Moho Forum

Yes this is getting outrageously better every time. That mouth is incredible.

bupaje wrote:Be willing to pay for lessons that didn't break the bank.

Agreed! It'd be great if someone (cough - Vern & Rasheed - cough) would put together a DVD.

BTW -- looking kick @ass, Vern!!

- g

Wow... you know I wasn't sure about this thing to begin with.. but you've really pulled off some interesting secondary movements. I don't know enough about AS to even ask the questions I want to about your work on this. The mouth is really impressive, as well as the movement of the hair and the subtle finger movements.

Anyway you can illustrate how you created the mouth animation and masking (I'm only using simple switch layers at this point) What about the fingers? Are you using point animation here? (not that I even know how to pull that off at this point). Like I said, I don't even know enough to ask good questions.

Regardless... good job

Oh, and just so it doesn't look like I'm completely fawning all over you... there are two things that bother me. The left ear (his right) seems to turn too much in relation to the head itself and the tail seems to want to have more bones. It doesn't have the same fluid motion that most of the rest of the animation has. Small points, but that's just some things I noticed.

Keep up the great work.

J

I agree, it gets better every time. And I've seen some of the bone rigging Vern did (with external control bones in the same bone layer). I can only imagine how much control he has over his character.

The problem that Vern has (and you as well I suppose), is that one can only interpolate between single vector layers, not between bone layers with vector layers inside them, while the latter are so easy to manipulate.

I'm thinking of ultimately creating a toolbox for rapid development of animation poses. The idea is to mold your animation poses with bones (which may contain several vector child layers, and even bone layers with their child layers), store what you see in a frame into frame zero of a newly created single vector layer inside a switch layer, so you'll get a collection of single vector layers, packed with all your character's artwork as layered shapes, that can be switched using interpolation. It isn't as exact as bone animation (which follows arcs, point motion follows straight lines), but if you need better inbetweens, you simply create them.

The toolbox could be used for all kinds of things that are now hard to do with point animation, like lipsynch, head turns, hand animation, and even full motion animation. If you would use actions inside such a switch layer, you can speed up animation even further. Of course, I want to include that as well in my toolbox.

And now I need some days with good sleep, because I have slept too little in the last couple of days.

very cool!

Gr,
Frank

Rasheed wrote:
I'm thinking of ultimately creating a toolbox for rapid development of animation poses. The idea is to mold your animation poses with bones (which may contain several vector child layers, and even bone layers with their child layers), store what you see in a frame into frame zero of a newly created single vector layer inside a switch layer, so you'll get a collection of single vector layers, packed with all your character's artwork as layered shapes, that can be switched using interpolation. It isn't as exact as bone animation (which follows arcs, point motion follows straight lines), but if you need better inbetweens, you simply create them.

The toolbox could be used for all kinds of things that are now hard to do with point animation, like lipsynch, head turns, hand animation, and even full motion animation. If you would use actions inside such a switch layer, you can speed up animation even further. Of course, I want to include that as well in my toolbox.

And now I need some days with good sleep, because I have slept too little in the last couple of days.

It sounds like a brilliant idea, it would be heaven if it's possible to achive this "toolbox".

Normally I wouldn't post something like this but I kind of shocked myself a little...

I can't believe how "3D" those teeth look! I just finished the front open switch and this was the first test rendering. All that is a shaded effect on the teeth. I love that thing.

Sorry about the stilted movement, will tweak that in the "final" animations of course. Just testing right now.

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/teeth_close_up.mov

-vern

Fanfriggintastic! I have to pick your brains when the semester ends in two weeks -want to play with my Anime Studio! (Notice my judicious use of the phrase 'Anime Studio' instead of 'AS' to avoid rumor and innuendo).

Can you imagine if this character had to be done frame by frame, by hand?!

I love liberating technology like Anime Studio!

Fantastic stuff Vern! (Those teeth scare me.)

Regards, Myles.

artfx wrote:Can you imagine if this character had to be done frame by frame, by hand?!

That surely would have needed a team of trained animators in the same amount of time.

Great work!

Clap! Clap! Clap!
I must say Bravo!

I started experimenting with the hands.

This is a very rough example but I think it might work;

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/larry_hands2b.mov

It is a switch layer with bones to translate the fingers and two layers, one for the inside of the hand and one for the outside. Basically slight point tweaks and major reordering of shapes.

The "pop" where the transition takes place is a bit rough, but I plan to hide some of it with another "fur" shape and also it happens so quickly it might not be noticeable. I doubt his hands will be seen this big in any of the animations.

The bones are the same for both "versions". I just "flop" my reference to them... the pinky becomes the index and the thumb translates to the other side.

EDIT:

I keep looking at it and forget how it works.. Better write it down...

The shape order of the fingers change on the inside view so it appears to turn in 3D space, but actually the fingers never flop at all... the order changes so the pinky is on top and the index is on the bottom... swapping places... kind of sweet.

-vern

i would try and get the fingers to be the same colour and tone as the palm of the hand from the inside view, and the transition from inside to out side was quick but if you scrub the time line slowly you see that it doesn't need to be so hasty as it works at a slower pace

it would be really nice if you could post your "as" files for the community to pick at

explaining your method is good but you cant beat the hands on experience to see how something ticks!