Moho Forum

I was just wondering what that gadget in Vern's video is called. It looks like some sort of rotation gadget - but I can't find it anywhere in the users manual.

It's in Vern's Anime Studio Animation "demo" Reel at 2:00 and 2:19
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIizjus-zC0

Are you talking about the "Scientist" character and the head rotation?

If so that is a custom head rig I created. That character file is included with AS 6 (he's called "Technician"). It's a complex bone rig I developed for doing head turns and facial expressions. I have a few different head characters I used it with.

The "gadget" and bone markers I created myself. The best way to use the rig is to turn of construction curves off so I needed to highlight the bones for controlling the face and added them to a vector layer bound to the bones.

-vern

I thought it was a rotation feature of the program itself when I first saw that icon you were dragging around, in fact, that's what persuaded me to buy the program!

Anyway, great stuff, at least it can be done and that must save a lot of manual work. I've just started going through it all to see how it works. I'll have to find some tutorials on these rotation rigs though.

Cheers!

Oops! Sorry if that animation was misleading!

It never occurred to me that might happen. It was just a handy gizmo I bound to a bone so I could turn off construction curves (or paths as they are called now in AS 6) so I could see where the bones were.

Holy cow... I never imagined that it looked like part of the application.

-vern

Hey, not at all - I'm really glad you did! If anything, perhaps Smith Micro ought to hire you as their marketing guy

I was comparing Anime Studio 6 Pro to Toon Boom Studio 4.5 at the time I saw your vid's, and it was your rotation rig that finally did it for me. That, and the fact that Anime Studio just feels better designed. I have to admit, I only bought the program because I like Anime such as Ghost in the Shell, Spirited Away etc.

However, I think it's turning into an addiction because I've hardly put the program down since I got it!

Lovely bit of scripting!

It appears that you are controlling some of the brow bones via a curve. Am I seeing this correctly?

I've been trolling here for a while *ducks head abashedly* and here's my first post.

Yes there is a layer script. In reality that script is only doing something very very very simple.

When a head rotates things on the sides like ears and eyes will go in one direction and then "flip" and go in the other direction as they go around the other side. I am not explaining this in the proper "mathematical" terms but you know what I mean.

The only thing the script does is to control a few bones that change direction when the head crosses a center point. I also "convert" translation to rotation for the main bone. Every other bone is controlled by those bones either directly or through a constraint.

The eyebrows are just a "chain" of "compound" bones. Compound bones are just copies of the same bones on top of each other. It's been a while since I actually had to count those bones but I think there are 3 sets of chains for each eyebrow. Same for the mouth. Compound bones.

The compound bones allow me to pose the mouth or eyebrows and turn the head at the same time.

So, I position the mouth with the mouth controls. That is one set of bone chains. Then I turn the head, another set with different constraint values also influence the points. Put it all together and it looks pretty good. If you actually saw the bones you would see that some have to move entirely off the screen in order to effect the points. I have HUGE constraint values. Up to 1500% I think on some of the bones.

-------

Phew! Even I get confused when I talk about it. I built this rig ages ago. I just reuse it over and over for different heads. That is why I've kind of forgotten how most of it works.

I still need to add a tongue to this rig to make it perfect. something simple just for lip sync.

I am building a new version for characters that have a "snout" like talking bears and tigers. The teeth and tongue are a bit tricky. I will have to add additional code in the script to deal with them.

If you poke around with the "Technician" character you might see a little bit of what I'm describing. Don't feel bad if you get confused. I freak out sometimes when I have to figure out what the heck is going on. I must have been high or something when I created this thing.

-vern

Clever stuff

I'm just getting the hang of Switch layers and Blend Morphs - hoping I can work around scripting somehow. I know I'd prefer the hands-on creative approach over scripting, so I'm trying my best to get the hang of the various animation methods and tools available.