Moho Forum

Hi, yesterday I took an old rig to put some smart bones on it. It was mostly to fix the joints and remake the head turn (which used blend morph).
Then I had the idea of making reusable 'multiples' using smart bones. The idea is very simple, for example, I have an arm rigged. Then I draw another arm behind the original arm. As the new arm is hidden behind, I made a smart bone to control when it it will come out from hiding. Rotating the bone left or right will define from where the multiples will appear.
Ok, maybe it doesn't sound so simple, so I made this little video (01:48 min)

Ah, very clever. Basically it's way to creates a multiple-image blur effect for quick movements. Bravo!

superb! Going to try it!
Thanks for sharing.

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Here's an alternative style idea - great technique Selgin!


Since smart bones let you change fill opacity as the 'fan' is fully open, its possible to fade out the further 'multiples' which has quite a nice motion blur effect.

I like the idea.

Love it.

I'm glad you liked, guys
I tried it with multiples just because for me it looks better for this character. Now, obviously this is my personal taste. What I like most of this is you can even have both, controlled by different bones.

I saw Synthsin made a reformulation in the other forum (you can read his thread here), here is the gif he created (I took the freedom to make it a little smaller) showing its result:

He defined the smart bone as child of the arm and applied dynamics it. Since it can be a smart technique of automation, I think it doesn't work too well for this specific task. Multiples and smears are usually very fast, lasting a couple frames and in specific moments. I think this is the kind of task where the animator brain must decide when and how many frames, not the software.

You can always animate the bone dynamics on/off to choose when it is applied.

synthsin75 wrote:You can always animate the bone dynamics on/off to choose when it is applied.

Sure, but that implies adding keyframes, just like doing it by hand, but with a new channel involved and no control over different situations. I think your idea is good and I'm pretty sure I'll use in the future, but I just don't see a real advantage for this case.

PD: Hey, I just remembered I made something similar before, I posted it on this thread.

The character on 3:30 of this video has a smart bone for the hat, it makes the hat simulate a 3d rotation. I made the smart bone child of the head bone and activated dynamics to it. So, when the character moved, the hat physically reacted to that movement rotating on "3d", so with smart bones I got "3d dynamics".

That hat looks amazing

I think Wes's technique work well, but I agree with what you are saying Victor.
I had a look at the file last week and thought the same about the fast movement thing , so I put another keyframe in the smart action and dragged it ( I think) forward on the timeline so that the smearing doesn't actually start until the dynamically driven bone gets to a certain speed/angle.
That way the smear only happens on really fast movement and stays clean for everything else.
I think doing that AND having the smear on a different layer... then the best of both world might be found.
Just something to consider.. oh and ...multiples... singles... a mix of both ....or perpendicular whoosh marks are all good stylistic treatments , it totally depends on the context ..eh?