Auto Rig Script

[videodv]

Just thought you may wish to go and have a look at this exiting new development scirpt to augto rig your characters in Anime Studio 9.2

http://animatorsforum.com/

You will find it in the Innovations / Autorig Script thread.

Regards
Chris.

[hayasidist]

is this still available?

IIRC, Mike Kelley wrote that script (as indicated in videodv's post) back in 2013. His style was mainly (exclusively?) based on 3/4 view characters. I think his auto rig script relied on a specific hierarchy (and naming system) for vector layers. I've had a trawl of my archives and can't find it even to check if my recollections are right. Mike is now focused on 3d work.

This video of his https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHJa9aHeWZM explains his workflow and (around the 5:50 mark) why autorig was not made generally available.

[Greenlaw]

I use auto rigging for 3D animation when I can, and yes, it's a great timesaver! The catch is that you need to follow very specific naming conventions and expect to accept some limitations. Most of the time, I rig what I need manually though because the auto-rig can be either way overkill for what I need at the moment, or it's simply not appropriate because the character I need to rig is not a typical human proportioned biped.

I think a usable auto-rigger could be created for Moho but it will probably need to be very simple and/or limited in how you can animate it. (Mike Kelly's, for example, worked with 3/4 pose only.)

IMO, it's probably better to create and use a template rig and just replace and/or rebind the artwork layers. This is not difficult to do if you design your characters and break out body parts consistently to work with the template. Of course, you'll probably need a different template for very different character styles and body types. That said, Moho makes it pretty easy to modify the skeleton in the setup frame (frame 0) to suite different body proportions and features.

It all comes down to planning and understanding what you need your characters to do before you start rigging and animating them.

The one thing I wish was easier in Moho is the ability to swap body parts with complex Smart Bone actions applied. I have an okay but messy workflow to do this when I need to share body parts like hand setups between characters, but I feel Moho should have a native system for simplifying the process.

Smith Micro totally broke my workflow in 13.0, but Lost Marble got it working again in 13.5. (THANK YOU, GUYS!) Now I just want this to be easier.