Adding smart layer hands to preexisting character

[Lordwardell]

So I have a character fully created already and I was trying to add more options of hands, I found a couple helpful videos online but the image is so small I can't see which buttons I'm actually suppose to press in order to get the desired results,

[dondo]

Hey, I'm fairly new to this stuff too, but maybe I can help... but I'm not completely sure what you're asking, and the answer depends quite a lot on how you're doing it. Here's how I'm doing it:

The characters I'm working with are all drawn in photoshop and then imported as images (really as .psd files). We draw each segment of the limbs into a separate layer: e.g. upper arm, forearm, hands. So I then add bones along those segments, and flexi-bind each bone to the specific layer (which means I don't have to worry about bone strength affecting something it shouldn't). For any joints that don't look right, I add a mesh, tell the image to use that mesh as a "Smart warp layer," and then use smart bones to do the fine-point corrections.

So with that setup, to deal with hands in different positions (specifically things like rotating the palm in and out, and pointing fingers, and so on), we draw the various views of the hands independently. Then I put all the hands into a "switch" layer where the hand image would be if there were only one. Once that's done, I can now switch between the various views. I think perhaps that's what you need here?

But I should note that making this work well is a bit tricky. You need to make sure that the wrist for each hand is close enough in appearance that when you switch between them there's no visual weirdness across the full motion of the hand-bone. If you do need to add a mesh and make corrections, it is possible to have multiple image layers use the same mesh as a warp layer. So you can use that to fine tune at the wrist, but that's really (really really) hard to get right because the effect on the rest of the hand is almost always wrong in most of the hand positions. We've been able to avoid doing that by getting the wrist shape right.

Does that answer your question?

[Lordwardell]

Yes thank you your info was very helpful, I actually solved my problem shortly after posting but your help is much appreciated. Thank you

[Greenlaw]

Some handy tips for hands:

For our 'A' rigs, I like to create a fully poseable vector hand that's controlled by a set of Smart Bones, which are synchronized to multiple angles. Basically I have a Smart Bone Dial (SBD) for each finger, a 'global' SBD for the whole hand (open is neutral, with closing into a fist or opening wider and spreading fingers.) Then there's another SBD to step-rotate the hand 360 degrees from palm to back and back to palm again. Since each 'rotation' version of the hand uses the same posing SBD's, the poses stay synced when the hand is rotated. Then 'static' hand poses may be added later to the switch for the poses we can't hit with the poseable setup. These 'one-off' poses ignore the Rotate SBD.

The 'one-offs' are either vectors assembled from a construction kit, or quickly sketched in Photoshop. It doesn't really matter how they're made since the drawings aren't actually rigged, they just need to match the look of the rigged hands.

If the above sounds like an advanced setup, you're right, and I only do this for main characters that will be used throughout the season of a show.

For 'B' characters (more common,) I just make a simple switch layer and add hand pose drawings to the switch as needed. ('B' characters are one-offs that may only appear for a few scenes in a single episode. Boss Baby: Back in Business, for example, had a ton of these.) These are usually static hand drawings that simply switch from pose to pose, but I might make add animation to a hand drawing one if a scene really calls for it.

For hands with a poseable rig, you probably want to go with vectors, which are awesome for making many hand shapes with a basic 'construction kit' approach.

For switch hand poses, when I'm not using an SBD to drive the fingers, I just switch between drawn poses. There are multiple ways to do this in Moho.

Most of the time, I like to link this to an SBD that flips through the drawings in a switch layer. This works well but it's a pain to update if you intend to add a lot of new drawings. What I used to use is Ctrl-Alt click over the drawing in the workspace, which calls up a list you can choose from. (To select the switch layer directly, use Shift-Alt click--this actually selects the parent group, which in this case is the Switch Layer.) This still works well for simpler but it can get messy if you have a lot of Groups inside the switch, or 'invisible' layers blocking the switch.

Lately, I've been using Switch Selection. This works great but you'll probably want to use Timeline visibility to keep the switches visible in the Timeline--this gives you a direct 'button' (the text label) to click on to select the switch. That catch with this is you always need at least one keyframe for the Switch to make it visible in the Timeline. That can clutter your timeline. (We really need a better system for managing this sort of thing.)

Additional tip: When you make an advanced hand setup, add a separate Style for the stroke and fills. This helps when you wish to reuse the setup for other characters. If you do this, at some point, you should import the hands into itself--this gives you the opportunity to break the Style ID so you don't get conflicts when characters using the hand setup have different skin color or line weights in their hands.

Final tip: A while back, I thought I was being clever by making a single Switch Layer that had just about every possible hand pose a character might ever need in a show. I wound up with about 60 hand poses for each character. TBH, I don't recommend this...it was a pain to scrub through all these poses. If I considered trying this approach again, I'd probably break down the hand drawings into multiple categories of switches. I still think that's going to be a pain animate though.

Sorry, despite writing a lot here, I'm having to skip over a lot of details because this can be a pretty big topic. I'll cover it more fully in video course I've been putting together. For now, I hope the above info will give you some ideas for your rig.

[dondo]

Greenlaw, this reminds me of one of my biggest pet peeves:

When I've selected a layer contained within a bone layer (typically when I'm moving assets around during rigging), I often forget and try to "Z" manipulate bones, which silently fails. Then when the bone doesn't move I get pulled out of my flow, or worse when I end up moving my assets I risk screwing up everything.

Is there any keystroke (or mouse interaction) that will select the containing bone layer?

To be honest, I don't really understand why "Z" doesn't do this automatically. If I'm in a vector layer contained in a bone layer I type "Z", why not just auto-select the containing bone layer and switch the tool?

Thoughts?

[Greenlaw]

I do almost all of my animation in the bones layer so this generally hasn't been a problem for me.

By design, all the animation is driven with the skeleton, target bones, or SBDs so I rarely need to switch to another layer to animate the character. About the only time I go into another layer is when I need to add a custom point animation and when I'm done, I immediately switch back to the bones layer and continue.

Since the bones layer is at the top of the rig, it's pretty easy to access. Most of the sub-groups and layers beneath the bones layer stay closed most of the time.