There is a thing I don't know how to do in Anime Studio Pro that I would like to do.
How do I animate a human that changes his hands? (I'm kinda bad in English so I made an example in Paint).
Let us say I want to animate this guy, meanwhile he moves his hand in a scene I want it to change perpective, so he don't have one position on his hand all the time.
I need to draw a new layer for every hand yes, with bones, so I can animate the fingers. But how do I do so they switch between these hands?
Oh, just one thing that came to my mind, maybe I do that in the same way as I use Switch for eyes and mouths (when characters are talking and blinking)?
If so, how does it work with the bones for the hand? Does Switch works with bones?
You can definitely have a switch layer, with different switch layers representing hand positions. That's what I do.
Drawback, of course, is the hands don't move smoothly between positions -- you *could* turn on interpolate and have each hand have the same number of vertices, but this wouldn't work right because people's fingers don't morph that way (it wouldn't look like mouth interpolating does because in the case of a mouth it's all on the same plane). I don't mind this look, but I'm just pointing out to you that the only way to do a very smooth look would be to either draw lots and lots of hand positions (like cell animation) or to use bones to move the fingers on a layer (and this has indeed been implemented by some folks like Vern).
But for the switch layer and how it works with bones, you can control the layer with one bone. So you have a "hand" bone that moves the hand layer that contains all the hand positions, and you choose which hand you want by choosing that switch in the hand.
Ok, I used Swtich as Mkelley said I could do, I made a little test in Anime, and whohooo! It worked xD
First I made the arm and hand in seperate layers, and connected them with a bone, and putted the hand in a Switch, and made one more hand in the switch that I can switch to.
I putted the arm hand hand togheter like this... and made some keyframes with the Switch.
Ok, I have tried this before, but it didn't work because I drew the hand and arm as one layer. It seems I need to make two seperate layers for the arm and hand to make it work.
Still I'm unsure how I will do with the bones for the fingers... but I have at least learned one more thing for now xD
mkelley wrote:Drawback, of course, is the hands don't move smoothly between positions -- you *could* turn on interpolate and have each hand have the same number of vertices, but this wouldn't work right because people's fingers don't morph that way (it wouldn't look like mouth interpolating does because in the case of a mouth it's all on the same plane). I don't mind this look, but I'm just pointing out to you that the only way to do a very smooth look would be to either draw lots and lots of hand positions (like cell animation) or to use bones to move the fingers on a layer (and this has indeed been implemented by some folks like Vern).
But for the switch layer and how it works with bones, you can control the layer with one bone. So you have a "hand" bone that moves the hand layer that contains all the hand positions, and you choose which hand you want by choosing that switch in the hand.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean with everything you say (my english is kinda bad and I'm a bit n00b in Anime) xD
But I will take some time, try to understand and play around in Anime.
selgin wrote:viewtopic.php?t=10051
here is the thread with vern's hand technique. I always use it.
Let's see if I can explain what I said in easier terms (unfortunately, my ONLY language is English :>).
Switch layers can operate like traditional cell animation in that as one switch replaces another it causes apparent movement based on persistence of vision. However, how smooth that movement depends on how much one layer looks like another, just like with any cell animation. IOW, if you have one finger pointed to the left and the next layer has it pointing all the way to the right the finger will "jump" between those positions. How good this looks depends on how fast the jump and what your style of animation is.
A switch layer can also "interpolate" or move the vertices of each layer inbetween the keys that switch those layers. So if you have one finger pointing left and another layer with the finger pointing right AND the layers share the same number of vertices AND you've set your switch layer to "interpolate" (not the default) then inbetween the key for the first layer and the key for the second layer the vertices of that finger will move.
Now -- how good this movement is depends on where the vertices are, but in general they will simply "slide" or morph from one position to another. This is a good thing if everything is morphing takes place on a single plane. For example, if your mouth is in the "O" position and then closes it's okay if the middle position has the mouth in a <> position because that's more or less how it would work in Real Life.
But for a hand you might not want or have your finger just sliding from left to right. It might be describing a circle, for example, in which case the verts at the top would come down across the ones lower down. That's hard to explain, but the idea is that if movement is not all on a single plane (and even if it is sometimes) just interpolating the vertices from one switch layer to another will not look right.
When I use switch layers for my hand positions I make sure interpolation is OFF -- when I use them for mouth positions (lip sync) I make sure its ON. Perhaps that's the best way to proceed until and unless you understand it further (and perhaps even then :>)
Aha ok I understand now. I didn't know about interpolate, it sounds cool, I will use it on lip syncs as you said.
But for hands.. I don't really care if they don't switch perfectly, after all, it's "just" cartoons I'm making.
I have seen some cartoons that has been shown on TV, wich are made in Anime Studio Pro. The characters in those cartoon, switched thier hands when the hands came outside the TV screen (when they waved with thier hands or something). That's a way to not show the switch.
Anyhow, it was not a proffesional cartoon, it was like 2 persons who made it.
