Bone Locking is FANTASTIC! Don't be afraid of it!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 3:43 pm

I always hated bone locking. It seemed like it was... weird. It didn't do what I wanted.

The trouble was... you have to sort of beat it with a hammer to make it work. And it does!

I leave that "bone locking helper" turned on. That does help. If you use bone locking and some of the parent bones aren't rotating correctly, they get twisted or pop... then "force" the rotation. Rotate those bones with the rotate tool until they pop into position. I didn't even know this would work. Also keep in mind that bone locking is like dynamics... sometimes you see weird things that aren't really there. You have to scrub through from the beginning to see the proper bone locking in action. If you scrub the timeline backwards or in the middle of a sequence it causes popping on other frames that isn't "real".

Onion skin also has weird effects. Onion skin doesn't always show the proper bone rotations with bone locking.

You have to remember that AS is trying to force bones into whatever twisted angle it can so the locked bone stays in place as close as possible. Keeping this in mind you want to make sure there is some leeway for the bones to bend and twist. Even a tiny bit of bone scaling can eliminate some weird popping of the bones.

Another trick, use angle constraints when you can on the PARENT bones. This prevents those bones from getting all twisted around. If a bone CAN reach a certain bad angle... it will... if it can't, it stays in the correct angle.

I love bone locking now... just love it.

One thing I still haven't figured out is what the heck goes on when you turn it off. I think the bone angles are "returning" to their natural angle. The trick I use is to rotatate the bones to "match" the position when the lcoking is one.

So if a foot is locked and then... unlocked, On that frame rotate the calf and the bicep to match the previous frame where locking is on. then move ahead to your next key frame where you want to move the unlocked bone. ti blends perfectly. I haven't had any trouble.

Anyway, I was thrilled with finding this out. I know some others use bone locking and like it, and many others don't. You just have to "force" ti. Fiddle with it and you get the hang of it.

-vern

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 8:51 am

Here are a couple of samples of what I'm talking about:

http://www.lowrestv.com/anime_studio/bo ... imbing.mov
http://www.lowrestv.com/anime_studio/bo ... /dance.mov

In both examples I had to sort of "force" the thighs, calves, forearms, biceps to bend correctly by rotating them after the foot and hands were locked. It wasn't really that hard to get it to do what I wanted. Considering I never really used bone locking successfully before I'm quite happy with this discovery.

Bone lock is definately in my list of tricks now.

-vern

DK · Post by DK » Mon Jun 16, 2008 10:03 am

Great work Vern! The climbing mov especially looks excellent. It's made me want to explore the bone locking function all over again.

Cheers
D.K

Manu · Post by **Manu** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 8:43 pm

Mmm, my experience is that the longer a scene gets, the more erratic the bone locking gets.

If you were to try and make your climbing man into a 10 second scene, I would expect the popping to get so bad you'd be forced to go back and switch off the bone locking throughout the whole scene and manually move the feet into their positions. Force rotating stops working very soon I'm afraid.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 10:46 pm

I just fooled around with bone locking on my "dancing" file. I upped the time to a 20 second animation at 30fps and didn't encounter any more weird popping then I had encountered before. I put in all kinds of extreme movements and stuck in extra bone locking on alternate feet and hands. I also went in and made sure all the bones were bent correctly.

I only noticed one spot that kept "repopping" in the first 20 frames but it was an easy fix.

The problems I find have to do with how the parent bones "reach" a position that conforms to the location of the locked bone. So rotating them or scaling slightly helps that process.

Hey this is just my experience. I just can't find a time related problem with bone locking.

By the way the dance file in the sample above is about 7 seconds.

-vern

Manu · Post by **Manu** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 10:51 pm

I'm happy to hear it works for you. I found that once it starts to play up, it gets from bad to worst and I would have been better off doing it manually in the first place.

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 4:51 am

I love lock bones and use them in almost all my animations. They are tricky to get, but when you understand how they work, make all simpler.

here is an example I did yesterday.
http://www.mediafire.com/?jdx2l2eohwr (fixed link)
the little guy is climbing the arm and shoulder of a man which is talking. I haven't here the final composition, but I suppose it work as example.

I have animated it in no more than 20 minutes. without lock bones it would be a nightmare.

DK · Post by DK » Wed Jun 18, 2008 4:57 am

Selgin.
That link just defaults to a web hosting page. There is no file.

Cheers
D.K

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:01 am

sorry, i'm working on it.
http://www.mediafire.com/?jdx2l2eohwr (fixed)

DK · Post by DK » Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:07 am

Right click will only save as a htm file

D.K

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:12 am

ok, I don't know what is happening, but here is the file in mediafire
http://www.mediafire.com/?jdx2l2eohwr
(it's just a little video, anyway)

DK · Post by DK » Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:16 am

Hey that's cool! It seems to really make a difference using footlocking, seems as though the characters are really making contact on an object with their feet. Nice work Selgin. Thanks for sharing.

D.K

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:37 am

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:49 am

Using those extended bones for locking looks like a good idea. I'll have to try that out. Thanks Selgin!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 6:02 am

That's brilliant!

Little extender bones for locking!!!! I never thought of that. That would make it a lot easier.

-vern