Bone Binding - Tutorial 5.6

Bob G · Post by **Bob G** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 7:33 am

I'm trying to bone a cartoon character derived by importing images of components of the character such as body, torso, right leg, left leg, etc. I'd like to end up with bone manipulation similar to that of the example in Anime Pro's Tutorial 5.6. The Turtorial's character has very complete separation of the movement, for instance, of the legs. The left leg can be manipulated completely independently from the right leg and, for that matter, any of the other main components of the character.

When I bone my cartoon characters, however, all of the components interact with each other to varying degrees and I'll like them to be indpendent as with the Turtorial. I do select the "Region Binding" mode for the bones vs. the "Flexible Binding" mode per the Manual. I then shrink the "Bone Strength" so that, for instance, the left leg of my character's bone strengh zone does not overlap the right leg bone strengh. However, when I manipulate the right leg, the left leg is still strongly effected and vice versa.

I noticed that the bone strength zones of the Tutorial character could be made very large overlapping other components but the component, e.g. a right leg, could still be manipulated completely independently of any other component.

QUESTION #1: Why is it that the bone strength zone of a given component of the Tutorial 5.6 character can be made very large overlapping other components and still have the various components so indpendent of the maniulation of others?????

QUESTION #2: What is the best method for boning the components of a character imported as individual images to achieve the independent manipulation that the Tutorial 5.6 character has???? I'm asking, in part, because I'm wondering if there is a difference between an imported PNG image and a component of a character actually drawn within Anime.

Cheers,
Bob G

Nolan Scott · Post by **Nolan Scott** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 11:28 am

Split the Character apart before adding the bones...
Check out Tutorial 3.4 Character Setup...
It really doesn’t matter if you use imported image components or your own vector drawings.

Regards
Nolan

Bob G · Post by **Bob G** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 4:08 pm

Nolan,
Thanks for the response. I do split the character apart before adding the bones but I now think that the problem is that I've been following the guidance of the use manual and deliberately establishing a linkage between the components by selecting the bone in the torso just before adding any bones to another component such as a leg. An example is that I select the torso bone then add all of the bones of the left leg. After that I select the torso bone again and add all of the bones of the right leg.

I will recreate my character without selecting the torso bone first and see if it makes the difference.

Cheers,
Bob G

sbtamu · Post by **sbtamu** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 4:56 pm

I have never been a fan of designing the character pulled apart. I bind all the points manually to the bones. IMO, this method gives you more control when it's time to animate.

sbtamu · Post by **sbtamu** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 6:15 pm

This might help you some.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfKjWuxo ... e=youtu.be

Bob G · Post by **Bob G** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 10:39 pm

sbtamu,
Thanks for the inputs. The link you provided ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfKjWuxo ... e=youtu.be ) was helpful in that it suggests that, if I want good separation, I need to separate the components of my character quite far a part before I add the bones.
My components were separated but too close together because I had found a really nice method for importing my character's components without needed to manually align them to assemble the character. Mind you my components are created by using Photoshop to take a hand drawn character and chop (using Photoshop's Lasoo tool) it up into components such as torso, head, leg etc before importing them to Anime. The trick is to do nothing whatsoever to tranlaste the XY position of the components at every stage from Photoshop through Anime importing. The components then remain aligned exactly as in the hand drawing image and are thus automatically aligned. NOTE: Getting good alignment manually after the components have been separated has not been that easy for me.
The problem with my trick method, of course, is that the components above are all too close for the separation of bone strength that I'm looking for. I'll try to find a method that gets both separation and semi-auto reassembly of components.
NOTE: Because of my "day job", I've haven't had a chance to try any of the recent suggestions from forum members yet but I'll get to them eventually. Thanks to all for the helpful suggestions.
Cheers,
Bob G.

sbtamu · Post by **sbtamu** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 10:53 pm

Use bind layer to bone when using images. Like this example I made awhile back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRFkpSEc ... AAAAAAARAA

Bob G · Post by **Bob G** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 11:35 pm

sbtamu,
Good stuff. Thanks! Can't wait to try it.
Cheers,
Bob G.

Bob G · Post by **Bob G** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 7:48 am

sbtamu,
Thanks to your input and that of others, I now have a method, hopefully repeatable, by which I can separate a left leg from a right leg and animate a couple of strides reasonable well.
I had planned to get a couple of strides done then use Copy and Paste to replicate the strides in the "Channel" tab of the "Timeline" enough times in conjunction to a "Follow Path" to represent my character walking over some distance.
I didn't get to the "Follow Path" because the Copy and Paste didn't work correctly. Below is what I did and the result I got...

1. For the Skeleton layer of my character, and in the "Channels Tab" of the "Timeline", I moved the cursor to frame 0.
2. I held down the left button on my mouse and higlighted 9 frames of the Timeline. That caused all of the 4 channels in the Timline to turn red for frames 0 through 8.
2. I clicked "Copy" in the Edit drop down menu.
3. I moved the cursor from frame 0 to frame 9.
4. I clicked "Paste" in the Edit drop down menu.
5. RESULT: Frames 0 through 8, which were still with red highlighting, reverted to the non-red default colors but there was no paste starting at frame 9 where I had repositioned the cursor in step 3.
NOTE: I've tried this before and it worked as expected but, for some reason, the COPY/PASTE is not working as expected this time.
QUESTION: What am I doing wrong????

Cheers,
Bob G.