A little disappointing, but trying to rise above.

[ddrake]

Disappointed to find out 9.2 doesn't support layer ordering in Smartbones as I thought. Had some decent work put in to some headturns.
At least you can still manually key the layer orders each time. Maybe I can make some actions to at least give me the orders I want, and then re-adjust for speed in the timeline? Anyway, just powered through. Here's a test.

[AmigaMan]

That looks excellent and is totally convincing. Nice character too.

[ddrake]

Thanks, Amigaman. Here it is again with a more finished look.

I have no idea what's going on in this scene, nothing actually a part of the story I'm working on. Just wanted to see it in use with a little more character animation. And I've been testing out some 'handheld camera" style movements. Maybe a little overboard.

[Danimal]

The fast movement of both the character and the camera help the second one significantly. They help make the movement look a lot more natural.

[Víctor Paredes]

Very nice.
In 9.2 you can't animate the layer order using smart bones, but you can translate the layers in Z to "simulate" a change in the layers order (actually, create a "real" change in the Z order). Just activate "Sort layers by depth" in the Depth sort tab of your bone/group.
It's harder and slower than in 9.5, but it works.

[ddrake]

Fantastic! Of course that makes perfect sense. Kind of wish I'd considered that over the weekend.
Guess i was so caught up in finding something that smart bones couldn't do for me the way I expected, that I didn't think about how to tackle the problem with what they could do.
Ah well, all a learning experience anyway. Thanks for the tip Selgin, will be re-working this tonight and see how it goes.

[Greenlaw]

That looks fantastic! It's surprisingly '3D-like'. Thanks for sharing.

[ddrake]

Thanks Greenlaw

Been working a lot with trying to merge styles of 2D and 3D work. For whatever reason (probably lack of practice ) I tend to work a little bit better with building a 3D environment and then choosing angles and shots that I like, rather than the forethought to draw perspective for backdrops with a lot of detail. So I'm attempting to get a look for the 2D characters that blends nicely with that kind of world.

Haven't nailed down exactly my shading approach yet, but working with simple but convincing head turns really seems to help add some perceived dimension to the characters. Probably could stand to do a little work with some bone scaling and foreshortening work to really push the illusion. Anyway, it's a style choice that I think is starting to come together and is looking unique but decent.

Still not sure that this was the simplest approach even given my strengths vs weaknesses, but I'm definitely learning a lot of neat tricks in the process.

[Thrashador]

Hey ddrake,
That looked awesome! I'm impressed.

Can you tell me a bit about how you achieved the handheld camera effect? What interpolation setting, how many keyframes, etc.? I've been wanting to do something like that for a while.

Thrashador

[ddrake]

Can you tell me a bit about how you achieved the handheld camera effect? What interpolation setting, how many keyframes, etc.?

Well honestly I've just recently started experimenting with this myself, so I have no tried and true method as of yet, and my only tests have been with shots of a few seconds.

What I can tell you is that the above example didn't involve any special keyframe settings really, maybe an ease in/out here or there, but really just got my animation done and did a final pass keying camera movements. The approach for me is as much about the principles behind it as anything.

First off, handheld camera does not necessarily have to mean "shaky cam." Obviously if you're going for this look there is going to be some "shakiness" because you're trying to get away from the mechanical smoothness of a typical computer simulated camera movement. But as much as anything it's thinking about the camera, not just as a Frame that contains the action, but rather a character itself that you'd want to manipulate according to some of the same guidlines applied to any character in the shot. Namely timing and anticipation/reaction.

I found in this instance with several quick actions in the scene, giving the camera movement a bit of a "reaction lag" then trying to catch up helped with the look. Then by overshooting the mark a little and compensating back to desired shot, you get more a sense of a camera operator than some kind of all knowing magic picture frame that either leads the action or follows it exactly.

Anyway, sorry if that's not all that useful from a directly practical standpoint, but so far my work with it has only been more theory/concept based, and then trying to adjust to what looks right.