Selgin's techniques, tutorials and script ideas
Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 5:54 pm
Hi, I decided to put together most of my techniques, tutorials and scripts ideas to make easy and more ordered the access for new users and avoid they be lost on time.
I will put this post link on my signature and I hope to make it bigger with the time. Please, feel free to take a look and ask about in any of the topics.
New! Full body turn tutorial: Making a full body turn is easier than you think.
New! Walk Ruler: No more sliding walks!. This ruler works great to make constant velocity walks for bipeds, quadrupeds or any legged character you have. It can be easily adapted for any velocity and size. I use it in all my projects.
New! Follow Path as a pseudo bone: Follow Path tool can be used to bend complex shapes and, in some cases, works better than normal bones. Combining bones and follow path gives great results.
New and improved head turn technique: A new way to create head turns which actually let you turn your characters heads even on 360 degrees. It solves a big problem of all AS head turns I know.
Snake creeping technique: An amazing hidden feature in which you can define a path of distortion and put any object to follow it. Ideal for snakes, smoke, waves, flags, etc.
Flexible locking: Another amazing hidden feature which let you have a locked bone in movement, but still locked. Ideal to easily create diferent types of walkcycles based on just one basic walk (include an anme file which explain it better than me).
Turning Head with blend morph: Using the new blend morph feature to easily create infinite angles of a turning head. It even can be useful to create a reusable turning head with lipsync.
Cartoony dust with particles: A simple technique to avoid the computational look of particles and create them on a more cartoony way.
Frame by frame script: A simple idea script (script wrote by synth) which let you make simple frame by frame animations fastly. Ideal for velocity lines, drops, wrinkles and stuff which can help to make your animations look less "digital".
Negative curvature arm: A use of negative curvature (a fantastic hidden feature itself) which let you use it for a very simple and convincent arm/leg rotation.
Workspace tip: A little tip which let you hide/show the windows (timeline, style, tools, layers) by shortcuts. Ideal for people, like me, who have a small screen and don't need to see all windows all the time.
Poses script idea: A wonderful script wonderfully wrote by Genete which let you make complex animations moving just one bone. This script was wrote before the new Blend Morph feature and the final result you get is similar.
There is an improved script wrote by Rudiger and you can look a video demo on this topic.
Improved Translate layer tool (adds visibility, transparency and blur fast access): For this one you must visit Animators Forums, the unofficial anime studio forum, which moderators are Mkelley and Synth, two talented animators/scripters which choose to start their own forum. There are interesting info there, so I recommend to visit it.
This tool is based on this request and was wrote by Mkelley (thanks again, Mike). It adds to translate layer tool propieties a checkbox for visibility, one text box for transparency and one for blur, so you don't need to open layer proprieties over and over. It makes the workflow much more fluid.
Oh, a great feature with this tool is that you can change the visibility, transparency and blur of several selected layers at the same time!
Tutorial for animate rope, clothes, hair, etc: A very short tutorial (1:26) uploaded to youtube with a very simple technique which absolutely eliminates the pain of animating ropes and similar stuff. This discover has been a lifesaver for me and I strongly recommend you to take a look.
I will put this post link on my signature and I hope to make it bigger with the time. Please, feel free to take a look and ask about in any of the topics.
New! Full body turn tutorial: Making a full body turn is easier than you think.
New! Walk Ruler: No more sliding walks!. This ruler works great to make constant velocity walks for bipeds, quadrupeds or any legged character you have. It can be easily adapted for any velocity and size. I use it in all my projects.
New! Follow Path as a pseudo bone: Follow Path tool can be used to bend complex shapes and, in some cases, works better than normal bones. Combining bones and follow path gives great results.
New and improved head turn technique: A new way to create head turns which actually let you turn your characters heads even on 360 degrees. It solves a big problem of all AS head turns I know.
Snake creeping technique: An amazing hidden feature in which you can define a path of distortion and put any object to follow it. Ideal for snakes, smoke, waves, flags, etc.
Flexible locking: Another amazing hidden feature which let you have a locked bone in movement, but still locked. Ideal to easily create diferent types of walkcycles based on just one basic walk (include an anme file which explain it better than me).
Turning Head with blend morph: Using the new blend morph feature to easily create infinite angles of a turning head. It even can be useful to create a reusable turning head with lipsync.
Cartoony dust with particles: A simple technique to avoid the computational look of particles and create them on a more cartoony way.
Frame by frame script: A simple idea script (script wrote by synth) which let you make simple frame by frame animations fastly. Ideal for velocity lines, drops, wrinkles and stuff which can help to make your animations look less "digital".
Negative curvature arm: A use of negative curvature (a fantastic hidden feature itself) which let you use it for a very simple and convincent arm/leg rotation.
Workspace tip: A little tip which let you hide/show the windows (timeline, style, tools, layers) by shortcuts. Ideal for people, like me, who have a small screen and don't need to see all windows all the time.
Poses script idea: A wonderful script wonderfully wrote by Genete which let you make complex animations moving just one bone. This script was wrote before the new Blend Morph feature and the final result you get is similar.
There is an improved script wrote by Rudiger and you can look a video demo on this topic.
Improved Translate layer tool (adds visibility, transparency and blur fast access): For this one you must visit Animators Forums, the unofficial anime studio forum, which moderators are Mkelley and Synth, two talented animators/scripters which choose to start their own forum. There are interesting info there, so I recommend to visit it.
This tool is based on this request and was wrote by Mkelley (thanks again, Mike). It adds to translate layer tool propieties a checkbox for visibility, one text box for transparency and one for blur, so you don't need to open layer proprieties over and over. It makes the workflow much more fluid.
Oh, a great feature with this tool is that you can change the visibility, transparency and blur of several selected layers at the same time!
Tutorial for animate rope, clothes, hair, etc: A very short tutorial (1:26) uploaded to youtube with a very simple technique which absolutely eliminates the pain of animating ropes and similar stuff. This discover has been a lifesaver for me and I strongly recommend you to take a look.