Searching for a hand shake tutorial.

[uncle808us]

Hi I am searching the web for a hand shake tutorial but so far no luck.
Can anyone guide me to a tutorial on this subject 2D handshake?
thanks

[Greenlaw]

I had to do something like that for All Hail King Julien a few years ago. You can see it on my 2017 demo reel where Thighsander Plunderhorse and Norge Grendelfist join hands and take off running.

To make this work, I merged the skeletons under a single bone layer and used a shared target bone for the wrists. Now that I'm thinking about it, this probably involved a couple of targets with a shared parent so I could offset positions slightly. To move the characters together with joined hands running along the bridge, I probably put them both in the same group and just moved the group. (Sorry, it's been a while and I don't remember the exact setup but this description should be close.)

This is a situation where I wish multiple bone layers could share target bones located in a separate bone layer. The above works but, IMO, we shouldn't have to create a custom setup just to do this.

Anyway, I hope this gives you some ideas for doing something similar with your characters.

(I'll post an example project in a sec.)

[Greenlaw]

Here's a simple rig example for making hands shake. It's technically what I described in the previous post:



In the above image, we have bone setups for a green arm, a red arm, and the target bones. These setups exist in the same bone layer.



When the hands come together at frame 27, the wrists are keyframed to target the bones. Then the animation is taken over by the parent bone of the two targets, moving up and down. The result looks like this:



Here's the Moho project:

Download ShakeHands.moho

If I have time, I'll post a version with some artwork to show how to layer the fingers and thumbs.

[uncle808us]

Thank you Doctor. I really appreciate your reply.
I can use this in the future.
What I failed to mention in the OP was the fact that this will be a hand drawn frame by frame.
Sorry I just want to stop you before go to any more trouble.

[synthsin75]

For frame by frame, just find some reference footage.

[Greenlaw]

No problem.

For FBF, I agree with Wes: study footage of people shaking hands. I looked over on YouTube and was amused by how many ‘how to shake hands’ videos exist there.

[uncle808us]

Thanks guys.

[Greenlaw]

Oh, here's addition to my original suggestion: set your hand bones to use Independent Rotation. This way, both hands will stay in the same fixed angle and not have mismatched rotations when they join and shake.

For the Developers: In the future, can Independent Rotation be made into a keyframeable property? Quite often, I want to switch this constraint on and off, and it's something I've wanted for years. Thanks!

[Greenlaw]

I absolutely agree! I've been requesting keyframeable Independent Rotation for years.

Alternatively, if we had keyframeable Visibility for Bones, we could set up two hand bones, one with IR and one without, and switch between them with a Smart Bone. This feature would offer greater flexibility within a rig. (Imagine switching between a jointed arm and a noodle arm setup.)

Ideally, I wish we had both. These are the kind of improvements I really wish to see in a future Moho.

[synthsin75]

Spammer rewording last post.