3D Plane Butterfly Wings

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DK
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3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by DK »

Hi.
Anyone have any ideas how I could set up a decent looking 3D butterfly in Moho? Setting the wings up on a plane inside a group is the first thing I thought of but the problem is....if I drag the butterfly around the interface the wings change angle which makes the set up quite useless.

Is there a way stop this from happening anyone?
Thanks
D.K
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slowtiger
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by slowtiger »

Well of course they change angle and look weird, because camera makes them do so ... optically it's totally correct.

I think I've done exactly that, quite some time ago. To get rid of the weird looks I'd animate a butterfly loop in place, reder that, and re-import the video/image sequence, which now I would move across screen.
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DK
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by DK »

Well....Optically correct or not I managed to sort of do it!
Made a group of two object layers (Just Squares). Animated both objects with a flapping cycle on their Rotate Layer Y settings.
Then set each layers Face Camera setting to Pivot Y Axis.
Drag the layer around as much as you want.
Still has a perspective distortion but it's not quite as noticeable.

EDIT:
Nope....didn't really change anything....I'll keep playing with it.

D.K
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DK
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by DK »

Correction.
This actually seems to work!!! There is no visible perspective distortion on the "X" planes group when the child layers are set to Pivot Y Axis.
Drag theparent group from left to right and no perspective distortion.
There is some Perspective distortion however when you drag the group downwards on the Y axis.

D.K
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hayasidist
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by hayasidist »

you might try making the z separation of the camera / wing higher (and zoom to compensate for size reduction). Distortion is very noticeable when the distance between camera and "nearest the camera" is very small compared to camera and "furthest from camera" (fish-eye lens effect)

e.g. camera at z=4. "middle" of butterfly at z=0. bit of wing nearest the camera at z=1; bit of wing furthest at z = -1 ---> nearest at z-relative = 3; furthest at z-relative = 5 -->> "distortion" = 5:3 = 1.67 = nearly 2 - i.e. noticeable

e.g. camera at z=20. "middle" of butterfly at z=0. bit of wing nearest the camera at z=1; bit of wing furthest at z = -1 ---> nearest at z-relative = 19; furthest at z-relative = 21
-->> distortion = 21:19 = 1.1 = just over 1 - i.e. barely noticeable
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Greenlaw
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by Greenlaw »

My daughter made an animated movie for school last year and I helped her rig a butterfly for the end titles. If you watch the movie at this link, you can see it at the very end:

https://vimeo.com/292533023

I had previously created something like this for Trolls: The Beat Goes On and Boss Baby: Back In Business, and it's a really easy setup.

The butterfly's main movement is using Follow Path. After the path animation was keyframed, the wings were animated. Basically, each wing is in a separate layers with the origin placed at the location where the wings 'attach' to the body. The only animation applied to each wing is layer transform, stretching and compressing the 'height' of the wing. If you animate these two properties thoughtfully, you can create the illusion of depth and perspective.

Clipped from the short:

Image

Below, you can see the Follow Path curve for the butterfly and the transform widget for one wing in this screencap:

Image

And, as shown here, only the scaling was keyframed for each wing, The scaling was done in only one direction and after the follow path was animated.

Image

After showing her how to animate the butterfly using this simple trick, my daughter (who was 11 at the time,) painted the butterfly artwork and animated it on her own.

Hope this helps.
Last edited by Greenlaw on Fri Jun 07, 2019 2:43 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by Greenlaw »

Oh, I just remembered one more thing, which is funny because at the time I had forgotten tell this to my daughter too. When using Follow Path, it's better to not use the auto-orientation option for the butterfly and instead keyframe its rotation manually. Trust me, this will look more natural. (Afterwards, she re-did her animation and agreed.)

Final Tip: As always, it's a good idea to look at the actual thing you're trying to animate and understand how it moves. In a cartoon, you don't need to simulate it exactly but it really helps when you add a few characteristics of the subject from real life. YouTube is a great source for this type of reference, especially if you can download the footage, output an image sequence, and study the motion frame-by-frame.
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by Greenlaw »

Re: 3D movement, unfortunately, Moho's curves aren't really editable in 3D space as points can only be positioned in X or Y on a plane, and not Z. You can sort of fake the 3D by orientating the plane so the path's curve points away/towards the camera on Z but this has some obvious limitations. If you do this, I think setting the butterfly group to face camera will work.

Alternatively, you can set up the curve in a normally oriented 2D plane and animate the scale and velocity of the butterfly over time to simulate depth.

If the 3D motion was really crucial to the scene, I would do the setup in a real 3D program. Can probably follow similar setup/animation principles and the 3D part would be easier to accomplish there.
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DK
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by DK »

Hi Scott.
I know you are busy buw Would it be at all possible to take a look at the file of just the butterfly?
Cheers
D.K
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Víctor Paredes
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by Víctor Paredes »

Just today I thought about a solution for this 3D problem!
Just put the butterfly inside of a group and scale that group in Z to a value very close to 0 (0.01, for instance).
Doing that, the software will consider the group (and everything inside it) as a flat object (so it won't look distorted when the camera moves), but you will still be able to animate the butterfly in 3D.
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DK
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by DK »

Hi Victor.
Many thanks! I will give it a try and report back!
Cheers
D.K
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DK
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by DK »

Well. Not the result I was hoping for. The .01 Z scaling makes it look like there is only one wing flapping. Too flat.
See mp4 below.

Top BFly is normal bottom is Z scale .01. Wings are in a group with Y rotation cycle.
Moho file is also included below.

www.creativetvandmedia.com/Forum/ButterflyTest.mp4

www.creativetvandmedia.com/Forum/ButterflyTest.moho

Cheers
D.K
Last edited by DK on Fri Jun 07, 2019 5:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DK
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by DK »

I think there is a bug here somewhere. I was experimenting with setting the face camera settings with this file last night and I was getting mixed results. Just then I set the top butterfly main group, (normal settings with no 0.01 z scaling), to Pivot Y axis and it works pefectly???? 3D without the extreme perspective distortion close to the camera? Weird?
This seems to be the answer but depending on how moho is feeling :lol:

www.creativetvandmedia.com/Forum/PivotYAxis.moho
www.creativetvandmedia.com/Forum/PivotYAxis.mp4


D.K
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by Víctor Paredes »

DK wrote: Fri Jun 07, 2019 5:35 am Well. Not the result I was hoping for. The .01 Z scaling makes it look like there is only one wing flapping. Too flat.
I'm not sure about what is the problem in your file (sorry, I didn't have time to check properly), but here's a version working:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6u8lsjaujzccz ... .moho?dl=0
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DK
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Re: 3D Plane Butterfly Wings

Post by DK »

Hi Selgin! Fantastic! Thanks for the solution. I was animating the sub parent group.
Brilliant work.
Cheers
D.K
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