Smart Mesh mess of questions

[willwillwill]

So first Mckoy Buck sent me a ton of videos which I have voraciously consumed and just worked for 7 hours with. Thanks again dude.

Here is where I am. I was actually able to use a drawing I did of a head and use the smart mesh to make it articulate, the eye lids, the check bones, and man it is in no way without major problems but I am pretty blown away with how cool it looks, I step back and am really happy about what I did.

What I want to know is before smart mesh I would make like four or five mouths and use the switch layer to choose. Today I redrew the mouth with the sound and it was fun but took way too long. Can I isolate part of a face on smart mesh and make different phonemes with smart mesh, I am guessing I can but not sure how yet.
Also I am wondering if I can take a drawing through gimp and put it in a picture without smart mesh. The body doesn't need to move the way the face does and it would be nice to treat it like one shape with bones.
Thanks thanks thanks thanks

[dueyftw]

I would just use two meshes. One on the head and one on the body. Each would have it's own bone layer. The only down side is that you have to jump back from one bone layer to the other. If you color the bone layers with say blue then you can hide all the other layers in the search feature of the layer pallet. You could use another color like red for all the meshes. That way if you want just to adjust the mesh you can find easily too.

Dale

[willwillwill]

Thanks so much for your reply.
Do you mean one mesh for the head and one mesh for the entire body including arms and legs or would those be separate? Also do you bind layers and use flexi binding just like with a shape with smart mesh?
Thanks again
w

[dueyftw]

Yes, One for the head, one for the body. You could have one on each arm, leg and hands. The more you separate the more control you will have.

The binding is up to you.
The 3 type of binding is: Flexible, Region and Point and each have their uses. Try each one.

Also remember that you can make smart bones to control the mesh. Like if you wanted a woman's body figure to go from an hourglass to over weight.

Dale

[willwillwill]

Wonderful thank you so much.

[willwillwill]

Hey
so the problem now is the first body I made from a drawing with mesh the body was really distorted when the bones moved no matter what I tried. Then I tried to isolate body parts like you said, I got the head and the body pretty good then I drew out the points for the first arm and the points triangulated and the layer of the picture had the smart warp attached to the right place but when I moved the arm either the points or the arm would move depending on which layer I selected. What am I doing wrong and are there any short cuts to putting bones into a drawing?
Thanks

[dueyftw]

Dale