How do I even get started here??

[Greenlaw]

Yikes! Windows 10 should not have done that. I upgraded 8 different computers at home to Windows 10 a couple of years ago and none of them had a drive reformatted, external or internal. Are you sure the drive was reformatted? Maybe the volume with your stuff just needed to be remounted?

[Greenlaw]

Head turns can be easy or hard. It depends on the character design and animation style, and the method you decide on.

The easy way is it simply use the head shape as a mask and slide the face elements side-to-side inside an action. If the head is a vector shape, you can reshape it as it moves into the turn. If you have elements that need to move behind or in front of the head, like ears for example, you can use animated layer order in an action. If some elements exist inside a layer and you need to re-sort them, you can use animated shape order there.

Alternatively, you can use different views of the character inside a Switch. That's actually simpler to set up but it means your turns won't be as smooth. That's fine for very 'snappy' animations, but less so for more realistic or nuanced animations. When I use this approach, I sometimes use a hybrid method so I can have some sliding before switching to the next view drawing.

[synthsin75]

I've seen a lot of "smart bones are this wonderful revolutionary thing!" So I finally sit down to watch a tutorial on them last night and I discover they're just JCMs. It's nice to see how to create one, and they are definitely great things, but I was still a little disappointed I have to admit. LOL!!

Can JCMs in 3D also work as general purpose morph dial controls?

[spearcarrier]

That I don't know. You'd have to ask a content creator. :-p


And I'm not sure I'll be able to get that far with AS11. My official copy arrived today. So I uninstalled the demo and installed from disk. The actions feature is... kind of fubarred.

[spearcarrier]

Yikes! Windows 10 should not have done that. I upgraded 8 different computers at home to Windows 10 a couple of years ago and none of them had a drive reformatted, external or internal. Are you sure the drive was reformatted? Maybe the volume with your stuff just needed to be remounted?

HAHAHA. Oh yeah. I'm sure. What's more my 1 TB drive now thinks it's 32 GB.

When it first happened I was all over the place - bawling my eyes out of course - trying to find an answer. And found a lot of people who had had it happen to them as well. When you install Windows 10 as if you're installing to a different computer - which I had to do because I was upgrading from Windows 7 Ultimate N to Windows 10 Pro - no N - and HEAVEN FORBID I choose the OS I want!! Ahem - when you download the installer, it decides it's going to format where it's going "to ensure there's enough space".

The documentation said it would ask. It did not.

[spearcarrier]

Head turns can be easy or hard. It depends on the character design and animation style, and the method you decide on.

The easy way is it simply use the head shape as a mask and slide the face elements side-to-side inside an action. If the head is a vector shape, you can reshape it as it moves into the turn. If you have elements that need to move behind or in front of the head, like ears for example, you can use animated layer order in an action. If some elements exist inside a layer and you need to re-sort them, you can use animated shape order there.

Alternatively, you can use different views of the character inside a Switch. That's actually simpler to set up but it means your turns won't be as smooth. That's fine for very 'snappy' animations, but less so for more realistic or nuanced animations. When I use this approach, I sometimes use a hybrid method so I can have some sliding before switching to the next view drawing.

Now that sounds complicated. I grasp what you're saying though.

It would be nice to turn a head a little bit, but I can tell I'm far from that.

Currently what I'm doing is changing Liz bit by bit. She's no longer Liz right now. This is while I play with her rigging. I am curious to see if I could "upgrade" her. But for now one thing at a time. It's fun so far.

[dueyftw]

My 3 cents,
Spearcarrier, how long did it take to learn 3d? I have been a Moho user for over ten years. I gotten to the point that I have to look at my older videos that I did to remind myself how to do something in Moho.

Moho can get really complicated with rigs. An example is a split mouth for head turns, a technique that came about long before smart bones.

Dale

[spearcarrier]

How long it took me personally to learn 3D isn't a good example because I spent so many years just using the program for pose references to hand draw things. And speaking of complicated rigs, DAZ Studio's new rigs have gotten worse. Bones for face muscles morphs used to handle. Things like that. I can safely say that I'm pretty much left a little behind in that arena, but I'm okay with that. LOL. I like the older models.

However I expect that it will take me a very long time to learn Moho as well. I take my time with these things. It's not like I'm working for the man in this or anything. Even if I spent all day long every day trying to learn something new, I doubt I'd start getting into the more complicated stuff later.

Right now I want to concentrate on smart bones. The tutorial I found was by Smith Micro. It was very short. I doubt it covered much.

I also need to figure out what's wrong with my program. I can't use the actions menu. It... causes big issues. Were there any program updates for AS11 that anyone can remember? I told the help menu to check for updates, and all it did was tell me to buy Moho 12. Which I really can't do yet.

[SuperSGL]

I used poser as well (im not a very good drawer especially with characters) Im still in the process of creating my own sitcom using characters I 'morphed' from originals.

As far as the animations go I had the same frustrations you move a character one way pose it in another frame and the inbetweens go hay wire!! I started mixing a lot of linear movements for certain actions and would go back in and add spline curves where I could to finalize the movement.
I used CorelDraw for most of my vector art but importing it into ASP11 was just too frustrating (so many points) Moho 12 really took care of this with bezier points.

I've imported poser animations (with alpha) to add effects or animated backgrounds like a girl riding an e-Bike with the camera down pointing at the front wheel and animated a road with white dashed lines in moho (would of taking alot longer with poser)

As Greenlaw suggests - just start your project (keep it simple) and learn as you go. You will find a lot of help at this forum as have I. Goodluck with whatever you choose!!

[spearcarrier]

I do intend to follow that sage advice. And spline curves? Yeah. That's one WAY over me.

Well. Back I go to setting things up! I'll share the first project if I ever get that far.

[chucky]

If you have large drives, you might need to flash your intel drivers. That happened to me , it looks like they are blank or undetected. It was an easy fix once I found the large capacity drivers.

[spearcarrier]

We may try that tomorrow. In the meantime I'm wondering if AS11 is even worth it. OMG this program is full of bugs!! The demo I had downloaded worked like a dream. This... THIS is a disaster.

[chucky]

It's not full of bugs dude. Most bugs turn out to be user error when you are just starting out. I tested it V11 and 12 quite thoroughly on my short film Tern Tale viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31080 if it was crawling with bugs, do you think I could have done it?

[spearcarrier]

So, then you're telling me the numerous script errors that keep popping up in the lower right corner when I try to save to my library are user error? There are a *lot* of them. Or how about how the action menu won't close, and instead of being able to save an action I get a green screen? And it won't go OUT of the action menu even after I close the window and I have to click randomly to get it to stop that? I've only been saying the action menu is fubarred for a while now.... Perhaps every time the program crashes arbitrarily is my fault, too. Or my favorite, the scrubber deciding randomly to run like crazy across the animation at super speed when all I'm doing is sitting hands down just reviewing by watching.

Oh oh, or how when I changed a shirt to crayon mode out of curiosity it refuses to be anything but crayon now. Even though it says it's plain shaded. That one is fun. :-p

The program didn't have these problems with the demo I tried it on. But I was running the demo on Windows Ultimate N 7. So I've emailed Smith Micro in the hopes that even though the program is old they might be able to help. I'm not holding my breath, though.

When I say something is full of bugs and I compare it to when it was running better earlier, I'm comparing actual program behavior. It helps to ask what the problems are instead of pointing fingers.

[hayasidist]

or how when I changed a shirt to crayon mode out of curiosity it refuses to be anything but crayon now. Even though it says it's plain shaded. That one is fun.

that one might be to do with styles.

if you have a style applied to a shape you won't see that you have unless you check the advanced option in the styles window. the style overrides the apparently given fill and/or stroke options