Which is best? Smart Bone dial controls or Blend Morphs

[steveryan2]

I've been playing around with options for creating character rigs and it occurs to me that there are two methods of rigging controls into a character:

-Smart Bone Dials
-Blend Morphs

I am trying to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each method for rigging a character's head and facial features (eyes, eyebrows and mouth in particular).

Do you find that one is easier than the other to rig? What about using them to animate; is one easier or more flexible than the other? Does it make sense to use Smart Bone control dials for one part and Blend Morphs for the other? Here is what I have come up with thus far:

Smart Bones Advantages / Blend Morph Disadvantages
Smart bone control dials are always visible on the screen as long as the character is selected on the layers panel. This is in contrast to Blend Morphs where you have to display the dialog to use them. It's a quick keyboard shortcut to display the Blend Morphs dialog, but it is an extra step.
The Blend Morph dialog box is HUGE and takes up a lot of screen space. The more morph targets you have, the more space is taken up.
Depending on your monitor's resolution, the Blend Morph dialog can only display so many targets at one time (about 15 on mine).

Blend Morphs Advantages / Smart Bones Disadvantages
Blend Morphs has it's own dialog which can be easily removed from the screen for more screen real-estate. This is opposed to Smart Bone dials that can clutter up the screen; especially if you use a lot of them for greater control.
Blend Morphs can be combined; using combinations of any of the morph shapes that you have created.

Please correct me if I am wrong or have overlooked something. And please tell me when and why you use one method over the other.

thanks,

Steve

[dueyftw]

Blend Morph uses more cpu power than smart bones. But at times Blend Morphs can be useful. Smart bones require two to do the same as a blend Morph. Go forwards and backwards. The same control can be made with both, but Smart Bone win because where you could have 50 of them and only 10 of the Blend Morphs before thing get bog down.

Dale

[steveryan2]

Assuming that CPU power isn't an issue, have you had a better results using one over the other?

[dueyftw]

Assuming that CPU power isn't an issue, have you had a better results using one over the other?

but it is.

It been a while that I used blend morphs. So I made up a file with a bunch of them. The lag issue is not there. Faster computer? I don't know.

The advantage that Smart Bones have over Blend Morphs is that they are on screen all the time, and you can push up your control to the top bone layer of your project.

The a vantage of Bland Morphs is that you don't need a bone and they turn 200%. (see long time, forget how to make them, just remembered the lag they caused) But to use them, you need to go to they layer they are on. And they can't be rigged controlling each other. My walk rig would never work using Blend Morphs.

I'm not saying not to use Blend Morphs, there are advantages to Smart bones that you will find that you will end up ignoring them.

Dale

[steveryan2]

Thanks for pointing out that you have to select the layer with Blend Morphs. I had run some basic tests using both methods and my files were so simple that concept just didn't get noticed. I can see where having control of everything at the top with bones is an improvement in workflow. Once the animation process begins it would be a hassle to go back and forth between a lot of different layers to use Blend Morphs.

Thanks for that!

[dueyftw]

I don't use the top layer as the only layer to animate from. I find that in a normal rig I will have too many bones. So I have bone layers for the eyes, arms, legs and body. This is only one step down from the main layer. This makes rigging easier for me and with Dkwroot's group bone script I can hide all the bones on the top layer and animate the lower layers.

Also sometimes neither a Smart Bone or a Blend Morph will be the best. I need to have the wings of a creature to flap. So I have two actions, wings flap that cycles and wings off where all the bones keyed in an action on frame one but not moving. Then I 'Insert Reference' to control the action of the wings.

Dale

[steveryan2]

After a lot of experimenting I think I've found a complete answer to my question as to which is better; Blend Morphs or Smart Bones. This is just my opinion from my own somewhat limited experience; yours may differ. I am just sharing in case this may be helpful to someone.

I was confused about what was best because Smart Bones can do so many things; fine tune an arm bend, create a head turn, a dial bone to control other bones, etc. So I am limiting this comparison to just Dial Bones (a specific use of smart bones), rather than to Smart Bones generically. At their essence, both both Blend Morphs and Dial Bones are really about having an easy-to-use interface to control Actions that you create on the Actions panel. Blend Morphs control blends between single-frame poses, and Dial Bones control a timeline of any number of frames. Both are valid ways of rigging for animation.

- For creativity and flexibility, Blend Morphs have the advantage. The sliders allow for a level of creativity and experimentation by combining the sliders in varying degrees. The more poses you have, the more possibilities to blend between them. You can also push the sliders beyond 100 percent for some unusual effects.
- Blend Morphs are easier to set up; just create the Action and use the sliders. No need to create and program a custom control rig.
- Blend Morphs can be thought of as an easy way of storing individual poses. And of course, morphing between those poses.
- Blend Morphs don't clutter the screen with lots of Bone Dials. All of the sliders are contained in a single dialog box that can easily be displayed and dismissed with a keyboard shortcut.

- For ultimate control, Bone Dials are best. You can customize Bone Dials any way you like for infinite control. The dial bones can be big or small, colored, and individually positioned on the canvas where you like. You can have nested bone controls and even use target bones for a complex rig. You get to set it up in a way that it makes sense to you.
-Bone Dials require more effort to set up. It's not difficult to create a single bone control, but it does get complicated fast when you have bones controlling other bones. There is a higher learning curve than with Blend Morphs.
- Bone Dials can create other types of transitions other than morphing one shape to another. Changing color, stroke exposure and gradients are some examples.
- Bone Dials are always on a bone layer which means they can be put on the same layer as your character's skeleton. This puts everything in one place so you don't have to switch back and forth between layers once you start animating. Of course, if you choose you can have bones on different layers. When animating with Blend Morphs you would have to constantly switch between layers when setting poses with the skeleton versus whatever you use the Blend Morphs for (usually the head, or parts of the face).

Other things I learned
- Rigs do not need to use an either-or approach. If you have a series of single-frame poses and you require controls to transition between them, you can alternate between Blend Morphs (by displaying the dialog), or Bone Dials; just set up a bone dial using the same single-frame poses that the Blend Morphs use.
- Blend Morphs can be used to control Bone poses as well as Point poses. I would have to experiment with this to see how practical it actually is.
- The same single-frame pose, or Action, can be used both as a Blend Morph and as a frame in a Bone Dial timeline.

Summary
- For beginners getting started, Blend Morphs are clearly the easier solution for creating head and/or facial rigs than Bone Dials. Not that Bone Dials have to be difficult; they can be used for simple set-ups as well. But Blend Morphs require only a couple single-frame actions to get started. The slider interface is generated automatically. Just display it by pressing Ctrl-Shift-B on your keyboard.
- For us control freaks, nothing beats the control of Bone Dials. You can start simple and progress with increasingly complex rigs.

[dueyftw]

You left out Actions. These are repeatable movement that can be inserted into the time line.

Both Blend morph and smart bones have replace them. BUT they don't do cycling very well.

Set up a tire to be rotated. Make an action of the rotation, then insert a reference.

What is just an Action? Read the manual.

Dale

[steveryan2]

Since both Blend Morphs and Bone Dials are merely controls for using Actions, I went off the assumption that anyone interested in the question in the first place would know what Actions are.

For the uninitiated, Actions are reusable poses and animations. Very much worth looking into.

[dueyftw]

No your missing my point.

Try to make a tire turn, or a wing flap, something that cycles constantly with smart bones or blend morphs.

Then get back to me on how they worked out.

Dale

[steveryan2]

Actually the point of this post was to compare Blend Morphs to Smart Bones, and determine the best use of both.

[dueyftw]

But your not getting it. It's like comparing three things and only talking about 2 just because the third is not used as much.

I'm only trying to get you more knowledge of AS. In some few cases Actions are the better than blend morphs or smart bones. You should know how to use Actions.

Dale

[steveryan2]

Thanks dueyftw for trying to help. I already understand Actions; I actually find them very simple. I thought that was evident because one would need to understand Actions first before using either Blend Morphs or Bone Dials, since Actions are required for both.

What I was doing was comparing methods of creating rigging controls for animation. I don't see how Actions can be a third option for rigging. Instead Actions are are prerequisite to using Blend Morphs and Bone Dials (although the have a few other features as well; but none of them for rigging controls).

If I am missing something and Actions have some rigging control feature I am unaware of, please let me know. But I'm pretty sure I have a good grasp of Actions; or else I wouldn't be able to talk about Blend Morphs or Bone Dials in any meaningful way.