Bone morph dials script

[funksmaname]

Looking good stephen glad you got it working!
how are you creating the head tilt and pupil movement?

[sbtamu]

Looking good stephen glad you got it working!
how are you creating the head tilt and pupil movement?

Since there is no bone for the head I put everything in a group and just rotated the group layer around origin that was set on her lips. For the eyes that's a prop that comes with AS and I just used switch layers and I just tilted the head when I randomly moved her eyes.

She says "shut up freak" I had my daughter voice it but I'm missing too many phoneme to make it look right so I just muted it.

Stephen

[funksmaname]

Here's a new screencast:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0jVn4n3l5A

Sequential action mixing using MorphDials to automate animation... originally this was what i had in mind for the circular pie split actions so a bone can rotate around the clock to create a sequencial animation - but this way actually gives more control on the weighting and mixing of the actions.

I might put this and the face theory tutorials in the main hints and tips? they will probably get lost in here, but they are specific to this script so not sure whether to keep posting tutorials here or there? thoughts appreciated

[Rudiger]

Ticked are:
Enable layer scripts
Preserve interpolation mode
Preserve existing keys in real-time
and Bring up options window

I know what you mean, its quite funny - smilin is even funnyer.
Here's the smilin2 rig : http://www.mediafire.com/?ghldtzlpejd8408

note to others: you can play with this but I highly reccomend you make your own from scratch or you won't really gain anything from it!

Reason to parent the bone layer is that i dont want to totally lose the ability to use normal bones... as cool as this is its overkill for simple movement... maybe i should just use a group layer, and put that into a bone layer. I'll try that

It's also when i'm trying to tweak points sometimes, as i move a point it does that flapping wider and wider thing so i can't actually change a pose? it could be because i put down the actions as references rather than copies? but even getting rid of all references makes the point flap - and i gues it's this point flapping that is being baked... if you zoom right out you'll see the face is increasingly exploding in oposing directions

Wow, that was quite a bug hunt!

I finally managed to track down the problem to being caused by a bone on the MorphDials layer that didn't have a name. It is clearly a bug in my code, as a bone with no name should not be able to cause so much havoc with baking, but until I can get around to fixing it, you are better off just removing the offending bone.

It was actually a zero-length bone that was lurking outside the frame. These can easily get created in AS whenever you accidentally click somewhere on the screen with the add bone tool. Because they are so small, they are very hard to spot. The best way I found is to select the bone strength tool as you will be able to see the strength field even if you can't see the actual bone.

Once I removed that bone, I was able to get it to bake moderately successfully. However, I noticed that some of the keys were getting baked as action references which is not good. That might be the reason why his head movement is so jerky. You are probably best off not using action references at the moment.

By the way, I am keeping a bug-list, so all of these bugs you are finding will get fixed eventually, just not sure when I'll have time.

[funksmaname]

no worries if there's workflow to avoid a bug that will suffice for now!

Thanks for finding the problem - i had wondered what that empty space with an arrow next to it in my actions list was, it probably got created automatically when i made the bone click

[Víctor Paredes]

You guys are making an awesome work. thanks for sharing it.
I would like to have more time to play with this awesome script.

[funksmaname]

This is a long shot, but is there a way to merge the layer duplication script functions with this? that way we can also use Selgin's new 'Bitten apple' face construction technique in combination with this script? Since the technique requires its own embedded scripts, unless we can somehow apply two scripts at once, maybe merging the code could solve the problem?

then again it might just mess everything up

*ho hum*

[Rudiger]

This is a long shot, but is there a way to merge the layer duplication script functions with this? that way we can also use Selgin's new 'Bitten apple' face construction technique in combination with this script? Since the technique requires its own embedded scripts, unless we can somehow apply two scripts at once, maybe merging the code could solve the problem?

then again it might just mess everything up

*ho hum*

Hmm, that would be quite a super-script ! My layer scripts are pretty much empty as most of the functions are defined in the Menu scripts. If you did the same thing with Selgin's script and put them in a utilities file, you could easily write a simple embedded script that called both functions.

[funksmaname]

somewhere in your response i think you said it might be possible?

[freddykrueger]

Hi guys, I am a bit of a newb here.

I have version 7.0 Pro and I have tried to install the script but some menus have changed names from what is in Rudigers folder. I wonder just where these extensions have to go on 7.0? Where did you place each extension, in which folder?

Love the script. I have done quite a bit of frame by frame animation if you will. My website is mostly geared toward film and concept art but you can check it out.

I am new to Anime Studio Pro and I love the program. I have also worked with toon boom but I find Anime Studio to be a bit more friendly to bone rigging and line control (vectors).

Thanks a bunch for a good script, now only if I can use it.

[Rudiger]

Hi guys, I am a bit of a newb here.

I have version 7.0 Pro and I have tried to install the script but some menus have changed names from what is in Rudigers folder. I wonder just where these extensions have to go on 7.0? Where did you place each extension, in which folder?

Love the script. I have done quite a bit of frame by frame animation if you will. My website is mostly geared toward film and concept art but you can check it out.

I am new to Anime Studio Pro and I love the program. I have also worked with toon boom but I find Anime Studio to be a bit more friendly to bone rigging and line control (vectors).

Thanks a bunch for a good script, now only if I can use it.

I just installed the MorphDials scripts in AS7 the other day and it worked fine. The trick is to just drag the "scripts" folder in the zip file to your "Anime Studio Pro 7" installation folder and say yes to merging new folders with existing and it should just happen.

Anyway, welcome to Anime Studio and hope you have some fun using these scripts!

[freddykrueger]

Thanks a bunch. Love what you have done. I will most certainly test it and respond.
I wonder if anyone has tried doing this to the whole body.
By the way I got it working. For some reason I can't see the motion in real time and have to bake it every time. Anything I am doing wrong? I am also watching funksmaname's tutorials and its a bit more clear.

Thanks.

[ulrik]

Hi Rudiger, I have been working a bit with your great script and it works great, however when I try to export the animation AS always crash, I tried with all kind of codecs and also to export to image sequence .png with no luck. Do you think it has to do with the script?
I have no problems to export without the script.

cheers / Ulrik

[Rudiger]

Thanks a bunch. Love what you have done. I will most certainly test it and respond.
I wonder if anyone has tried doing this to the whole body.
By the way I got it working. For some reason I can't see the motion in real time and have to bake it every time. Anything I am doing wrong? I am also watching funksmaname's tutorials and its a bit more clear.

Thanks.

No probs, freddykrueger. I'm glad you like it, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with it. I have done some experiments with applying this technique to the whole body. The basic idea is to make the actual skeleton also serve as the set of morph dials, so the morphs automatically get mixed as you move the skeleton in 2.5D space. In theory it would be possible to pose the character in any pose, and then rotate it to any angle, which is about as 3D as you can get, without actually being 3D .

There are quite a few possible reasons as to why the realtime visual feedback is not working. First thing is to check the MorphDial options, and make sure that realtime morph blending is enabled and the other options have sensible values. The second thing is to check that the MorphDials layer has the rt_gen_morph_weights.lua script embedded and the layers you wish to control have the rt_apply_morph_weights.lua script embedded.

Hi Rudiger, I have been working a bit with your great script and it works great, however when I try to export the animation AS always crash, I tried with all kind of codecs and also to export to image sequence .png with no luck. Do you think it has to do with the script?
I have no problems to export without the script.

cheers / Ulrik

Sorry, I couldn't tell you Ulrik. It's certainly possible that my script is responsible for the crash. What happens if you bake the morph blend result and then disable realtime morph blending before you render?

[funksmaname]

In theory it would be possible to pose the character in any pose, and then rotate it to any angle, which is about as 3D as you can get, without actually being 3D

...lol, that makes my brain hurt...