More fun with 3d

Want to share your Moho work? Post it here.

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7feet
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More fun with 3d

Post by 7feet »

I thought earlier today that I might try to expand a bit on SqueakyDaves 3d features bit. So, I whipped up an admittedly pretty primitive head shape in Wings3D, and started mapping facial features onto it in Moho 5. Here is what I've come up with so far, Quicktime using Sorenson 3 compression. Project files a here if anyone is interested.

One of the things I wanted to try, but just couldn't get to work, was to do a full, 360 degree turnaround. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out, or perhaps it's not supported, how to use the 3D head shape layer as a mask so that you wouldn't see the facial features you shouldn't when the head is turned away from you. If that could be put in (and I didn't suck at 3D modelling;) it could be pretty handy. Well, more xperimentin' tommorow.
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spasmodic_cheese
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Post by spasmodic_cheese »

hrmm whats with the chin's polygons?
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7feet
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Post by 7feet »

As I said, the bit in Wings was a hack job. I whipped it together, found that Moho rendered it in a pretty unfortunate manner where there were a lot of polys, so I hacked 'em out. Not pretty, but enough to illustrate the idea.

Yeah, the chin is just messed up, in a 3D app. But I was kind of surprised that it rendered without more glitches in Moho. Mainly I wanted to see how easy (or hard) it would be to combine the 2d and 3d elements
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Ric_535
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Post by Ric_535 »

That is cool - please keep us up to date on your progress - thanks for the files also :)
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7feet
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Post by 7feet »

So, another member asked me how this worked, so here it is:

Thanks! It was mostly a test to play around with the new 3D object import. I had pretty much negelcted it in the last version, except where it related to the old 2D style sceneplaning. When they busted out the 3D import , I had to play.

First, I created a basic head shape in Wings3D. That was baffling in itself, 'cause I'm a sculptor (mostly) and I still find 3D on the computer a pain. I imported that shape into MOho.

Building the facial features was probably the most complicated. Each was drawn out, and then the layer translated (using the "Top" view) to where I thought it should be in relation to the face. Because I used more contours in the face than I'd originally intended, it took some tweaking to get then so, when the head turned fairly far, it didn't look as if something like the eye wasn't hanging out in open space. If you hadn't noticed it, if you hit the "ALT" key while you're in layer translation mode, it works on the Z axis.

The nose shadow and the eybrows were straight vector layers. The eyebrows are bone controlled. The mouth was a switch layer. The eyes themselves are more complicated.

The basic eye shape is a switch layer, with open , partially closed, and fully closed sublayers. All of the layers were modifications of the "open" layer, so that I could use the "interpolate sub-layers" in the switch tab of switch layer options, since all of the shapes had the same number of points in each shape. They were just duped and modified. I like the interpolate bit, you can get some nice smooth things out of it for subtle transitions and emotion and stuff like that.

The mouth also took advantage of bones being part of switch layers now. I assigned 2 bones, each pivoting about 1/3 out from the center of the mouth, towards the corners, to affect the outer corners of the mouth. For this, I like the new region binding and bone strength. For limbs that need to move a lot, I still need to use point binding and extra control bones to keep things from getting too wierd.

The pupils are the topmost layer in each "Eye" group, with them being masked by the switch layer that has the eye white background and the lid shape. by using the eye shape as a mask, you can move the pupils around all you like, and you are only going to see the part of the pupil that should be showing. I'm still not entirely sure how the masking system is supposed to work now, but I was able to hack out a solution in a coulple 'o hours. In this Beta (now 2), it doesn't seem to be noticing line width in the masking, which is messing up the way I normally work, but I imagine they can tune that up. Normally, for straight 2D, I put the eyes on one switch layer, and both pupils on another, both placed in one basically masking group layer. It makes it easier to make sure that both pupils track properly. But you can't do that if you have to have each 3d object in a separate layer. I'd love it if it were possible to place individual objects in 3D space ( it would cut down on the maze of layers ) , but I suspect that would be a pain in the ass on the programming end.

Generally, in 2D vector stuff, I assign a bone to control the jawline so it really looks like the mouth is opening when the mouthshape changes (when I have some concept of the scripting I'll write that) and I was definitely missing that when working with a fixed head shape. I never like that on most cartoons ( probably for finances ) just have the mouthshapes change, but the jawline stayes the same. In the end, want to figure out how to do something like real oldschool animation in Moho.

--Brian
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rhythm_dj
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Post by rhythm_dj »

very impressive. id be keen so see some more tests with 3d. keep it up
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rhythm_dj
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360

Post by rhythm_dj »

having conducted many painful, ass crippling experiments with head turns in 2d i find the most difficult part is the morphing of the head: jaw+hair lines to simulate a 3d turn. however as the head is a 3d object here, isnt that problem eradicated? could thou not warp the vectors of the facial features to turn in perspective with the head throughout the visable 180 degree, then toggle layer visibility when the head is turned away...?
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