This was one of the first characters I created with Moho. I used it for early testing of this head rig. It wasn't that great so I decided to upgrade it to the new one. I added in more controls for the eyes. May have to rethink her hair. Right now that splkey hair just isn't going to work so great with the rig without a lot more bones and fiddling. I may give her a new simpler hair style. What is there now is a switch layer with some dynamic constraint bones from the original file.
Anyway, this is a test of the new eye controls. Very smooth. Large range of emotions/poses. Used a bit of layer squetch.
http://www.lowrestv.com/anime_studio/bo ... d_rigB.mov
-vern
New character with my head rig... well not so new.
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funksmaname
- Posts: 3174
- Joined: Tue May 29, 2007 11:31 am
- Location: New Zealand
cool vern,Yes, the hair is from the original. I did it ages ago. It is chains of bones over vector shapes with soft edge fills. I added dynamics to the bones so they wiggle a bit. I will probably go with a more "solid" hair style or at least very simplified.
It's tricky putting hair on this rig. That's why the main guy I did was bald... and my brother's caracature is mostly bald
. i have to put part of it on a layer above of the "face" layer and part is below the back head layer. I solved the ears that way. They are on a layer above the face. The face layer stops at the ears. There is a back of the head layer behind the ears to complete the illusion.
-vern
It's tricky putting hair on this rig. That's why the main guy I did was bald... and my brother's caracature is mostly bald
. i have to put part of it on a layer above of the "face" layer and part is below the back head layer. I solved the ears that way. They are on a layer above the face. The face layer stops at the ears. There is a back of the head layer behind the ears to complete the illusion.-vern
Heyvern;
I'm impressed with the amount of control you have over the head. I've been studying Fiziwig's tutorials for head and body turns:
http://fiziwig.com/anim/index08.php
Questions:
1. Is your rig as complicated as the one in Fiziwig's tutorial? I'm looking for a simple way to make head and body turns.
2. Do you think Fiziwig's tutorial is adaptable to more realistic looking characters that I like to draw.
F.C.Snow
I'm impressed with the amount of control you have over the head. I've been studying Fiziwig's tutorials for head and body turns:
http://fiziwig.com/anim/index08.php
Questions:
1. Is your rig as complicated as the one in Fiziwig's tutorial? I'm looking for a simple way to make head and body turns.
2. Do you think Fiziwig's tutorial is adaptable to more realistic looking characters that I like to draw.
F.C.Snow
Precise Planning And Timing
Never Suceeds Like Dump Luck.
Never Suceeds Like Dump Luck.
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tiannaidan
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Thu Jan 08, 2009 1:29 am
- Contact:
head animation
Nice work.Did you use pro for that?I only have the standard but will upgrade later.I have done a lot of work with 3D programs and recently switched to AS.
Gee I,m only a novice, so it's not really constructive for me to criticise. Generally I think it's great. But, Vern, I do have a few questions. How many bones did you use? And, what are the gereral techniques that you used?
Last edited by Durand on Sun Jan 11, 2009 2:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The rig I use is HIDEOUSLY COMPLEX. It's over the top. I think the Nasa moon landings were simpler by comparison. I think to use this rig on your own you would have to find a tiny door in an office somewhere that puts yoo into my head and spits you out on the NJ turnpike after 15 minutes.
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The rig for the head has just over 200 bones... uh... sorry... I added some recently for more eyelid control. It has 227 bones exactly. Most of these bones are what I call "compound bones". 3 or more bones exactly in the same spot but each moving in opposing directions. This is how I can turn the head, which moves the points of the mouth, but still open and close the mouth while the head is turned. These "compound bones" each work simultaneous moving in different directions base on constraints.
(Compound bones are what I use to make up for a missing feature in AS. You can only target ONE bone with a constraint. You can't position a bone half way between two other bones with a constraint. The way around this is to put in a duplicate bone for each other bone I need to constrain to.)
The mouth I think is the best part of the rig. I can get some really wonderful expressions. It has two rows of bones, about 10 each for the upper and lower lips. 5 bones for each side of the lip for individual control... or it might be 11 bones with a center bone controlling the sets... see? I can't even remember exactly and the rig still works! It's just like my car. Don't have to know how it works. Just put gas in it and drive.
Each of those bones is duplicated 3 (or is it 4?) times in exactly the same spot but controlled by other bones. So one set moves with the head rotation bone to create the perspective or 3D effect, while another set of bones moves with the jaw and lips control bones. Each of those bones have position constraints to the next bone in the chain and so on. Then each set is controlled by it's own control bone; Upper Lip, Lower Lip/jaw, Right upper lip, Left Lower lip... etc etc.
Because of this strange compound bone set up, some of the bones have EXTREME settings on the constraints. Like 5 to 10 in some cases. If you see these bones during movement they often translate entirely off the work area of the screen. That is because they are working with the other bones to share influence.
The ears are actually... the most complex bit of bone trickery. They fold and unfold like an umbrella as the head turns. The ears must have the same points in the same spot on frame 0. I can tweak the shape of the ear on the vector layer on frame 1.
I love the ears. After the mouth the ears are my favorite part of the rig. They work so well. It was very hard figuring out the bone constraints so that the ears collapse properly in the front view and still looked good. I had to have a version of the ear in view as I tweaked the constraints of each ear bone, subtly adjusting each bone so that it went from a side view ear to a front view ear.
90% of the bones never get touched. There are just a few bones that actually get keyed.
There is a single layer script on the bone layer. It's main purpose is to adjust the eye translations. As the head turns the outside eye goes "in" again slightly. It's one of those funky spherical rotation math thingies that Genete helped me with ages and ages ago when developing this rig. I hard coded it into a script.
The script also does a few other simple things like turning translation into rotation and visa versa for a few bones.
-----------------------------------------
In Conclusion
Please read carefully...
After describing this freaking nightmare rig and all of its complexity and intricacies that I've nearly forgotten...
The Rig Is Done! I will never have to build it from scratch again. I have been "tweaking" it of late but the rig exists and I won't have to "recreate it" for a new character. Just modify maybe 5 or six main bones. I might have to move a bone to lower/raise the eyes or the mouth. A bone to move the ears up and down etc. I may have to adjust points so they fall on certain bones, but in general I can draw a face and then apply it to the rig.
Adding a new face to the rig sometimes require a bit of finesse and fiddling but not more so than doing a character from scratch with switch layers or some other technique. It's very much worth it for the end result and ease of animation.
The rig already has a set of papagayo phonemes as actions. Each new character already has those phoneme actions "built in" because I use the same rig. I can use papagayo for "rough" lip sync. I can then go in and tweak the "acting". Since the bones never "change" and the positions of the bones for the actions are "relative" to the rig, they usually work well without much tweaking. And it's easy to adjust them if needed.
The bad news for me anyway is that I can't use this rig on my mac. Too slow. That was why it was in moth balls till now.
p.s. If multiple constraint targets on one bone are ever added to a future version of AS I could redo this rig using maybe 50 bones or less.
EDIT:
There is one fairly drastic modification I must make at some point. The mouth does not have a bone to pull the center of the lips up and down for creating really convincing "O" shapes. I have been avoiding adding this in for the reasons mentioned above. Some day soon though after a pot of coffee, buzzing on caffiene... some fast classic punk or techno music blasting on my headphones...
-vern
I think to use this rig on your own you would have to find a tiny door in an office somewhere that puts yoo into my head and spits you out on the NJ turnpike after 15 minutes. -----
The rig for the head has just over 200 bones... uh... sorry... I added some recently for more eyelid control. It has 227 bones exactly. Most of these bones are what I call "compound bones". 3 or more bones exactly in the same spot but each moving in opposing directions. This is how I can turn the head, which moves the points of the mouth, but still open and close the mouth while the head is turned. These "compound bones" each work simultaneous moving in different directions base on constraints.
(Compound bones are what I use to make up for a missing feature in AS. You can only target ONE bone with a constraint. You can't position a bone half way between two other bones with a constraint. The way around this is to put in a duplicate bone for each other bone I need to constrain to.)
The mouth I think is the best part of the rig. I can get some really wonderful expressions. It has two rows of bones, about 10 each for the upper and lower lips. 5 bones for each side of the lip for individual control... or it might be 11 bones with a center bone controlling the sets... see? I can't even remember exactly and the rig still works! It's just like my car. Don't have to know how it works. Just put gas in it and drive.
Each of those bones is duplicated 3 (or is it 4?) times in exactly the same spot but controlled by other bones. So one set moves with the head rotation bone to create the perspective or 3D effect, while another set of bones moves with the jaw and lips control bones. Each of those bones have position constraints to the next bone in the chain and so on. Then each set is controlled by it's own control bone; Upper Lip, Lower Lip/jaw, Right upper lip, Left Lower lip... etc etc.
Because of this strange compound bone set up, some of the bones have EXTREME settings on the constraints. Like 5 to 10 in some cases. If you see these bones during movement they often translate entirely off the work area of the screen. That is because they are working with the other bones to share influence.
The ears are actually... the most complex bit of bone trickery. They fold and unfold like an umbrella as the head turns. The ears must have the same points in the same spot on frame 0. I can tweak the shape of the ear on the vector layer on frame 1.
I love the ears. After the mouth the ears are my favorite part of the rig. They work so well. It was very hard figuring out the bone constraints so that the ears collapse properly in the front view and still looked good. I had to have a version of the ear in view as I tweaked the constraints of each ear bone, subtly adjusting each bone so that it went from a side view ear to a front view ear.
90% of the bones never get touched. There are just a few bones that actually get keyed.
There is a single layer script on the bone layer. It's main purpose is to adjust the eye translations. As the head turns the outside eye goes "in" again slightly. It's one of those funky spherical rotation math thingies that Genete helped me with ages and ages ago when developing this rig. I hard coded it into a script.
The script also does a few other simple things like turning translation into rotation and visa versa for a few bones.
-----------------------------------------
In Conclusion
Please read carefully...
After describing this freaking nightmare rig and all of its complexity and intricacies that I've nearly forgotten...
The Rig Is Done! I will never have to build it from scratch again. I have been "tweaking" it of late but the rig exists and I won't have to "recreate it" for a new character. Just modify maybe 5 or six main bones. I might have to move a bone to lower/raise the eyes or the mouth. A bone to move the ears up and down etc. I may have to adjust points so they fall on certain bones, but in general I can draw a face and then apply it to the rig.
Adding a new face to the rig sometimes require a bit of finesse and fiddling but not more so than doing a character from scratch with switch layers or some other technique. It's very much worth it for the end result and ease of animation.
The rig already has a set of papagayo phonemes as actions. Each new character already has those phoneme actions "built in" because I use the same rig. I can use papagayo for "rough" lip sync. I can then go in and tweak the "acting". Since the bones never "change" and the positions of the bones for the actions are "relative" to the rig, they usually work well without much tweaking. And it's easy to adjust them if needed.
The bad news for me anyway is that I can't use this rig on my mac. Too slow. That was why it was in moth balls till now.
p.s. If multiple constraint targets on one bone are ever added to a future version of AS I could redo this rig using maybe 50 bones or less.
EDIT:
There is one fairly drastic modification I must make at some point. The mouth does not have a bone to pull the center of the lips up and down for creating really convincing "O" shapes. I have been avoiding adding this in for the reasons mentioned above. Some day soon though after a pot of coffee, buzzing on caffiene... some fast classic punk or techno music blasting on my headphones...
-vern
Heyvern Wrote:
F.C.Snow
PS- 227 bones? Hmmm.
I want to know what kind of medication you're on, but I'm not sure I want to take it or avoid it like the plague.The rig for the head has just over 200 bones... uh... sorry... I added some recently for more eyelid control. It has 227 bones exactly.
F.C.Snow
PS- 227 bones? Hmmm.
Precise Planning And Timing
Never Suceeds Like Dump Luck.
Never Suceeds Like Dump Luck.
Yes... true... but the bones in AS also simulate muscles and tendons, so I think I'm off the hook. Off the hook meaning "not in trouble" and not like "insane" or "wild".jahnocli wrote:There are only 206 bones in the human body!It has 227 bones exactly.
I think of this rig like the people who created Taj Mahal or Mount Rushmore. Once it's done, you don't have to start over doing it again and create a tutorial and instructions to build another one every week.*
-vern
* Unless you work for Lego or something.
Thanks for the detailed description. MY BRAIN HURTS!!!! I'm thinking that a job at lego might do me a world of good.
Last edited by Durand on Sun Jan 11, 2009 2:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Keep in mind my background. I came to Moho and ASP from using Animation Master, a 3D program that uses bones almost identical to AS bones (AM came first of course).
With Animation Master having hundreds of bones is almost standard operating procedure. You need bunches and bunches of bones, bones for the geometry, fan bones for joints, control bones, rigging bones etc etc etc. So 200 bones in AS when I first created the rig didn't seem so far out to me at the time.
-vern
With Animation Master having hundreds of bones is almost standard operating procedure. You need bunches and bunches of bones, bones for the geometry, fan bones for joints, control bones, rigging bones etc etc etc. So 200 bones in AS when I first created the rig didn't seem so far out to me at the time.
-vern
Hmm that's one of the things I got tired of in AM - all those bones, I did get Anzovin's weightings tool ,which took a lot out of that.
I had a revisit to AM last night though to see if it baked shadows to make them better AS props - what a great interface it has.
Unfortunately it crashed every time I tried to import an obj (with texture maps particularly) and so I sighed once again and put the disk back where it came from.
I had a revisit to AM last night though to see if it baked shadows to make them better AS props - what a great interface it has.
Unfortunately it crashed every time I tried to import an obj (with texture maps particularly) and so I sighed once again and put the disk back where it came from.