Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Have you come up with a good Moho trick? Need help solving an animation problem? Come on in.

Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger

User avatar
dueyftw
Posts: 2174
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:32 am
Location: kingston NY
Contact:

Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by dueyftw »

This could be done with 4 bones at 90 degrees from each other with only one smart bone action each.


Dale
User avatar
dueyftw
Posts: 2174
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:32 am
Location: kingston NY
Contact:

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by dueyftw »

Another setup:


Dale
User avatar
DK
Posts: 2849
Joined: Mon Aug 09, 2004 6:06 am
Location: Australia

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by DK »

Hey dueyftw.
You're breaking some interesting ground there :)
Thanks for sharing.

Cheers
D.K
User avatar
Víctor Paredes
Site Admin
Posts: 5646
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 12:18 am
Location: Barcelona/Chile
Contact:

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by Víctor Paredes »

Fantastic, very clever!
Thanks for sharing!
Image Image Image Image
Moho Product Manager

www.mohoanimation.com
Rigged animation supervisor in My father's dragon - Lead Moho artist in Wolfwalkers - Cartoon Saloon - My personal Youtube Channel
User avatar
hammerjammer
Posts: 145
Joined: Sun May 26, 2013 10:04 pm
Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by hammerjammer »

Thanks Duey

This is so cooool.

I can see I'm not going to get much sleep tonight.
This will drive me crazy till I make a rig that uses this technique myself.

On a side note. I think I saw this sort of setup a while back using a Script or something.
No need for that now. This is really good stuff. I cant wait to try it.

Hammerjammer
Last edited by hammerjammer on Thu Mar 06, 2014 12:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
Check out All of my animations on my YouTube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/HammerAnimation/videos

Thanks for watching!
Hammerjammer
User avatar
funksmaname
Posts: 3174
Joined: Tue May 29, 2007 11:31 am
Location: New Zealand

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by funksmaname »

Hey Dale, on your second example, why did you put two bones with a single direction rather than both on one?
User avatar
dueyftw
Posts: 2174
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:32 am
Location: kingston NY
Contact:

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by dueyftw »

funksmaname wrote:Hey Dale, on your second example, why did you put two bones with a single direction rather than both on one?
Because with only three bones, as you drag the target bone between them you have the control of the two smart bones actions but for the other two you might have to drag the target bone halfway down and across the screen. The control of the target bone is a epithelial shape that is small between the bones and large away from them.
In the second video the control is a box defined by the outer ends of the bones.One could have a non rendering box with a name and hide the bones. Where as in the first video that would not work.

Dale
User avatar
dueyftw
Posts: 2174
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:32 am
Location: kingston NY
Contact:

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by dueyftw »

Here is a video:



Dale
User avatar
funksmaname
Posts: 3174
Joined: Tue May 29, 2007 11:31 am
Location: New Zealand

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by funksmaname »

Here's another little idea...

Image

Each equidistant bone only has smart actions from 0 to 45 degs, and as the target moves they rotate the face further along.
The target is also aimed at the 2nd target, which means if the target itself is moved up or down, it is rotated to create the up/down rotation.

I think distances will probably need tweaking, it does get quite complicated when you try to control left/right and up/down from the same place, as if i was to add turning the other way, target1 would get even further (and less responsive) from target 2.

Anyway, the file is here if anyone wants to fiddle:
https://www.mediafire.com/?bluowuacfqu2hb8
User avatar
dueyftw
Posts: 2174
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:32 am
Location: kingston NY
Contact:

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by dueyftw »

Here is the same idea in the setup I'm using:




And the file:
https://app.box.com/s/n4i43symwy3utjzu1il2

Dale
User avatar
Onionskin
Posts: 253
Joined: Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:01 pm

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by Onionskin »

I will definitely use the target bones for my head turns and wherever is need, I was also made some experiments like yours Dale but slightly different, I made 2 target bones controlled by "main translate" bone, one is for x and other for y.
Left-Right and Up-Down is easy job, but Left-Up, Left-Down etc, when actions are mixed, that bothers me. So I made smart bone action on the main translate bone for correction of those positions.

here is the file
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... _head.anme
User avatar
heyvern
Posts: 7035
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:49 am

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by heyvern »

This is soooo.... awesome. Finally... FINALLY an absolutely perfect replacement for all of my 2.5d characters. This is sooooo freaking cool.

My 2.5D head, which use to be in the partner content ("Technician") but I didn't have time to update for v10 so SM left it out... if only I had this technique a while ago. My rig was getting klunky and old but still worked. It was just to hard to create new characters and manage layers.

Ever since smart bones came along I've been struggling to replace my old 2.5d rotation with a single bone. The best I could do was two bone rotations for x and y head turns. I couldn't get the "dragging" to rotate. The best part is I came up with a solution to "copy" rotation angles of my old rig. I could drag my rotation bone to different positions and copy all of the point motion to different actions, basically "replicating" that movement without have to start from scratch.

I had been trying to script this before the v10 beta started, to do this aiming rotation trick. Unfortunately, smart bones weren't activating using the script interface. I got the exact same functionality of the bone rotation aiming at a another bone, but the smart bones just wouldn't do what they should.

I am very excited. I have a rigged character ready to use for the first test. He has all the head turn smart bone actions already created, just have to move those actions to different bones.

The other aspect of this new rig will be face controls. My old rig didn't have "fixed" expressions for phonemes. I could simply drag bones from any face angle to change eyes, mouth, brows etc. I used what I call "compound bones", multiple bones in the exact same position over the points but constrained to different bones.

This new "control array" can be used to do the same thing. I won't have to use as many compound bones if I gang up smart bones that activate based on aim bone control arrays.
Danimal
Posts: 1584
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 3:06 pm
Location: The Danimal Kingdom
Contact:

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by Danimal »

This really is a pretty brilliant idea. Using a Target bone this way could be used for a whole host of applications with making multiple things move in sync (I'm picturing a Star Trek-esque moment of the whole crew rocking to the side at once).
~Danimal
User avatar
Onionskin
Posts: 253
Joined: Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:01 pm

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by Onionskin »

And how about to assign on the control bone one more smart action, scale controlled bone

Image
User avatar
hammerjammer
Posts: 145
Joined: Sun May 26, 2013 10:04 pm
Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Re: Target bone controling 5 smart bone actions

Post by hammerjammer »

Hello all

This is all very interesting stuff. But, I am completed confused now.

:?: Did Chad Troftgruben or anybody do a tutorial on target bones?
I'm trying to learn the basics of target bones before I just dive in.

The AS10 tutorial manual, Tutorial 3.6: New Bone Features section refers us to tutorial file 3.6 which does not exist. There are only tutorials for 3.1 thru 3.4.(the same is true for both the 32bit & 64bit version folders)

anyway

I'm not looking for a full blown explanation here on the forum because I'm sure its a bit much to get into here.
I just would like to be sent in the right direction so I know where to look.

Thanks in advance.

HammerJammer
Check out All of my animations on my YouTube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/HammerAnimation/videos

Thanks for watching!
Hammerjammer
Post Reply