believe they will go along if they already exist in a Moho object you are importing. For a bit on how to work with actions, in the Users Manual->User Interface->Actions Window.

And that bone isn't connected to anything. The "root" bone I had named Body, the one floating out there I named Betty. Select the Body bone and open up the Bone Constraints window. What do you see? The body bone has both an Angle and Position control bone. Whats the bone? The Betty bone. They don't need to be connected, it's a setup that forces the bone in the body to slave to the movements of the outside bone. Select that outside bone, and move it around with the Translate Bone tool and you'll see what's happening right off.

Celeryhart · Post by **Celeryhart** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 4:30 pm

Oh man... thats a relief... !! How stupid of me.. I was trying to resize that head layer with the draw tool . What a raging idiot. At least I've learned one thing this morning....

I see what you mean about the Betty and Body bones... but another problem is that I don't know the tools well enough and when you say take the Translate Bone tool and move it around..... I"m scrambling to find out which tool that is....I grabbed what I thought it was and nothing happened.... I still don't know so have to go look that up. OH never mind... I just tried it again... and I"d forgotten to select the Betty bone in the first place... I see how it moves it around now.... too kewl.
Do not pass go.... go directly to jail... I mean square one... !!! Lord Love me...thats where I belong !!!

So later I'm going to take your movie and try to move Betty right off the stage with the translate LAYER too....then put it in my Swish movie...LOLO
I will also check out those actions.... and see if I can figure that out cause that is surely something I want to do.
I just adore those tippy toes.... and must learn to do that. You'd mentioned about disconnecting bones to...and I have to re read that cause when I tried to delete a bone... the whole thing disappeared and I'd have to make them all again.
All this information is so fragmented in my mind... I need a tool to compile it... I think it's called a BRAIN.... !!!

Well, it's not the weekend yet so I'd better get to work... thx..again.. !!

I shall return...

See, this is the way I'm used to animating..... !!!

http://www.celeryhart.com/RunningBear/

Celeryhart

7feet · Post by **7feet** » Sat Aug 26, 2006 12:28 am

Quick tip - hover the mouse over any of the tool icons and it'll tell you the name of the tool. When I capitalize stuff (like "Translate Bone") that's the name that would pop up when I do that. If you're not sure which tool is being talked about, do that and go fishin'. But it's pretty easy to narrow down - point related tools in the Draw section, bone relates tools in the Bone section, etc.

This is the icon for the Reparent Bone tool.

You want to reconnect the bones, not delete them, that'll kill the rest of the bones down the chain as you've seen. Look in the Using Moho->Tool Groups->Bone Tools section of the User's Manual for a bit more on how it works.

Also, in general, when you select a tool, look on the bottom of the main window, there are breif instructions and the key combos to do different things with that tool listed there. Saves some time looking things up.

Celeryhart · Post by **Celeryhart** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 1:07 am

Hey old boy.... I survivied the first class in Moho... and here is a little something I drew and animated the eyes..( not the class assignment though ) ...lol.. You'll notice that the drawings get better as you get to the end.. I was trying to learn the tools as I found them hard. But it does get easier with time and practise.... and I feel pretty comfortable though. I was pretty happy with the blinking eyes though. Wasn't as hard as I thought.

http://www.celeryhart.com/MohoClasses/avi-test.htm

I think there may be hope for me yet..LOL... Tomorrow I get the next lesson so can't wait for that. I shall return...

Celeryhart

Oh ya.. I came here looking for your answer you gave me to a problem I had. I"m doing one of the tuts and two pieces are sticking together. When I try to move the leg piece away from the arm... one damn finger is stuck to it and gets all stretched out of shape... HELP...LOLO... I forget what you told me to do.. and I can't find an anwer.