Moho Forum

Hmmm, even that topic doesn't sound quite right. Here's the dealio.

In trying to create my characters (and still figuring out a workflow) I'm pretty confident in getting the separate arms and legs (and head and body) to work properly with bones. It's only the actual attachment of the arms and legs to the torso that's giving me issues.

Let's take the legs for a moment -- the upper part of the thighs are controlled by a thigh bone (let's say). You rotate this bone and the upper edge of the leg can rotate beyond the torso, unless *very* carefully designed. And even if designed properly (and edge hidden) it doesn't distort the pelvis even slightly, which is odd looking. It's worse with arms, that don't seem to be able to be rotated much without the shoulder area being a problem.

I thought it was just me (and it might be) but all the anime samples that come with AS have this problem as well. The default file that loads up has a *terrible* arm issue -- rotate it even slightly and the arm bulges out from the shoulder unnaturally.

The best stuff I've seen in this regard "hides" the problem -- the legs are hidden by a skirt and/or jacket coming down over them, the arms are kind of separated sleeve shoulder things. Neither of these approaches works if your character has to appear seamless at the limbs. though.

I understand why you build parts like arms and legs out separately (and then attach them using the bone tool) in order to avoid undue influence from the other bones, but it seems almost like the arms need a shoulder bone (and the legs a pelvis bone) to work properly, and that then defeats the point of building them away from the torso.

Does anyone get what I'm saying or am I just rambling from too little sleep? I'd love to know what you are all doing for your normal workflow.

I think I understand your problem. Maybe some suggestions can help.

1. While building your vector layers, take care to position the point of origin exactly where you want to have the joints later, like the sholder joint. i dio this to be able to flip a layer easily later when movement calls for that.

2. I have something like a "shoulder bone" in my torso, which is just a part of the spine. To this I attach the switch layer with the arms (was not my idea, but I have to work with this now), you could do the same with the arm bone layer.

3. Extreme turns of the arm seem to be impossible without breaking the upper arm vectors apart. I worked around this by adding another vector layer with just a circle and an outline around only half of its circumfence. This layer normally is invisible, I need it only for movements where the arms go up in the air, but then it helps a lot.

4. Your legs could maybe be improved by adding part of the hips into each leg layer. So the spine bone would be in the torso layer, but half a hip go into each leg bones layer.

I stopped building my characters by seperating them all apart a while ago. Now I just draw all the parts in the proper place- and bind the points to bones individually, or flexi-bind the points.