Moho Forum

My Idea for this topic
I had an idea that maybe others will find interesting as well. Since I'm only moderately skilled artistically I'm always learning new things about Animation and ASP. And since ASP is always improving I frequently am not sure if a technique I'm using is good, bad or just out of date. So, I thought I'd share my approaches here with two goals.

1. See if I'm doing something dumb or others have better ways to do things.
2. Provide ideas for those newer to ASP than myself.

Head turns for mere mortals
Since I'm a mere mortal I can't just whip out characters that have beautiful head turns (left, right, up and down) But ... being analytical I have arrived an an approach that I think works, but others may have better ways. Here, I'm particularly interested in head movement for characters that are more realistic.

• Experts - I'd love to hear better ways to do things or just tips and pointers related to what I'm doing.
  • The video has about a 1 minute overview that explains all the experts need to know. (I think)
• Beginners - You can at least see what I do. Maybe others will share their ideas too.
  • The video does a walk through the approach. My youtube channel also has playlists to show more details.

Anyway ... here's what I'm currently doing to create more realistic characters with head turns.

Good overview of the process. I'd only mention that this type of headturn smartbone is best used in combination with other techniques, such as arc motion, stretch/squash, etc. Using it by itself will tend to look mechanical and lifeless.



PS. I see you have a video on squash and stretch which makes a good supplement to this one.

neeters_guy wrote:best used in combination with other techniques, such as arc motion, stretch/squash, etc.

Thanks neeters_guy. Your animation is a beautiful illustration of the principles of animation. Thanks for sharing. In my explanation, I was mainly focusing on the process of constructing the head, as opposed to animating it. I've heard/read those principles and am in the process of trying to make them inutitive so illustrations like yours are tremendously helpful in turning theory into practice

Mix and Match Characters
I know Mike Kelly created a script that allows you to truly mix and match characters in a random arrangement sort of way. I need to play with that some, but this is a little different idea.

In my case I was creating several characters, but I didn't want to have to re-rig the whole body for each character. So, instead I copy the layers from one character to another. Experts probably do this all the time.

The intention of the video is not how to use the same body for many characters, but rather, what do you do if you already have a body on character A and would like to use the same basic idea on character B, but character B is already built. I'm sure there's lot's more that could be said on the topic, but again I thought I'd share my approach and see what ideas others have.

Knee Rig
Here's how I do knee rigging in ASP 11.


That's the easiest approach I've found.

Walk Transition for additive cycle
I'm trying to use different walk actions that have the additive cycle that Victor showed. The problem is that the actions are reset to the initial location when they start (ie they don't add relative to wherever the figure starts. My solution is to just move the layer in a single frame. Does anyone have a better approach?

strider2000 wrote: My solution is to just move the layer in a single frame. Does anyone have a better approach?

Hey Strider, you are dealing with it in the simplest way I can see from your set up. Something we have done with walk cycles, is to have the bones only have him walk on the spot then add the forward step with a layer move on the bone layer. when pasting in the actions this will let you relative move the layer to the new position. But we always copy in the action into the layer rather than reference the action like you have, to be able to do this.
Relative action pasting is something that has been submitted by the beta team for consideration to be added. hopefully relative cycling is the first step towards this

j

Thanks for the info.

Character Rigging
I don't know how many others might be interested in this, but the question of "How to rig characters" is always of interest to me.

Recently tblr's great work here
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29125&hilit=Character+rigs#p164376
had me thinking again about rigs and then I had an idea

Perhaps people could share their approaches to rigging using the standard character wizard character as a basis. That way we can share general ideas without having to give away beloved or confidential character. They could take a rig, make some tweaks they like and then repost.



So, I took the BoySpiky character from the character wizard in 11.2 and started off with that. Over time, my plan is to move it progressively toward a rig that aligns with the latest Anime Studio techniques. Being geeky I'm using a naming scheme that helps track the generation of any rig since there can be any number of different approaches to rigging. I just append .x to the version I started with (Not saying anyone needs to follow that approach, I'm just sharing what I'm doing). So for example my original is just the default BoySpiky character. I call it "BoySpiky1"


BoySpiky1
http://www.mediafire.com/download/uy8qm ... iky1.anime

If I made a different version of BoySpiky from the character wizard using different parameters I'd call it BoySpiky2.
Anyway, I made a variation, based on BoySpiky1 and so it's BoySpiky1.1 (If I make different variation of BoySpiky1 I'd call it BoySpiky1.2. If I took BoySpiky1.1 and modified it, I'd call it BoySpiky1.1.1) But, no matter what the name is, it includes the following changes:

• BoySpiky1
  • All views from default Character Wizard 11.2
• BoySpiky1.1
  • Based on BoySpiky1 plus
  • Added shin target bones
  • Independent angles for feet
  • Stretch and Squash scaling for thighs, shins, head and torso
  • Max IK scaling 1.5 for shins and thighs
  • Removed angle constraints on arms and shoulders for ¾ views
  • minor adjustment to foot bone angles to align with feet
  • fixed bone constraint on right shin of front view

Here's that character

BoySpiky1.1
http://www.mediafire.com/download/d8fxo ... y1.1.anime

I specifically tried to make minor modifications so people can see that a few easy modifications can help quite a bit. In this case I wanted specifically to focus on the target bones for the feet and the IK stretching, but made a couple of other simple changes.

I'd love to see other people's ideas and suggestions as well

I think that' s a good idea ^^ in previous videos you post I saw similar techniques also different ones. I also would like to share mine. but in these days I can't find any time for doing that ( ı have to attend job interviews, still have some freelance works i haven't finished etc) If i find some extra time, i really would like to share one full rig here. But i'll follow this topic

My Standard Rig

Here's a post of a standardized rig that works for me at this point. The key idea I'm working through is that, rather than starting over again with each character (which I've done to this point), I can take a character created with this fully rigged system and easily turn them into another character just by tweaking the points. If it works as well as I expect, I want to try it with Mike Kelly's No Limits Designer (not the auto rigging, just the creation of the vector layers.

In a couple of weeks, after I've had some free time to create one, I'll post another character, in a different style, that is a modification of this one. I'll let everyone know how it goes. Please feel free to share ideas you have

neeters_guy wrote:Good overview of the process. I'd only mention that this type of headturn smartbone is best used in combination with other techniques, such as arc motion, stretch/squash, etc. Using it by itself will tend to look mechanical and lifeless.



PS. I see you have a video on squash and stretch which makes a good supplement to this one.

That looks really good!

Yeah, neeter_guy always has great work

Heh, thanks, guys. I'm really finding these videos informative. This community is so generous.

This seems like a relevant thread to bring up smart bones in ASP11.

If I want to create a control dial bone, there is a handy option to click which basically sets it all up for me, and I just add point motion (for example), it's pretty sweet.

Is there a similar thing in ASP11 for non-control dial smart bones, such as you would use in limbs? Or is that done the same as always?

Sorry if this information has been covered elsewhere. If there is a tutorial around, cool.