Joints

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

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Rai López
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Post by Rai López »

heyvern wrote:If you have a tip to workaround an issue... let's hear about it.
And, fortunately, in this case I have it... I'd like can say the same for others but... well, it seems that it's time to make the well :)

...Compare (and study) the right arm :arrow: HERE! (at the bottom you must click over "Fast and Extreme" and then wait 30 seconds to download (sorry...)) or :arrow: HERE! for a MegaUpload (with more secods to wait) alternative... Well, I hope this helps ... BYE! :D
Last edited by Rai López on Tue Dec 12, 2006 3:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Víctor Paredes
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Post by Víctor Paredes »

ramón your file is excellent!
thanks for share. (it would be nice to see more of your files running -corriendo, digo- by the forum), you are too wise (RE-wise) to don't share, please don't be egoistic!.
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jordanek
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Post by jordanek »

Yes, the loss of IK is due to the fan bones. The fan bones aren't really necessary, they just give you some added control of the joint's shape. I often don't use the fan bones at all.

Thanks heyvern for filling in with all the explanations and tutorials. I generally don't visit the forum on weekends.
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Mikdog
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Post by Mikdog »

nice post heyvern.
HassleHead
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Post by HassleHead »

I examined this file and the bones are using flexible binding, not regional. What I can't figure out is bone strength. Why is it uniform? Does this method only work with characters drawn with arms out? What else limits the use of this method? I ask and wonder because this is a very nice effect. I'll experiment and give feedback.

-HassleHead
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Post by HassleHead »

More on this method: it looks great with a smooth character with uniform coloring. In fact it looks amazing. A little bit of playing with it suggests a some future problems: the arms move behind the body. Maybe there's a way around this of which I'm unaware. Also, when you start adding points, it gets much more complicated to get smooth motion. Despite these limitations it looks wonderful. I only bring them up because I'm looking for a good way to rig characters.

HassleHead
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jordanek
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Post by jordanek »

It uses neither flexible nor regional binding. All the points are manually bound, meaning I went through and hand selected which points should go to which bones.
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Post by HassleHead »

Well it looks fantastic. I'm just trying to adapt it now to my uses. Thanks so much for this example.

-HassleHead
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Rasheed
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Post by Rasheed »

There are four types of bone binding for points in a vector layer that is nested inside a bone layer.

Image Layer binding. Binds an entire layer to a bone. You can do this by going to a child vector layer of the bone layer and use the Bind Layer tool to select the bone this layer should be bound to.

To release the layer, click outside any bones with the Bind Layer tool, or use the Release layer option from the Bone menu. If you release a layer, the bone binding reverts to the state that was in place before layer binding. So, in effect, layer binding just takes precedence over the binding state of each and every point in a layer.

Image Point binding. Binds individual points to a bone. You can do this by going to a child vector layer of the bone layer and use the Select Bone tool to select the bone you want to use. Next, use the Bind Points tool to select the points, and either press the spacebar, or click the "Bind Points" button in the top part of the main window. You can also select a bone in any bone tool by holding the Alt (Option) key and clicking on a bone.

To release points, select the bone, which will light up the selected points, deselect the points you want to release, press press the spacebar or click the "Bind Points" button.

Flexi-point binding. This uses bone strength to determine which points are bound.

You really should use region binding for more precise control. Flexible binding has a wider range, and the bone strength is more widely applicable. The type of flexi-point binding can be set in the Bone tab of the bone layer properties (double click on the layer in the Layers window, or select the layer in the Layers window and press the "..." button).

The default state of a layer is that all points are flexi-bound, but you can set individual points to be flexi-bound to a bone by selecting the bone (by Alt-clicking on it), next selecting the points you want to be flexi-bound, and select the Flexi-bind point option in the Bone menu. You can also flexi-bind all points in a layer, by selecting the Flexi-bind layer option in the Bone menu.

No binding. Points that have no binding, are called released points and are not affected by bone actions (translate, rotate, scale, IK-lock). You can release selected points through the Bone menu (Release point), or by first binding a point to a bone, and then releasing it by the method described in the point binding paragraph, above.

I hope this little overview will help you in your study of bones.
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Gnaws
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Post by Gnaws »

jordanek's manual point binding rig looks amazingly efficient.

Yet according to the manual:
Manually binding points to bones is a process that exists mostly for compatibility with older versions of Anime Studio.
To me, that sounded like manual point binding wasn't in keeping with AS Best Practices. Despite that, I'm using the jordanek rig in the future.

So I guess the bottom line is "use whatever works best for your individual style".
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heyvern
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Post by heyvern »

To me, that sounded like manual point binding wasn't in keeping with AS Best Practices.
Oh I never listen to those things. ;)

Often the creators of software have no idea what users will do with features. So many times a feature for one thing gets turned on its head and used for something completely different. (people using Animation:Master were creating beautiful brush stroked "paintings" using the hair feature. Who saw that coming?)

When I first bought Moho, the big hot discussion on the forum was about using switch layers for head turns. It was like a "brand new" thing at the time. I wonder if Mike saw that potential when he created the switch layer for lip sync.

-vern
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Rasheed
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Post by Rasheed »

Actually, for some things you even need more than the program is offering. Luckily, Mike made the program extensible (up to a point), so user can hack new features in scripting, that--hopefully--some day get incorporated in the core of the program.

I've read that someone was thinking of creating a 3D editor inside AS, with animation, of course. You cannot store the 3D animation data into the AS (or Moho) file, but you can import and export text files. Mike doesn't want AS to become a 3D animation program, but if someone is determined and skilled enough he or she can write a script that does just that.

Creative people (both programmers and animators) think out of the box, and don't particularly care about what should and should not be done. If it's there, and you can use it...

For instance, how about a bitmap painting tool, which lets you modify your bitmap drawings from within AS? You're supposed to do that in Photoshop or whatever external image editor, but that doesn't stop someone in writing an internal image editor to tweak some of the imported bitmap images. If it's useful, it might even be incorporated into the core program.

Of course, not the scripts, but the ideas of users, transferred in C++ by a professional programmer like Mike.
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Rai López
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Post by Rai López »

heyvern wrote:(people using Animation:Master were creating beautiful brush stroked "paintings" using the hair feature. Who saw that coming?)
...ME! That was the first thing that I thought to do when I saw such a feature ;) ...Happy to know I'm not the only one! (It sounds like a guarantee to me :)) The only thing bother to me is that you can't aboid that horrible fade/translucety at the end of the Spline, (at least on 11.1 version...) I think that I still have a solution but I wonder if you could have some nice news about that issue for me, cause I'm a little lost inside that giant app...

PS: Ahmmm, and sorry for the off-topic but I'm still a little lost too in all that huge new A:M forum :P
...
muuvist
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Post by muuvist »

Rasheed wrote: For instance, how about a bitmap painting tool, which lets you modify your bitmap drawings from within AS?
Yes! bitmap editing would be great. Or how about a tool similar to the bitmap mesh tool in the now defunct "Expression 3" from Creaturehouse. That would be perfect for tweaking imported textures that don't quite bend correctly with bones.
Sigh... EX3 had a lot of potential and "Living Cels" was looking promising too.
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dreeko13
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Post by dreeko13 »

i coloured the body red just to see it in action and this is what happened

Image

what on earth is going on?

when its rendered it just looks like he has a red body (as intended!)

would make it quite annoying to work on me thinks!
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