Moho Forum

heyvern wrote:Smooth bone joint (tricky to explain but easy to understand... awesome!)

In which video is this demonstrated?

Yosemite Sam wrote: In which video is this demonstrated?

Can't find a specific video. It might be hidden away in one of them.

It works really well for image warping like arms and leg bend joints. It maintains joint volume. Usually bending arms and leg type two bone combos with image layers causes the image to "squish" and get pretty nasty looking. With this feature it does an absolutely amazing job maintaining joint volume.

It isn't like other bone constraints. It's a menu command and you activate it on the layer you want it to effect, like an image layer or vector layer. You select two bones and run the command. When those two bones bend the joint area is sort of.... magically adjusted to maintain the volume of the joint.

It works on vector layers but it is really intended for image layers because image layers just don't have as many options for fixing joint areas as vector layers have. There are better ways to fix joints for vectors, like using smart bones.

This feature is really simple but incredibly awesome. It will dramatically improve image type rigging.

Here's a smooth joint image sample. Just a simple arm image warped with two bones:

Before:


After:

heyvern wrote: Can't find a specific video. It might be hidden away in one of them.

Yeah, it's hidden away in here. The video combines all the Constraint options:



Starts at around the 5:40 mark. Hope that helps!

heyvern wrote:

Yosemite Sam wrote: In which video is this demonstrated?

Can't find a specific video. It might be hidden away in one of them.

I never asked this, haha!

Here I've been raving to friends about how cool SmartBones are for fixing these problem but soon I won't have any problems to fix. Oh, wait, that's a good thing isn't it?

Yosemite Sam wrote:I never asked this, haha!

I can't even get credit for asking questions here.

Yosemite Sam wrote:I can't even get credit for asking questions here.

Sure you can!

The feature is also shown here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBaY16qz ... e=youtu.be

RichardU wrote:

Yosemite Sam wrote:I never asked this, haha!

I can't even get credit for asking questions here.

Haha.

Re: the "smooth joint" feature, in both Chad's example and heyvern's example I can see how the crook of the elbow was corrected, but the outer elbow definitely looks a lot less smooth to my eye. To be blunt it looks more angular. Does it look better after it's actually rendered?

Ronbo wrote:Re: the "smooth joint" feature, in both Chad's example and heyvern's example I can see how the crook of the elbow was corrected, but the outer elbow definitely looks a lot less smooth to my eye. To be blunt it looks more angular. Does it look better after it's actually rendered?

Yes, actually, there is a video (I don't remember which one) that shows the elbow smoothly rendered.

Hello

Yes, actually, there is a video (I don't remember which one) that shows the elbow smoothly rendered

He starts talking about the elbow around 5:50 then he mentions the fact that in order to see it properly you must render it, at about 7:55

Here's the video for this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G9v6XAQjj0


HammerJammer

Not sure why my example has those edges. It is rendered. It's probably because it's very low resolution image to start with.

Just wondering, does the edge problem only happen with images? More to the point, if you're using only vectors, will the outer side always be smooth (in preview and render)? Thanks for any answer.

G.

The smooth joint feature doesn't actually work as well with vectors. It works as expected but the result is quite different. You may still need to use smart bones which defeats the purpose.

The reason is that the smooth joint feature has sort of a spherical influence around the joint area and effects pixels of the image better than with vector points. When it effects vectors the point curvature isn't changed. It sort of enlarges the points in the radius but you don't have the same "magical" smoothing effect you get with image layers.

For example, my image example is simply a render of a vector shape. The vector shape with the smooth joint looks quite different. The inner elbow point doesn't change curvature so that part of the joint doesn't work nearly as well as the image version. This would absolutely need a smart bone with point curvature adjustment to make it "perfect". So the decision would be, use the smooth joint AND a smart bone or just do the whole joint with a smart bone?

The other issue is that those smooth joints ONLY work with TWO bones for the ENTIRE LAYER. You can't use the smooth joint feature for an entire character on one layer because only those two bones move points. That arm MUST BE on it's own separate layer. This works GREAT for image based character rigging but not so well with vectors.

Any type of Image distortion in preview is always "different" or not as good as rendering so rendering is always the best way to preview image warping. The effect on points is the same as any point movement in preview. It looks the same in preview or rendering. Only image warping requires rendering to see the accurate result.