Pick stuff up and move it in a certain sequence

[Greenlaw]

Note: I updated the project file and GIF on 2/20 @ 7:40p. The stream of chips on farthest right was moving behind the arm when it should have been in front. Also, the right hand wiggled a little because the bone was mispositioned. There might be a few other tiny improvements. An animator's work is never finished, only abandoned.

Note: Updated again on 2/21 @ 7:11a. My child told me my 'fix' now makes the right hand looks too rigid. Sigh! Everybody's a critic. Anyway, making the adjustment added another interesting tip for the video.

[Daxel]

Nice explanations like always. Waiting for that video to come out c:

[slowtiger]

In the olden days, when painted cels were placed on a background under the camera, the only way to let stuff vanish behind some background element was just not draw and paint it.

With all these nifty tricks with masks and duplicated objects and visibility switches I'd like to remind you: sometimes it's just enough to point animate an object so it appears to be behind something else. Just give it enough points at the start. Quite often I'm faster this way than with constructing an elaborate setup. If you need this only once, I recommend point animation.

[Greenlaw]

I agree with SlowTiger. Sometimes it's better to animate items (points or bones) directly and not waste too much time setting up rigging tricks and automation.

As mentioned earlier, I intentionally built some 'unnecessary' automated setups into this project for demonstration purposes, but sometimes--especially for a one-off scene like this one--it's easier to simply to push around points. (Tip: the Magnet tool is my favorite way to do this.)

But this is not an all or nothing decision: you should use your judgement about what to automate in a given situation and what to animate directly. The point is to get the best work done as quickly as possible so you can move on to your next best work.

To illustrate this point, I have some point animation going on as well in this project. I decided to animate the following that way because these areas were actually a LOT easier to point animate than to automate with a Smart Bone:

1. The cheese jiggle
2. The chewing motion
3. The right hand (because my child said it was still too stiff.* Alright already!)

That said, there's a lot going on in this project that I would not care to animate without Smart Bone Actions or rigging tricks because they'd be a pain in the butt to edit or re-animate without the controls. (Like when a producer requests a last minute change...at the very last minute!)

*Note: updated again at 7:36a. Time to abandon.

[MacCraw]

Great stuff, folks. I very much appreciate it, especially the visual aids and detailed instructions. Sincerely, thank you.

[neeters_guy]

Greenlaw may have over engineered this little exercise, but, boy, there's a lot to mine here. Thanks for the detailed explanations.

For my part, I favor a simple hand switch for this type of action. It's so simple that it can be done in any version of Anime Studio and Moho.

[Greenlaw]

Ha ha, nice one neeters_guy!

Funny...I find these chip eating animation cycles strangely mesmerizing.

[MacCraw]

Greenlaw may have over engineered this little exercise, but, boy, there's a lot to mine here. Thanks for the detailed explanations.

For my part, I favor a simple hand switch for this type of action. It's so simple that it can be done in any version of Anime Studio and Moho.

That looks amazing. Very nicely done, and thanks for making that too.

[ggoblin]

Wow. Brilliant Greenlaw and Neeters_guy! Love it, and the timing was perfect.. just after I finished my exercise the professional solutions are revealed to show how it should be done

Greenlaw:

Looking forward to the video Greenlaw, will go over the project file in the coming days.. so much to learn from it.

Haven't looked at the project file yet, but what struck me was all the little things in your animation which seem incidental but in reality are key to making a successful animation.. like the eyes following the food, the arc of the arm making the viewer follow the nacho, the hand turn between picking up the nacho and dipping it, the way the whole body moves when eating, the wonderful jelly movement of the dip, the movement of the jaws - you can feel the nacho being pushed to the back of the mouth after chewing to be swallowed.

It was interesting that in your description you mentioned the chip has its own bone. This seemed strange initially. I had just bound my chip layer to the hand bone (layer binding) which seemed to give me what I needed eg following the hand and still allow independent movement of the chip, like rotation. But after thinking it through I guess the reason for the chip having its own bone is that bone parenting can be animated but layer binding can't so with binding, the chip is struck to the hand for the entire timeline whilst with bone parenting, it can be re-parented to a different bone during the timeline, ie it can passed on if required. Is that the reason or are there some other advantages I did not consider? (sorry for the beginner questions).

Neeters_guy:

What an innovatively simple approach which gives spectacular results! I love how you have leveraged the flexibility of this approach by breaking the eating cycle in to two phases. The character and full animation with all the little movements is amazing. The chip in the mouth, is that using masking of a chip that is always in the mouth (set to invisible most of the time), or have you used another approach for that?

Thank you guys, I have learnt so much from these examples.

[Greenlaw]

Glad to hear the file and info is helpful! I'm putting together another fun animation that specifically demos the bone re-parenting. Will post that when it's ready.

As for the 'skelly' tips & tricks video, I decided to break that into a series of small 'bite-size' videos. Each one will demonstrate and explain a different technique, and the one project file can be used to follow along with each video. I think this way, I'll can at least get some of this info out sooner. Will keep this thread posted!

[Greenlaw]

It was interesting that in your description you mentioned the chip has its own bone...after thinking it through I guess the reason for the chip having its own bone is that bone parenting can be animated but layer binding can't so with binding...

You got it exactly!

Binding the chip to its own bone allows you to switch the parenting of the chip to another bone...for example, to pass the chip from one hand to the other. It's not used that way in this example but I thought it could be used to demonstrate the other 'hand-off' technique I described.

But as mentioned in my previous post, I'm going to make a different animation for that technique...and like the 'skelly' project, I'll post the new one here too.

[neeters_guy]

Neeters_guy:
What an innovatively simple approach which gives spectacular results! I love how you have leveraged the flexibility of this approach by breaking the eating cycle in to two phases. The character and full animation with all the little movements is amazing.

Thanks. Yes, she is double dipping.

The chip in the mouth, is that using masking of a chip that is always in the mouth (set to invisible most of the time), or have you used another approach for that?

The entire inside of the mouth is masked behind the face with the chip behind the teeth. I just move it to the center of the open mouth and then back.

There might be a few other tiny improvements. An animator's work is never finished, only abandoned.

So true. I started this as a simple hand switch demo, but I kept trying to "plus" it. Each improvement suggests more improvements, but at some point I just had to stop. It's fun, though.

Great comments, everybody!

[cgrotke]

You could also use particles... : )



(another animated GIF. Click for action...)

[Greenlaw]

There you go, problem solved!

This reminds me, here's another tip:

At one point in developing the nachos project, I used particle emitters for the chip bits. This worked okay but I couldn't get the stream to be as narrow as I wanted, which was important for getting the bits back into the bowl.

What I wound up doing was I copied a small triangle to the clipboard, and used the Particle Brush* set to used the clipboard as the source image, and then painted a horizontal line of chip bits with the tool. Next I pinned this chip bits drawing to a curving path in another vector layer using the Follow Path tool. To animate this, I added the chipStream SBD so I could control the timing and speed of the streams in one control instead of keyframing and editing four separate layers.

*Edit: Sorry I meant Scatter Brush.

[ggoblin]

I have not used the scatter brush (particle brush) before. I tried it after you mentioned it, works well.

The problem I encountered was that when I attached the particles vector layer to follow a curve, the particles act as one object when following the curve so the individual particles dont hug the curve as your chips do in your animation. 'Rotate to follow path' just rotates the whole particle layer so is no help. Is it possible to attach individual shapes in a layer to follow a curve? Whats your magic?



I remember seeing an example of using the particle system to create smoke particles from a cigar which were then made to follow a zig-zag curve.. so I guess thats another option?