Rag Doll!

Rancid_Snowman · Post by **Rancid_Snowman** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 9:31 pm

Is there any way in Anime Studio to give your characters a rag doll-like quality, or at least imitate it effectively?

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 10:25 pm

Not really. AS has bone dynamics but they behave more like springs. Maybe you could play around with dynamic constrained bones to get that effect. You could try using the Manipulate Bones tool to "simulate" it by hand. At least that tool will move/rotate more than one bone at once. It's not real physics though.

I've been working off and on on a separate scripting solution for better physics in AS but I haven't gotten to rag doll physics yet. So far just springs and bouncing ball type physics.

-vern

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 10:34 pm

Collapse a rigged character to the ground (on frame one) then just lock all of the extremity bones, including maybe the head. Now translating the characters root bone up will have all of the limbs hanging toward the ground. Basically work backwards.

dueyftw · Post by **dueyftw** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 11:55 pm

You could try a program that does 3d rag doll, import as a movie, or sequence pictures or an obj sequence for a reference .

Dale

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 1:25 pm

I'd dig to play around with a ragdoll in anime studio. You could really create a funny character with a cool ragdoll effect. It'd be pretty awesome to animate too, because you wouldn't have to worry about secondary action. Like a boneless chicken, you could just drag him/her around the screen and laugh as his limbs flailed about. Maybe you'd have some blinks and mouth actions going on there, but generally, you'd let the cpu do the math-work. COOL!

chucky · Post by **chucky** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 5:27 pm

I don't know why I don't see half these threads, the little orange flag only lights up some .
Anyway whining aside, here's a rough rag using dynamics and gravity.

It definitely could work better but it's a start.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 7:02 pm

About a week ago I started clicking the "view posts since last visit". It's on the right top on the main forum page. If you wait too long "new" posts are taken off the "list".

-vern

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:47 pm

It would be much better if the eyeball pops out from the cranium after first hit...

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:47 pm

Nice one Chucky. I assume you posed the character in his prone position on the ground and then picked him up and animated the fall using just his root bone. Very good solution.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 11:02 pm

A tip aside: did you ever try to animate in realtime? This nifty trick is something my father found out about first ...

Just hit play, let AS run, grab some bone and move it. AS will record the movement as long as it runs ...

chucky · Post by **chucky** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 3:20 am

I didn't do any animation here guys, I just put ol' bony up the top of the screen and let it run....
Rag doll...
Oh one thing, his leg went skyward at the end so I did drag that down to prone, not sure what causes that weirdness.
I attached the bone rig to a parent bone layer with one bone in it at niknak head and ran the gravity layer script...bingo.

rogermate · Post by **rogermate** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 7:02 pm

chucky wrote:I didn't do any animation here guys, I just put ol' bony up the top of the screen and let it run....
Rag doll...
Oh one thing, his leg went skyward at the end so I did drag that down to prone, not sure what causes that weirdness.
I attached the bone rig to a parent bone layer with one bone in it at niknak head and ran the gravity layer script...bingo.

But there is some head turn in there as well.

Are you pulling our legs?

chucky · Post by **chucky** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 12:50 am

rogermate wrote: Are you pulling our legs?

Ahhh the head turn,

I forgot about that, , yeah that was left over from when I built NikNak, some time ago.
When I imported him to the rag doll project, to throw around, the head turn came with him, and it didn't get deleted as it's not a bone based animation.
I left that in and ,yeah, that was animated but none of the rag doll was.
Well spotted.

rogermate · Post by **rogermate** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 8:06 pm

chucky wrote:
rogermate wrote: Are you pulling our legs?
Ahhh the head turn,
I forgot about that, , yeah that was left over from when I built NikNak, some time ago.
When I imported him to the rag doll project, to throw around, the head turn came with him, and it didn't get deleted as it's not a bone based animation.
I left that in and ,yeah, that was animated but none of the rag doll was.
Well spotted.

It still is amazing how much this software can do. The head turn was very subtle but I spent a long time looking at, that tiny amount of head turn helped make the rest of the motion so much more believable. I'm now watching cartoons on TV very closely and I see so much single angle views on characters. I'm so new to animation and graphics.

I remember as a child thinking that Disney cartoons were about real worlds and Flintsones type cartoons were fake. Still happily watched 'em. I'm struggling against myself now because I'm working on a Jib/Jab & Text type project and don't have the time to become a bona fide animator.

Thanks for sharing that ragdoll script info.

Rancid_Snowman · Post by **Rancid_Snowman** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:00 pm

[quote="chucky"]I didn't do any animation here guys, I just put ol' bony up the top of the screen and let it run....
Rag doll...

So then how did you set up the settings to have it do that?