exile wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 11:13 pm
I also discovered that the famous/infamous prefabricated movements can be edited using the 2D motion key editor (which has a sub-editor just for hands) and then saved as a custom movement.
Yes, this aspect of CA is like using Motion Builder, a mocap editing program for 3D animation rigs. The pre-animated clips-based system makes it easy to apply a an animation or to chain a sequence of animations, and mix and re-time them. And, yeah, the clips just containers for keyframes and the source of the keyframes can be mocap, hand-animated, or a mixture of sources, all fully editable by the animator. By providing a standard rig structure (for body, face, and hand), the clips are sharable and re-useable for other characters, even when they have completely different body proportions. This is a common system in the 3D world, but CA applies the same concepts to 2D rigs.
As for the quality of the default animations, users aren't restricted to the canned motions and can create their own custom library of clips.
The posing and key frame system is much like Moho's. No smart or target bones, only simple rotation but at least it works.
I find animating in Moho is a bit easier, especially when switching between IK/FK. In CA, I'm having to constantly enable/disable IK to use FK but in Moho I just hold the Alt key (when using the MB tool) to temporarily disable IK. IMO, Moho's approach is far less disruptive to the animation process. (But allow me to qualify this by saying
perhaps I simply haven't found the equivalent shortcut in CA yet. Still learning.)
As for Bone Target, in CA you are able to Lock any bone in place from a window. But, yeah, that's not exactly the same thing and I'm not sure it can do everything I use Moho's Bone Targets for in CA yet.
I'm skeptical about saving a lot of time compared to Moho but for people who constantly have rigging problems, the template system is a compromise between freedom to create something new and a much better chance the puppet will move as expected.
Same here. I can see the CA system saving me rigging time for general purpose character rigs but, yeah, I feel like I may be giving up the freedom to add custom features and controls the developers hadn't considered. For example, at this time, I don't think I can fully reproduce many of the Moho rigs I built for
Boss Baby: Back In Business or the
Kung Fu Panda rig seen on
my 2019 demo reel. TBD.
Just to compare, I loaded the PSD file with the hand images into Moho and tried to duplicate the bone setup. Each hand had 17 segments. The rigging went faster than the template procedure in CA4, but the joints stuck out when rotating, apparently CA4 has a different rigging system and the drawings were geared to that.
For Boss Baby, I created a similar hand rig in Moho. We have complete freedom to pose the fingers using SBDs, and when the hand is rotated from front to back, it keeps the pose. This was not easy to create but it is not difficult to transplant to another character either. (Well, at least in Moho 12.5. Unfortunately, this hand setup can't be transferred to another character in Moho 13 because of changes made to the Smart Bone System, which is why we haven't upgraded at my workplace yet.
Sigh!)
A co-worker asked me to make a tutorial video for setting up hands in Moho...I'll make a public video on this topic in the near future.
That said, yeah, CA has a hand system already built-in. It can't cover every situation, but it seems like it will do a good job in a lot of common ones.