The Mad Professor!

Want to share your Moho work? Post it here.

Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger

User avatar
heyvern
Posts: 7035
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:49 am

The Mad Professor!

Post by heyvern »

Recently got a Wacom Intuous 5 touch. This thing is OFF THE HOOK AMAZING! The touch is what makes it better than anything like this I've used, including the Wacom products I've used over the years. It's the medium size which is WAY better than the small Intuous 4 I use to use.

I wanted to really try it out the new Intuous so decided to create a new character for Anime Studio.

Here is the sketch done in Photoshop using the Intuous 5:
Image

The rigged character in Anime Studio
Image

Here is the video walk test:



This character uses strokes for arms, sleeves and legs. Lots and lots of smart bones for head and body turns. I was able to achieve full side to front turns and also added in a "back" view in a switch simply by duplicating the front view and making some modifications. This gives me an entire 360 turn. Of course the turn doesn't work with any pose because the bone angles for limbs change too much, but having the ability to use the same rig at any angle will save effort.
Last edited by heyvern on Tue Oct 01, 2013 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Danimal
Posts: 1584
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 3:06 pm
Location: The Danimal Kingdom
Contact:

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by Danimal »

Looks really incredible and speaks to the strokes for limbs technique. Also, I'm sure this is the dingbat in me, but I loved the way his mustache "bobbled" when he moved his head. Very "cartoony" in a good way!
~Danimal
User avatar
funksmaname
Posts: 3174
Joined: Tue May 29, 2007 11:31 am
Location: New Zealand

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by funksmaname »

Great work Vern! and nice to see progress from sketch to animation.
Only thing that stands out to me is that his goggles are the only things with an outline... if one is necessary, perhaps make it a more similar brown to the main colour rather than a black?
User avatar
amiramostafa
Posts: 100
Joined: Wed Aug 21, 2013 12:15 pm
Location: Cairo, Egypt
Contact:

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by amiramostafa »

i find it amazing , try to animate the coat , it'll be perfect
User avatar
heyvern
Posts: 7035
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:49 am

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by heyvern »

Yes, the goggles fill style is a mistake I missed. The goggles will be done in similar shaded style like the rest of the character. I missed that shape when I switched to a non stroked fill shape style.

Originally the character was done with "outlined" shapes and dark variable stroke weights based on the sketch. I traced the sketch in ASP and set up all the styles and variable stroke widths.

I changed the style because the rolling up of the sleeves was a main feature of the character. He would do that a lot when getting to work. It was a bit of a pain to do this with filled arm shapes, and decided to finally try that cool "stroke limb" trick I keep seeing here all over the place done so fantastically. There just was no simple way to roll up the ends of a filled shape, but a stroke was a piece of cake using stroke exposure.

Once I tried it and saw how freaking EASY and effective it is, I had to use it. It has so many advantages, no overlap issues, so few points (arm only has THREE points, just THREE! shoulder, elbow wrist!) how cool is that? I usually have 4 times that many points to deal with on an arm shape. To adjust the curvature when bending just a couple of smart bones on the forearm bone. I plan to use this technique a LOT more. Of course it's a lot more effort to create outlines with stroke limbs and having controlled variable width outlines is almost impossible, so I went with a clean non stroked style.

I kept the shapes as simple as possible with very few points to make body and head rotations easy. I was so happy at how simple and quickly I was able to do a side to side and up and down head turn. Of course this requires 2 bones, but it's not that bad.

NESTED BONE CONTROL IS FANTASTIC!!!!

This character would not have worked at all without nested bone control, or at least it would have been a gigantic complex mess requiring custom layer scripts and all kinds of additional effort to make it work. Arms, head, body are each in group layers and controlled using the new nested bones feature. Head and body have switch layers to flip from front to back, but are controlled by the same bones using nested control.

What's so cool is that the body is a switch with front/back sub group layers. The "parts" in the sub group layer are on separate layers:
Coat left
coat right
shirt
legs/hips
coat back

Using smart bones for body rotation I can control the sub layer order of the body parts above. And since the entire body and all of the layers are in a single switch layer I can easily do animated layer order without reordering a bazillion layers. The body group layer has sub level layer ordering for the smart bone controlling the body rotation. Without nested bones this would have been impossible.

Even with bunches and bunches of layers, they are all organized in groups and when they are all closed up, there is only 6 layers total required to do animated layer ordering. Nested bones is a freaking godsend for Anime Studio.
User avatar
neeters_guy
Posts: 1614
Joined: Mon Sep 14, 2009 7:33 pm
Contact:

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by neeters_guy »

Wow, that's impressive, although the vectorized version does lose some of the vitality of the original (bring on the beer and squiggly tie! :lol:). I guess I'm just partial to comic book line art style. Still, really nice demo. The character would make a good mascot for some product.
User avatar
AmigaMan
Posts: 1017
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2006 3:40 pm
Location: UK
Contact:

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by AmigaMan »

It looks fantastic to me! I must have a go at using the stroke limbs technique.
User avatar
Little Yamori
Posts: 616
Joined: Thu Jul 18, 2013 4:23 am
Location: Gecko Town ;)
Contact:

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by Little Yamori »

Brilliant Vern,

Very inspiring. After I finish my 2nd animation (within the next 3 months hopefully) you're work and willingness to share your techniques has convinced me to switch from Debut to Pro.

Thanks
Genete
Posts: 3483
Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2006 3:27 pm
Location: España / Spain

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by Genete »

I agree with amira: animate the coat and it will be perfect.
Great character!
-G
User avatar
heyvern
Posts: 7035
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:49 am

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by heyvern »

Yes all the requests for the coat animation are in progress.
The fluid natural sort of bouncy cloth coat animation needs to be done before creating the multiple "layers" of vectors for the body layer.

The coat is split into separate parts that have the exact same points but different visible shapes (top left coat front, top right coat front and back coat). I will need to rig, adjust and bone control those points on one layer first then I will duplicate that layer and recreate the shapes for the various layers so they will all move the exact same way. It's a bit more work but the end result will be awesome! :)

You can see the beginning of this in the images with the leg bending. I added in control bones for the base of the coat that have bone constraints controlled by the legs. The tricky part is adding in multiple "nested chains" of bones that allow for both varied leg control movement of the coat AND also some natural gravity physics movement for that natural cloth motion. It's tricky but works. A parent coat bone is constrained to the leg and a child bone controls the dynamic physics movement.

All will be revealed soon. :)
User avatar
kphgraphics
Posts: 132
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 7:32 am

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by kphgraphics »

Wow really nice, good work once again vern.
User avatar
heyvern
Posts: 7035
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:49 am

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by heyvern »

New video test of the body turn. The actual turn is a bit rough but works if I do it quick or stay at one position. It doesn't actually turn all the way around. I basically used a switch layer to switch front to back. To do the turn it's a "fake". He turns all the way, then I flip and he turns back the way he came. I have to do it this way because both front and back use the same bones. Unfortunately this means the left hand becomes the right hand type of thing. It still works pretty well.

Also added in some secondary coat movement with dynamic constraints.

User avatar
jahnocli
Posts: 3471
Joined: Fri Oct 29, 2004 2:13 pm
Location: UK

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by jahnocli »

Works pretty well.
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
User avatar
funksmaname
Posts: 3174
Joined: Tue May 29, 2007 11:31 am
Location: New Zealand

Re: The Mad Professor!

Post by funksmaname »

I think the turn works well - as does everything else... I like the character. My only criticism is the hands look kind of odd... like a bunch of bananas :D
Post Reply