How do I mirror asymmetrical hair styles?

Wondering how to accomplish a certain animation task? Ask here.

Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger

Post Reply
CodyBDrawin'
Posts: 30
Joined: Sat Apr 02, 2022 7:23 am

How do I mirror asymmetrical hair styles?

Post by CodyBDrawin' »

Up front, I get that the following borders on being more of an art style question, but it's proven to be a hurdle with characters' hair styles in the past, and I'm going to stop running from it and try to face it head-on.

The character I'm working on (pictured below) has her roots in being based on the design - but not completely; I've got enough originality to have made the tweaks that I wanted in order to make a unique design - of a minor Phineas and Ferb character with a great hairstyle, but there's a bit of a dilemma in that she's never shown facing the camera, so I have no idea what her hairstyle would look like in that style, and perspective-wise, I can't picture it or try to reverse-engineer it in Moho.

Image

The lefthand face was the original attempt I made last year at designing a new character based on the general likeness of a preexisting one. It was largely traced, but I made a couple of changes to things like the nose and ear, and adding a bun to the back hair layer, to make it a bit more original. The righthand face is one that I'm drawing from scratch, still in a similar style and likeness, but with the goal being to start with a frontal view and have a smart bone dial that can make the character's hair consistently resemble the hairstyle on the left regardless of if the character is facing to the left or to the right.

As I said earlier, I've had this problem with a multitude of different character hair styles, when it comes to preserving a 3D sort of illusion to it, and I could really use some help in figuring out how to go about making smart bone dial head turns with somewhat complex hair styles. If anybody could give me some advice/instructions on how one could go about mirroring that sort of thing (that is, more advanced hairstyles), I would greatly appreciate it.
User avatar
slowtiger
Posts: 6081
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2006 6:53 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany
Contact:

Re: How do I mirror asymmetrical hair styles?

Post by slowtiger »

This is a common problem especially with characters designed just for illustration - in fact, just now I have to work with that kind of problem in some TV ads I'm animating. The official turnaround contains a front view face where the hair is asymmetrical as well - you just have to decide to which side it leans.
Image

In animating a head turn, however, the best option is to do it fast. Let's say you have side, 3/4 and front view, the front hair ("pony" as it's called in german) will behave like that:

Code: Select all

side left	- left pony
3/4 left	- left pony
front		- left pony
3/4 right	- right pony
side right	- right pony
Do a test animation with this, it works well enough on 1's and 2's.

Any slow transition from one side hair to the other will look odd. Also don't forget the old animator's rule that no head turn should be done on a vertical axis (resulting in a perfect horizontal turn), but put the mid position a bit downwards (and have an eye blink there), because that's 1. more natural and 2. can cover up hair difficulties.
Some more tips:
- The most noticeable shape will be the "silhouette" of the hair because it's a different colour. Any lines inside that will not be noticed changing directions.
- If the hair is a bit longer you could also play with its elasticity and let it bob up and down, all covering the fact that it changes directions at some point. Also think of follow through action (especially with long hair).
- Slow head turns are quite rare in normal movements, you only do that when you follow a far away racing horse. In a conversation any head turn (from a speaker on one side to one on the other) will be quite fast. Many shows do with just a switch from 3/4 left to 3/4 right.
- You can fake your way through by avoiding a front view at all. If you have a 3/4 left to 3/4 right turn, do only 2 inbetweens (which technically will be 15° and -15° from front).
AS 9.5 MacPro Quadcore 3GHz 16GB OS 10.6.8 Quicktime 7.6.6
AS 11 MacPro 12core 3GHz 32GB OS 10.11 Quicktime 10.7.3
Moho 13.5 iMac Quadcore 2,9GHz 16GB OS 10.15

Moho 14.1 Mac Mini Plus OS 13.5
CodyBDrawin'
Posts: 30
Joined: Sat Apr 02, 2022 7:23 am

Re: How do I mirror asymmetrical hair styles?

Post by CodyBDrawin' »

I'm sorry. I'm really confused, particularly since the demo image you posted didn't actually show up, so if there was a visual aid, I don't see it. Do you have some sort of demo that you would be willing to share that I could examine and reverse engineer, just to see how it works based on what you're describing?

Also, a related issue I'm having with this is that my head turn (which is a work in progress) isn't consistent in the mainline as it is when setting up the smart bone action.

Image
Image
Post Reply