Desperately need help with Image textures

[mickimac12]

Hi everyone,
I am a newby and I'm trying to apply an image as a texture to some body parts that I've drawn in A.S. Pro 10. I can bring the image texture into A.S but I can't apply and fix the texture to my vector drawings. When I move the body part with the Transform Points tool, the texture does not move with my A.S vector shape. Is there a way to apply the texture and bind it to the vector image that I've drawn in A.S, so that the texture and vector image move as one?


Many thanks for any help you may be able to offer.

[Víctor Paredes]

Use bones with bone strenght. Image textures are mostly independent to the vector, they behave as images. So move and bend them with bones, just like image layers.

[mickimac12]

Thank you for your help.
I don't know if this makes any sense, but what I am trying to do is to trace an image in A.S and then apply the the original image as a texture to the vector image I've just traced. I'm hoping that I will then be able to manipulate the shape as you can a vector image which would give me more control than just an image; is this possible?
I am hopeless at drawing and would like to find a solution to manipulate photographs in the same way as vectors.

I thank you for any solution you may be able to offer.

[Víctor Paredes]

No, sorry, the only way to distort an image that way in AS is using bones.
Anyway, if you add several bones with different sizes and stenght, you can distort images in many ways. You will never have the freedom you get with vectors, but you can get nice results.

I showed some examples of images in this talk:

If you want, take a look at 9:00 and specially at 22:30 and 25:00

[heyvern]

The way I think of image textures in a shape is to imagine them as simply an image layer with a mask... but without the mask.

An image texture effect in a shape is almost exactly the same as a masked image layer but no masking is involved. It's "simpler" to manage in the layer hierarchy.

[mickimac12]

No, sorry, the only way to distort an image that way in AS is using bones.
Anyway, if you add several bones with different sizes and stenght, you can distort images in many ways. You will never have the freedom you get with vectors, but you can get nice results.

I showed some examples of images in this talk:

If you want, take a look at 9:00 and specially at 22:30 and 25:00

Hi Victor,
Thank you so much for your help and the wonderful link you sent me. I just wanted to know if you had any information on how you animated the head in your animation of the man eating the coins? I thought that was brilliant and worked very well. Did you cut it up into several parts and animated them then? How did you get the mouth to open and close and keep the detail inside the mouth? Did the image have a closed or open mouth when you got it?

Love your work.

Thanks again

[mickimac12]

The way I think of image textures in a shape is to imagine them as simply an image layer with a mask... but without the mask.

An image texture effect in a shape is almost exactly the same as a masked image layer but no masking is involved. It's "simpler" to manage in the layer hierarchy.

Thank you for your explanation on image textures. I am going to take your advice and use them in the layer hierarchy as you suggested.

Thanks again.

[Víctor Paredes]

I just wanted to know if you had any information on how you animated the head in your animation of the man eating the coins? I thought that was brilliant and worked very well. Did you cut it up into several parts and animated them then? How did you get the mouth to open and close and keep the detail inside the mouth? Did the image have a closed or open mouth when you got it?

Hi, Thanks for the nice words. That guy eating coins is just one image with alpha (I don't remember if a psd or a png). Just yesterday some guys asked me the same about him, but there are no other layers used. Only one layer and a set of bones which bend it. I used rotation, translation and scale on some of the bones to get the result. The mouth looks closed just because the bones bent it that way.
When I set up images with bones, I always considere two aspects:

- Adding the bones which will actually move (rotate/translate/scale)
- Adding the bones which won't move, but maintain parts of the "flesh" on its place

So, for example, I didn't want to move the top of the head, so I put some bones there. That bones won't be animated (and can be hidden in version 10), but are there to use their strenght and keep the flesh on the right place even if the other bones move.

[mickimac12]

Thank you again Victor for all your help. I think I understand how you did the animation of a man eating some coins from your explanations, but I always learn better from visually seeing a demonstration. I know you must be very busy, and I'm sure you get asked to do a lot of tutorials all the time. I was just wondering if I could pay you to make a tutorial for me on how you rigged that animation?

Many thanks