A rigged arm that can move behind and infront of the torso?

[Sailor-taurus]

I've finished making my first character in Anime Studio, but for visual purposes (she has bands around her shoulders rigged to the Shoulder bones), the arms are drawn behind the torso, so thus her arms always move behind her torso. Is there any way to get them to move infront of the torso when wanted?

[jahnocli]

There are a number of different ways of doing this. Perhaps the simplest is to copy your arms to another layer in front of the body, and switch layer visibility when necessary.

[Sailor-taurus]

Wait, layer visability can be animated simply by turning the visability on and off?

First animated points, now this? This freakin' rules!

[Mikdog]

Ya.

What I'd do is simply animate the arm either in front or behind the torso for the whole animation.

Once I've animated that arm, I'd copy it and put it either in front/behind the torso, depending on where the first arm was.

Now I should have 2 arms animating exactly the same - only one is animating in front of the torso, the other is behind.

Next, I'd put both those arms into separate SWITCH layers. In each SWICTH layer, I'd have an empty VECTOR layer I'd call OFF.

So, now Ihave 2 switch layers - one in front of the torso, one behind. Each swicth layer has 2 layers inside it - an arm that animates, and an empty vector layer.

(If I've lost you here, maybe investigate more into SWICTH layers. They will save you LOADS of time fiddling with layer visibility and opacity)

THEN, I'd play the animation back, and have the SWICTH layer ON for the front arm when it needs to be showing in FRONT of the torso, and swicth it off for when the arm needs to be showing BEHIND the torso.

There you go.

It makes sense, I promise, even if it sounds helluva complicated, it's pretty straightforward.

If there's an easier way of doing it, I'd be interested to know.

[Sailor-taurus]

The previous way to do it is easier. I just duplicated the layer, it stayed rigged to the arm bones, I made some small adjustments to make it look pretty, and now both the front and back arms animate and move at the same time, and all I have to do is switch off the visability when needed...

[Rasheed]

Here is an example of a turning head using invisibility.


Click the picture to view the movie

[Sailor-taurus]

Yah, I only just learned how to animate visability. Tis a neat feature. =D

Thanks for your help!

[Víctor Paredes]

=D

(and thus is how born a new moho fan)