Bone animation for life! :D

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Fri May 12, 2006 9:10 pm

Just a tiny dig.

Anyway... my background is Animation Master.... you use bones. 99% of all animation is done with bones... I would venture to say most 3D apps use bones.

So... vector animating in Moho is not my favorite choice.

The following animation is pretty much just an experiment... I had fun with it though.

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/blobbo.mov

It is ALL bone animation... I never touched any vectors beyond frame 0. Every thing is controled by bones... no switch layers... just bones.

Here are some screen grabs of my bones. I use this type of set up for some characters that are kind of fat and blobby. It works great for bending and avoiding intersections. I use a series of what some would call "fan bones" with constraints to spread out the motion.

The bones are set for "region binding" not flexible binding.

The bones on the left are the control bones. All of the bones in the "body" are constrained at different amounts to the control bones.

My only point with this is that some think that vector animation is "the way to use moho".

It is "A" way... but bones work to. I don't think there is any best way to use Moho... what ever works for you is the best way. What ever way is comfortable from your own perspective or experience.

I like bones because I can animate this character easily by just moving the bones. If one part is a little off... I just move the bones... if I must I can also go in and tweak the points.

-Vern

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Fri May 12, 2006 10:39 pm

Great looking blobby character with nice and very expressive animation, and it's all done with bones!! that's great, thanks for showing this heyvern. If you have more please show it, and also the way you've rigged and controlled the animation, for me it's of most value!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sat May 13, 2006 4:50 am

Since the file I created for this isn't really "important" to me I thought I should just post it for download.

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/fan_bones.zip

Keep one thing in mind... I sort of use those constraints like... a paint brush. I tweak and fiddle... I often try constraining to different bones just to see the result.

Once I get something that works.... that looks good and I like it... then I stop fiddling.

So the constraining may be odd and inconsistent and possibly a better way would be possible... oh well... it works for me.

Also I added the back arm by duplicating the main bone layer animation, deleting all the parts except the arm and then just modifying the arm key frames for the opposite arm so it was "different".

Normally I wouldn't do this. I just didn't feel like adding another arm bone set up to this file.

-Vern

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Sat May 13, 2006 7:13 am

thanks a lot for the file, I'll check it and learn

Rai López · Post by **Rai López** » Sat May 13, 2006 8:57 am

...CURIOUS! I was experimenting too with duplicated "exoskeletons" in Moho looking for the most possible live animation (specially using Dynamics), well, in those days it seemed to me like a little intricated or round-about but now I can see I'm not the only twisted mind here

...CIAO!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sat May 13, 2006 10:40 am

Thanks Ramón.

I love using "external" bone controls. It allows me to move them around out of the way of the "body" so I can see what I am doing.

This is nothing... in Animation Master I would have a lot more fan bones... and they have to work in 3D... multiplied by every joint to smooth out the motion.

Here's an updated version of the animation.

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/blobbo2.mov

This was kind of fun. I just sort of make it up as I go. I never really know what will happen.

That is another thing I like about bones. If the character is set up right... I can do pretty much what ever I want. Like posing figures. Gives me more freedom to go back and change what ever I need to very easily.

-Vern

DetoNaToR · Post by **DetoNaToR** » Sat May 13, 2006 12:37 pm

I don't get it, how did you do a head turning animation using only bones..?

I downloaded your moho file but I can't understand your technique..

el_Brujo · Post by **el_Brujo** » Sat May 13, 2006 3:16 pm

great work! Now i have something to study...

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sat May 13, 2006 8:02 pm

DetoNaToR wrote:I don't get it, how did you do a head turning animation using only bones..? I downloaded your moho file but I can't understand your technique..

For the head turn there is an extra eye layer behind the head/body layer. As I turn and distort the head and neck I move this eye out... then a "third eye" layer is made visible as it turns to the front.

Normally I wouldn't do it this way. I would use a switch group for a head turn and then copy the created keyframes of the vectors to a "stand in" head so I can use interpolation. That is a bit of a pain to make changes of course.

I wanted to see how far I could go with out using any vector animation (Switch groups technically ARE vector animation in my head).

This started as an excersise... an experiemnt with fan bones. I hadn't really pushed the concept to this extreme yet.

I never intended to do a head turn... I kept adding in new stuff as I went along to make it work. This was sort of a free form "flow of conciousness" type animation.

First it was just a wiggly amorphous blue blob. Then I shaped a head on it and added an eye. Then an arm. Then I decided to do a head turn so I added some extra bones to the head to "distort" the shape... then I needed another eye... etc.

Later some of the fan bones weren't working properly so I go to frame 0 and tweaked the points. I found they work best with one bone for each point.

This could happen all while motion was "in place" with bone animation.
Adding new layers or changing the mesh did not effect any of the bones key framed motion.

I eventually put both eyes on separate layers so they could be moved more easily using bones and so I could scale them independently using layer scaling separate from the body/head... no vector scaling needed.

I wanted to be able to stretch out his body and neck so I added scaling constraints to the body bones. Scaling the control bones stretches the body bones.

This is why I like bones. Everytime I added in a new mesh or changed the vectors... or added a new layer... all I had to do was make sure it was associated with a bone that was already keyframed. If I added a new bone it was always a child of a bone already keyframed.

As I play with this... I plan to add simple fingers next. I won't have to animate vectors if I use bones to control them.

If this was vector animation and I added fingers to the existing mesh... I would have to key frame ALL those points on every existing key frame. By adding the fingers on frame 0 and just sticking in some new bones under the hand bone to control them I can easily go through and add finger motion separate from everything else already done.

This experiment... was purely an excorsize to show that bone animation is another technique in the Moho arsenal.

... bone animation for ME is the "Best "Way to Use Moho". It is how I have animated in 3D for nearly 10 years.

-Vern

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun May 14, 2006 10:13 am

Another one!

Added fingers... added some more bones for the bottom of his body... experimenting with some vector effects on the render.

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/fan_bones4.mov

-Vern

ingie01 · Post by **ingie01** » Sun May 14, 2006 1:25 pm

heyvern,
thanks for your contributions. you were always helpful on the A:M forums as well. I particularly liked your A:M avatar(s)!

kasjorg · Post by **kasjorg** » Mon May 15, 2006 1:44 pm

Hey great work:)

Nice blubby character! You are really in control of those bones and the bones gives it a nice style. I still think they limit the possibilities of - say squash and stretch without distorting, turning arms and legs towards the camera etc. So you will be limited to working with flat shapes and only bend them not form them - like the arms in your animation - woulden´t it be nice if you had them going forwards while going out in perspective?

Conclution - vector animation for real life!!!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Mon May 15, 2006 7:50 pm

Oh boy! A challenge...

I will give my usual excuses... with more time I could smooth this out. There are some rough spots... but this is just one rough pass. I need a few more bones in there... but it gets the job done. Didn't take very long either.

(it would be nice if bones could scale in both directions... looking forward to an update someday with that feature.)

Please keep in mind one thing... I CAN and DO use vector motion as needed. I don't insist on ALL bone animation.

I did for this situation just to see how it would work out. Obviously there would be some spots where moving points would clean up some of the rough spots.

I am just suggesting that bones don't inherently mean "bad" animation.

Take this animation with a grain of salt... I was just poking some fun. And actually... he only has 3 fingers so... not sure exactly which one he is "using".

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/justkidding2.mov

-Vern

kasjorg · Post by **kasjorg** » Mon May 15, 2006 8:37 pm

haha I rest my case!

taecg · Post by **taecg** » Tue May 16, 2006 9:35 am

oh! god!
cool!very nice~~~