Animr and character rigging techniques, illustrator files...

[thedoc]

Hey there

I was surprised to find Moho... a dedicated 2D animaton application,
wow it's got bones? imports illustrator, camera depth feilds... wow.


a few questions though...

1. I want to do anime style work on Moho... is this possible?

2. Can i key frame to add more movement?

3. you can set up bones to animate side ways... what about making a
character move towards the screen or away?

4. I recently scaned and colored some work in flash and exported as
Illustrator file then imported in MOHO, it worked but there were way
too many vertices/ vector nodes making bone and character rigging
very difficult... do any of you know how to reduce the nodes? how do
you guys import artwork into moho?

5. I rigged a character and when i animated the bones and the arm needed to over lap this ugly gap came on, How do i aboid this coz i import my stuff so there are too many vector nodes... how do i seal with this

I think thats it for now... OH... one more thing... what other 2D
animation apps are there?

[cribble]

1) Anything's possible as long as you can do it

2)Yes, it does it automatically on the time line when you move a point or an obeject etc..

3)I'm not so sure about this, maybe resizing or something might help

4)I usually draw within MoHo and delete any extra points i don't need. But recently i've been exploring with imported PNG files.

5)....errrr... it happends i'm afraid unless you make the arm out of 3 different parts : the upper, lower, and hand.

Flash does 2D, but its not an actual animation program anymore, its turing more to the web development side of things. Apart from that, no , i don't know anymore good 2D apps.

[7feet]

3. For movements that are supposed to look foreshortened, like walking towards the camera, you can you can use the Bone Scale tool. For example, shorten the upper and lower leg bones as the leg comes up, then lengthen the lower leg bone as it swings forward, and then lenghten the upper leg bone as the foot drops to the ground. Thats the quick description, but it should give you something to play with.

4. Yup, I've imported some .AIs that came out of 3d program and there were a truly godawful number of points. As soon as I finish a few projects and no longer have to put in 14 hour days, I was planning on writing a Lua script to simplify imported vectors. Maybe start out with something that simply removes every other point. Not a very smart script, but some analysis for distance between points and relative angles of points could be thrown in later. Come to think of it, that part could probably be hacked wholesale out of the Freehand Tool script. Anybody with some time? Also, are you working in Moho 5 yet. In many cases, the new setup with the combined flexi-binding and adjustable bone strength can make it a lot easier to rig. Takes a bit of tweaking but can be useful and a lot faster than the old method in many cases.

5. As Cribble said, you need to have parts that are intended to overlap on seperate vector sublayers within the bone layer, or at least as separate objects on a single layer (I MUCH prefer doing it on separate layers, makes it easier to keep track of the object hiearchies). Moho's fills get funky when you have part of an object overlap itself, and there's no way around it short of breaking the object up. Also, rigging the character with the parts separated, and then moving them into place with the Bone Offset tool helps to keep the bones (using the flexi-binding and bone strength) from affecting parts of the character you don't want them to. LostMarble had posted a good description on how to work it after the first Beta 5 came out, over on the Yahoo group (this message).

Just about every other useful 2D animation app around are oriented to people doing traditional, draw every frame, animation, and I just don't have the time (or patience) so I haven't used 'em much.

If you wanted to post the .MOHO file from one of the pieces you're trying to work on, I could bust out a quick rig on it to show you what I'm talking about.

--Brian

[sang820]

Don't use by file AI that put into directly, by node of MOHO it duplicate it,will a lot not fine

(55555~~~Language obstacle that regrets! I do not understand your most conversation ~~~' )

[spasmodic_cheese]

sang do you draw/illustrate directly in moho, if you do not use AI import???

[thedoc]

and how have your experiments been with png? does that mean i can color stuff into photoshop and then export 2 png then animate in moho?

Will give a try though i think it's lengthy?

any other way to import lineart into moho?

[sang820]

sang do you draw/illustrate directly in moho, if you do not use AI import???

[spasmodic_cheese]

i totally agree sang!!!

maybe there is some sort of script in LUA we could make to make smaller drawing

[myles]

I was surprised to find Moho... a dedicated 2D animaton application, wow it's got bones? imports illustrator, camera depth feilds... wow.

That's a fairly common reaction to Moho - "wow!"
I'll add I've also had the same reaction to every version from 1.0 onwards - the new features are always amazing,

1. I want to do anime style work on Moho... is this possible?

I can't see why not - are there any particular aspects of what you regard as "anime style" that you think might be difficult ?

2. Can i key frame to add more movement?

Yes. Moho is based on the timeline/keyframe concept.

3. you can set up bones to animate side ways... what about making a character move towards the screen or away?

You can either scale the character or move the (2D) layer closer in 3D.
Keep in mind the character and bones are actually 2D, so individual limb movements directly toward and away from the camera may require more work on the part of you, the animator, than movements in the layer plane.

Switch layers (multiple views of a character or body part) may be useful in some cases.

4. I recently scaned and colored some work in flash and exported as Illustrator file then imported in MOHO, it worked but there were way too many vertices/ vector nodes making bone and character rigging very difficult... do any of you know how to reduce the nodes? how do you guys import artwork into moho?

While I haven't done a lot of animation in Moho yet, I tend to redraw animated shapes in Moho using other artwork only as a bitmap guide.

EDIT: Exactly as Sang shows in detail above. Thanks, Sang!

Backgrounds and other non-animated props can also be imported in as bitmaps or composited in using a video editor.

Note that you can also apply bones to bitmap objects and animate them - either as cutouts or using bone warping - see the last 2 examples at
http://www.lostmarble.com/moho/features.shtml

5. I rigged a character and when i animated the bones and the arm needed to over lap this ugly gap came on, How do i aboid this coz i import my stuff so there are too many vector nodes... how do i seal with this

Break the arm into 2 fills. See http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~myle ... bones.html

Note the version 5 (currently in late beta) fill and outline toolset has changed - in many cases you no longer need to make partial outlines as separate objects.

I think thats it for now... OH... one more thing... what other 2D animation apps are there?

http://www.bakhter.com/html/anima/ink&paint_tools.html

List of vector and (predominantly) ink&paint software, some designed and priced for large studios with dedicated inkers, colorists, background artists, traditional frame-by-frame animators, etc.

In my opinion, Moho is the winner (on both features and price) for smaller studios and single-person animation.

Regards, Myles.

[thedoc]

i see


what do the most of you do? how many use png files? can you post a demo that you've done with that? I'll try the whole streamline thing and all.

when i meant keyframing i meant like frame after frame of different pictures see? Like in Flash see?

What about this bone enlarging? I have no Idea how i can go about it...

but i guess i better follow PNG Vs Vector.... which to choose... do you guys use Pamela? i wanna know if it's worth trying out!

[thedoc]

NNAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!


the main problem here i guess is more more ont he importing artwork in more than anything... when i import into flash and try vectorising the stuff there the drawing gets done up... it looks like $#!t and when i export the image as Illustrator the gradients are lost! why? is it moho which cant suport gradients? whats going on? Streamline is not giving me any joy... maybe i should go PNG? but i'd like to do a feature film about 50 minutes long so i gotta get my factas straight!



i need those of you who have been working with moho fo quite some time to help me out, How have oyu been doping it? What have you been doing... vector or PNG... give me samples! HELP

1. what is the best way to import hand-drawn artwork into MOHO
(i use a blue ink fine liner on normal bond paper and scan)
2. maybe there's a setting i'm missing in vectorising this stuff in flash... what is it?
3. I'm not @ home so when i get time i'll try and upload the image here

[myles]

the main problem here i guess is more more ont he importing artwork in more than anything... when i import into flash and try vectorising the stuff there the drawing gets done up... it looks like $#!t

Auto-tracing (vectorisation) of artwork is an inexact art at best, and most programs get it partly right some of the time. For backgrounds and props where exact reproduction isn't as important it's often fine, but for animatable characters you're going to at least do some hand-tweaking of auto-traced artwork, and and you are often better served by hand-tracing the character entirely - see Sang's posting above.

AlgoLab seems to do a nice job (see http://www.algolab.com/Fine_Line/Fine_Lines.htm) but even then the lines are not necessarily joined in the correct way for animation or fills - for instance, see the bottom of the right-hand dolphin's beak/jaw, and consider that the left-hand dolphin's fin/back line may actually continue into the left-hand horizon line rather than continuing around the dolphin (an example of what auto-tracing may do, I don't know where the lines go in this particular sample).

and when i export the image as Illustrator the gradients are lost! why? is it moho which cant suport gradients?

I doubt Illustrator multi-step variable endpoint gradients will translate into Moho's 2-colour object-sized gradients - different software, different features.

Streamline is not giving me any joy... maybe i should go PNG?

Again, I'd recommend using auto-tracing and importing only for less important backgrounds and props, and re-creating animatable characters in Moho, unless you're going to use cut-out/marionette/puppet style animation.

1. what is the best way to import hand-drawn artwork into MOHO (i use a blue ink fine liner on normal bond paper and scan)

• 1. Use cut-out style animation - see Moho 4.6 helpfile/manual Tutorial 6.
  
  2. Use image warping - see Tutorial 10
  
  3. Combine the two above techniques for "hand-painted" textures - see Tutorial 21
  
  4. Redraw your pencil-sketch character using Moho's vector drawing tools - View; Select/Show Tracing Image, then see Tutorial 2. Alternatively, it is also possible to use an image layer rather than a tracing image.
  
  5. If you import auto-traced characters or characters produced in other vector software, be prepared to spend some time tweaking the character using Moho's vector drawing tools.

Regards, Myles.

[thedoc]

i think that i'll have to go throught the pain of buying an optical mouse and MANUALLY tracing.... but i think it'll take forever! especialy if you do frame by frame animation... the pain....

has any of you used PAMELA? I might try the whole PNG thing... like i said, anyone use PNGs? I did take a look at tutorial 6 but it's not realistic! at the elbows or knees there are GAPS. if you're going for that kind of animation then it's cool and all but i wanna do anime sort of stuff see? SO i think VECTOR is the way to go...

anymoe takers?

[myles]

i wanna do anime sort of stuff see? SO i think VECTOR is the way to go...

Why do you understand vector tools would be better - cleaner lines, easier fills, something else ?
If you want to do frame-by-frame drawing over the top of scanned artwork would a fully-featured vector illustration program be more suitable for you, with all the frames joined up in a decent video editor, and animation previews in a pencil-test program ?

Ahh, I've just had a possible insight - are you looking for more of a vector-tweening (morphing) program, between multiple separately drawn vector illustrations - rather than the bone/point/shape-based animation offered by Moho ? That's how it is beginning to sound, where you are referring to the separate drawings as "keyframes".
Although that's not the way Moho works, I have seen that technique (and terminology) in other software.

Regards, Myles.

[thedoc]

i like the way Moho works see? but think of it combined with frame by frame drawing see?

you mentioned pencil testers? what are those? I think i might try drawing in flash then importing the work in Moho... i'll need to fool aroound a bit more.
But i would still like to know what you guys do... how you do it, do you auto trace? do you draw in illustrator? do you use graphic tablets or mice? what projects you have done and how you went about it.... I think if you guys could spare the time and write a "the making" article of a project you have done (no matter how short) and maybe post a short .swf or .mov,.avi of whatever you've done with how you've done it... what process.
See the thing is i've been using Moho for what? a few weeks and i need to find out what people who've been using it for a span do and what process they use coz Moho's way of animation is new to me.

you can PM me if you feel your submitions aer too long or email me a zip file with stuff in it like moho files of the projects you did... I think that might do the trick,
I know this sounds like a tall order but if you have the time to do it, i would greatly appreciate it very much.

thanks for the help.[/quote]