Character Wizard "Potential"?

[ddrake]

Here's a stupid little clip, but I thought I'd share it as an example of what I'm about to jabber on about below.



Since I'm a wordy bastard, here's the backstory behind it (bear with me?):

When I first started playing around with this software of course I spent a little time manipulating things in "Character Wizard" and for the most part found everything to be pretty awful. This was in actuality just a combination of silly and simplistic preset actions, as well as a very rudimentary art style that, to put it kindly, were not to my tastes. Well, last night I started wondering about it again, since the project I'm working on will end up having "many many" characters. Mostly background extras and such, but I was curious to play around with it again after having used the program for a while.

I went in and opened the action .anme files that were part of the Character Wizard folder, and decided to make a couple adjustments to the jump action. Then I tried to make a character that was as close in proportion and style to the characters I'd been creating from scratch and realized that with some decent animation backing them up, they don't look that bad. (Still bad, but not THAT bad) And maybe that's the whole point, something kind of crappy to start with, but once you learn to manipulate things you can get decent results.

Anyway, the result of this is some testing, as seen above. On the left is the Character Wizard "mannequin" doing it's preset actions, the middle is the rig from the wizard stripped and re-vectored, actions adjusted. And on the right is one of the characters rigged as I created it, just doing his thing.

Now, maybe I'm late to the ballgame with all of this, and I've already been using multiples of rigs I've made and like as a template for new characters. But has anyone here worked with manipulating Wizard elements before? I've seen how individual pieces are laid out in their files, faces, feet, hands etc, and I think I could easily incorporate new material into those folders to make a quick character that's more to my liking. BUT (and maybe it's not worth it) I would be interested if I could fully customize the wizard, down to the rig and slider settings, and potentially be able to Wizardize fully customized characters myself based off of my art work.

The hang ups are that I cannot find the rig the wizard uses, nor whether or not I could even manipulate it. I cannot find the original walk cycle action, therefore have no idea if I can change it or where to place a new version. And I don't really know the programming behind the sliders. (I assume bone scaling for length and width scale on vectors for "shirt and pants" etc.)

Anyway, that's enough rambling about it. Perhaps these are all things that the program purposefully would rather me not screw with. Just thought it might be a giant waste of time initially, but have the potential to save a lot of time in the long run.

[neeters_guy]

Jonbo started a thread that's worth a read: Character Wizard Mods

I posted several mods which include notes on where the preset file is located. It's been a while since I did them so my memory is bit fuzzy.

I agree with you though, CW has potential. I look forward to see what you come up with.

[ddrake]

Thanks neeters, Guess I didn't see that combing through, or I saw it earlier when I had no clue what I was doing. Now I might have a portion of a clue and can maybe follow along. Looks like I've got some reading ahead of me though

I guess, before I jump down this particular path my question would be, is it worth it? I mean, your thoughts on CW mods, the process and results? And since you say it's been a while, I assume this is not something you actively USE yourself still, or have stopped creating material because it isn't practical or has too many limitations?

The reality of the situation is that I would actually really like to experiment with this and possibly find my own solutions to share, but bottom line is that I'm looking for any time-saving process for my current project. The caveat being that I'm really looking to be able to customize to the full extent and not have to give up creative control due to the CW limitations. Any personal opinion?

I'll probably read through it and poke around regardless, just curious of your thoughts given you have some experience with it.

[jahnocli]

You could try taking a look here:

You need Anime Studio | Innovations | No Limits Designer

More stuff to take in though!

hope this helps

[neeters_guy]

Opinion on CW tends to be divided either as useful or completely useless. But I like to see it's usefulness somewhere in the middle, in the context of the user's experience and goals.

For the non-artist user or beginner, it can be a way to quickly create a character and get animating. The rigs won't win any awards for character design (and there are weird bits to be sure), but with a little thoughtful experimenting (avoid the defaults) you can create a passable character. As the user gains more experience using AS, he/she can go in and fix the weird bits as well.

For the artistically inclined and more accomplished user, I think the best use of CW is to create a template rig, which is then modified to their liking. Having all the bones, views, and layers set up in one go can save time.

You are correct though, I don't use CW for my current work. That's because I developed my own rig setup over time and I prefer designing my characters from scratch. But that's me. I'm sure you'll find your own way.

[Danimal]

potentially be able to Wizardize fully customized characters myself based off of my art work.

When the wizard was first introduced, this was the concept that had me all excited about using it. After attempting to do that, I realized I was spending more time trying to figure out how to make a custom character in the wizard versus just making it from scratch like normal. I was really kinda disappointed because that would be such a fantastic feature.

Seeing how you did it, however, makes me think I might have been making it more difficult than need be as your results are really quite good!

[ddrake]

But I like to see it's usefulness somewhere in the middle, in the context of the user's experience and goals.

Thanks for your input neeters,

Still on the fence about CW. Hell, still on the fence about my experience and goals. I'm going to spend a little more time working with it. I read through some of the threads on the subject, still couldn't seem to find indication you could manipulate the starting rig itself? Though, actually the rig it uses isn't all that bad. Just not what I use.

I'm still intrigued by the customization possibilities, but from a practical standpoint of what I'm trying to do I was looking for a quick way to use existing artwork to whip up new characters as I need them (there could be a lot, since I have a school of students and hordes of zombies.) But they are all "extras" essentially, so I wouldn't necessarily need them to be all that "good," or fully rigged and functional.

I had already been working from my own template of sorts and created a small cast of the main characters plus a small batch of extra (the floating heads):



Just thinking I could try to reverse engineer them and throw all their little pieces into CW, and get a little variation without having to build anew. If nothing else, it did seem as though it would let you use a bone layer for any of the switchable components, so that could save time by just throwing in some of varied eye/eyebrow rigs I've already made. Still be marginally better slapping something like that on whatever ridiculous face it puts together. Ultimately it all seems strongest just as a "Head Wizard" and then pop those suckers on a custom rig template as i have above.