Dynamic Hand

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 7:00 pm

If I understand, I think you can just bind the troublesome vector points of the wrist to the hand bone in your switch layer. That way the wrist warps with the hand movement.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:21 pm

basshole wrote:Great.

Okay, now, how do you solve the problem (easily, that is), of joining this switch layer to the main body, but having the vector layers blend in?

The only way I've found to do it (after hiding the edges at the joint, of course) is to tediously jump between translate points and manipulate bones, reshaping the two layers/shapes that are supposed to look unified, 'til there's no obvious stuff sticking out during the animation arc. For instance, with this hand, a hand/wrist can only move so far in either direction. So once I key in the bone angle constraints, I keep moving the wrist back and forth, from one limit to the other, watching for one layer or the other to bulge out, or the outlines to mismatch, and give the gag away. I keep reshaping the vector layer 'til that stops happening. That's really tedious, though.

What I usually do is make sure the hand and the end of the wrist have a sort of "ball joint" set up. They sort of pivot around a center point. The joint is hidden. In my "furry hand" I was lucky because the fur hid the joint. Synthsin75 is sort of on the right track. You would need that hand bone in the main skeleton and in the switch.

It can be tricky if you need a "smooth" joint and there isn't anything like a sleeve to hide the joint. If your character has sleeves it's a piece of cake.

I will post a sample later.

-vern

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 11:00 pm

Oops, yeah that's what I meant. You'd need a hand bone in your main skeleton layer that is bound to your hand switch layer. Then bind the outline endpoints of the wrist to this hand bone. (maybe with some fan bones to minimize wrist distortion)

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 12:28 am

third time's the charm:

so, I bind the points of the wrist in the SWITCH layer to the hand bone in the master skeleton layer. . .that's what you mean? That's pretty clever.

Yeah, no sleeve on this character. He's a superhero with a form fitting glove.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 1:59 am

so, I bind the points of the wrist in the SWITCH layer to the hand bone in the master skeleton layer. . .that's what you mean?

Uh, I'm assuming the wrist is not in your hand switch layer, but if it works great. If not, try posting the AS file. Aside from giving us a better idea of what you're talking about, me or someone else would be happy to modify it and repost it so you could see exactly what we're talking about.

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 3:44 am

Well, the hand switch layer has the hand, and I can extend it into a wrist as much as is necessary.

The forearm layer ends in a stump, like a war vet.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 5:27 am

basshole wrote:third time's the charm:

so, I bind the points of the wrist in the SWITCH layer to the hand bone in the master skeleton layer. . .that's what you mean? That's pretty clever.

Yeah, no sleeve on this character. He's a superhero with a form fitting glove.

You can't do that. You can't bind points from inside a switch layer to any bone except the bones ON the switch layer.

-vern

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 7:15 am

That's what I thought. I THINK I see what you mean. I'll play around with it.

My book got here in the mail today, so that's nice.

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 11:15 am

Here is the project file:

http://joshbass.com/Site/Home_Page_files/ninjews.anme

It's his left hand. I bound the outer points of the forearm to the hand bone, but still had to trial and error it to get the arm and hand to line up perfectly. It's pretty solid now, I think.

Make sure your region binding is on when playing with it.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 4:34 pm

I cleaned the wrist up a bit. File here. You're on the right track. Minimizing the vector points helps how the wrist warps. Let me know how that works.

BTW. Nice character. I'm laughing already.

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:23 pm

I like the picture that comes up right before I download. . .

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 9:57 am

Ok, after playing around a little, I think perhaps I actually want to use actions to pose the hand, instead of a switch layer. Could this be right?

If I want to both move bones and morph points, I can't really do that with a switch, can I? Cause the bones are in the root switch layer, so you can't switch between bone positions.

But actions can include whatever you want. . .

So for instance, if I want to have the hand sometimes dead on to camera, sometimes forshortened one way or the other, doing poses like pointing with the index finger, grabbing something, etc.

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:33 am

If I want to both move bones and morph points, I can't really do that with a switch, can I? Cause the bones are in the root switch layer, so you can't switch between bone positions.

But you can have several skeletons in the same switch layer. Each one can only affect to one or some of the switch childs vector layers so when you switch from one vector layer ot to other you also switch from one skeleton to other skeleton.
To maintain all the skeletons move together just constraint their rotations, scales or translations ot a master one.

-G

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 12:25 pm

Funny, I was just about to ask about that.

So instead of just vector sublayers, I could have each sublayer of the hand switch layer be a hand skeleton with its OWN vector sublayers.

Here's the problem, the switch layer itself has bones right now. . .can I transfer them into a bone layer, and make that a sublayer of the switch, so that switch is "empty"? Is this even necessary? I guess I could just put this switch/skeleton layer in ANOTHER switch layer, and treat it as a bone layer?

When you talk about constraining the motions to a master skeleton, I'm not sure I know what you mean.

EDIT: Okay, I tried making a new empty switch layer, and putting the switch layer containing the hand bones inside it. Now my hand's disappeared. Can't see it. Does this not work, then?

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 1:35 pm

No, no.

I meant, make several skeletons (not several bone layers) at the same switch layer. Independent skeletons that affect only to some vector layers. To do that (affect only to some vector layers) you can use the offset technique or the bind point thing. The structure would be this:

-Shwith layer
--Vector layer 1
--Vector layer 2
--Vector layer 3

But each Vector layer is only affected by a subset of bones of the skeleton(s) of the switch layer. By independent skeletons I mean that there are more than one root bone in the bones of the switch layer. Each root bone represents a independent skeleton as well as its position, rotation or scale only affects to the root one and its childs.

Let's see the switch layer bones structure:
-Switch layer
(root1->child11->chil12->etc): This skeleton would only affect to Vector layer 1
(root2->child21->chil22->etc): This skeleton would only affect to Vector layer 2

etc.

Got it?

And to avoid animate all the skeletons (bones) at the same time you can constraint each set of bones (root2->child21->chil22->etc) to one of them (for example the number one). In this way each bone would have a correspondient bone in the master skeleton:

root2 <-- constrained by --> root1
child21 <-- constrained by --> child11

and so on.

-G