Hair on Back of Head - Help!!

[gingie]

I haven't been able to figure out a simple way to put this so it's been impossible to google around for, but here goes!

One major thing interrupting my workflow is I've been unable to find a way to make hair at the back of the head move with the head's rotation without having to move it frame by frame myself. (Which always results in some visible glitchiness) Is there a way to make a layer glued to a point in another group, or rotate with a layer group that it isn't in? (It can't be in the same group because then it goes in front of the neck.)

I'll attach some images with my character rigs to show the issue. Whilst it's easy enough to fix on one frame, it isn't really convenient for my workflow and looks bad in motion.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/eMjbgHZWDuhkNfuG6
(It's been about a decade since I've used a forum and in that time I seem to have forgotten how to host images!)

Currently I'm working in Anime Studio Pro 11, so if there's a solution to this in Moho 12 or 13 I'll be very interested to update once I can afford to. (As a side note, ASP11 is running quite poorly on my new high spec Mac, it renders at light speed but the interface itself can't seem to handle particles without crashing or preview animation at a decent FPS. Would upgrading to a newer version of the software help with this?)

[Greenlaw]

That looks like a binding and constraints issue.

There are probably a handful of ways to do this. Here are a few ideas...

Use Use Flexi-binding for Selected Bones, Point Binding, or a combination of the two to deform the hair from top down. Then parent the root of this 'hair chain' to the head bone, so the hair chain moves with the head bone rotation.

To simulate the effect of 'gravity on the hair, you can do any of the following:

- use independent bone rotation
- use a bone target
- use bone dynamics
- manually keyframe it

One way to 'automate' this effect might be to parent the target bone to a lower part of the body, like the root or hip bone. This way, the hair is always pointing down relative to the character when it's walking around.

You might also insert a child bone in the hair chain so you can keyframe secondary 'swings' to the hair. This adds a little more realism to the hair motion.

If you decide to use Bone Dynamics, you'll want to use a bit of Dampening so the hair comes to a rest gently. Bone Dynamics is very 'springy' by default, and you want to minimize that. Personally, I avoid Bone Dynamics for really long hair. It can look ok when the characters motions are consistent and not extreme and may save you a little time, but I think it always looks better when it's manually keyframed and it's worth the effort. (It's really not that much more work either.)

Hope this helps.

[Greenlaw]

Regarding posting images, this forum changed software recently and we lost the TinyPic option.

However, you can still use TinyPic to host your images, and insert them into your posts. IMO, Tiny Pic works okay but there are many other image hosting sites that work well too. Sometimes I'll use Imgur.

You can even host the image yourself using DropBox or Google Cloud.

If you hover over the Insert Image button in the Post A Reply tool bar, it will show you the required format. Some hosting sites (like TinyPic) will even give you the link already formatted for this forum.

Hope this helps.

[gingie]

Thank you for your response! I'll definitely try to set up the hair physics on the braided hair as you mentioned.

Currently though, I do most of the animation manually or via switch layers, so my characters don't actually have a full bone rig, I only really use bones for in hair. I don't have a head bone because I worry about distortion to the shape of the head, I just have everything grouped at each point of rotation.

Is it still possible to set up parenting without bones?

[Greenlaw]

Currently though, I do most of the animation manually or via switch layers, so my characters don't actually have a full bone rig, I only really use bones for in hair. I don't have a head bone because I worry about distortion to the shape of the head, I just have everything grouped at each point of rotation.

Is it still possible to set up parenting without bones?

The Flexi-binding mode is a global setting that affects all layers by default, so generally not suitable for rigging and animating a complex character. If the default binding is not adjusted, it can cause the unwanted distortions you describe.

In other words, using bones won't necessarily distort body parts in bad ways...you just need to apply them correctly to your character. If you use Use Selected Bones for Flexi-binding, Point Binding, Smooth Joint, or Layer binding, or any combination of these, you can constrain the deformations to only the areas where you want them (usually just the joint areas). With Smart Bone Actions, you can refine the deformations further. You can check out my demo reel in the link below to see examples.

I'm surprised to hear you wish to avoid using bones in Moho. To me, Moho's Bones, Smart Bones Actions and Bone Constraints are primary reason to even use the program...after all, this is a puppet rigging and animation program. If you're animating characters in Moho, you should really look into this.

Hope this helps.

[gingie]

Yeah, I have a pretty strange workflow for this software! (And yet I've stuck with it for a decade now) I'd consider myself 'in it' for the interpolation features, and motion tweening. Sometimes I just use the software for predawn frames cause switch layers are easy to work with! I'll probably start looking into ways to animate that work better with the tools. I usually get held up by things like bones not allowing foreshortening of joints etc, but with the newer versions of the software that might be less of an issue.

I have a feeling a lot of the features you mentioned aren't in ASP11 that I have, so I'll look forward to trying them out once I can upgrade. Oh and thanks again!



(Retrospectively I really could have used bones for this a lot more than I did, haha....)

[Greenlaw]

Pretty cool! Thanks for sharing that.

Here's a 'quick and dirty' demo I threw together in a few minutes:



This is probably as simple as it gets. The head is layer binded to the head bone, the top of the back hair is point binded to the head bone, the entire hair is then binded to the two lower hair bones and the head bone using Use Selected Bones For Flexi-binding. The bone strength for the two hair bones is default, and the bone strength for all the other bones is set to zero. (I should have lowered bottom hair bone's strength by maybe half so it only affects the lower points but I didn't want to spend too much time on this...gotta leave the house in a sec.)

Oh, almost forgot: I have Independent Rotation enabled for the top hair bone. This is what keeps the hair pointing 'down' (or whichever direction I decide.)

The nice thing about this setup is that it moves with the head but I also have independent control over the hair animation, the hair automatically points to the ground when I want it to, and it moves with the character's both when I move the root bone.

This should be a good starting point and I hope it gives you some ideas.

[gingie]

I had no idea this was possible! That's really cool, it's definitely giving me some ideas for my next rig. Thank you!

[Greenlaw]

Ok, I'm back. Here's a tweaked version with the top hair bone's pivot moved a slightly higher and the lower hair bone's strength slightly reduced :



Not perfect but I think this illustrates how easy it is to tame the deformations with a few small adjustments.