Selgin's techniques, tutorials and script ideas

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 5:54 pm

Hi, I decided to put together most of my techniques, tutorials and scripts ideas to make easy and more ordered the access for new users and avoid they be lost on time.
I will put this post link on my signature and I hope to make it bigger with the time. Please, feel free to take a look and ask about in any of the topics.

New! Full body turn tutorial: Making a full body turn is easier than you think.

New! Walk Ruler: No more sliding walks!. This ruler works great to make constant velocity walks for bipeds, quadrupeds or any legged character you have. It can be easily adapted for any velocity and size. I use it in all my projects.

New! Follow Path as a pseudo bone: Follow Path tool can be used to bend complex shapes and, in some cases, works better than normal bones. Combining bones and follow path gives great results.

New and improved head turn technique: A new way to create head turns which actually let you turn your characters heads even on 360 degrees. It solves a big problem of all AS head turns I know.

Snake creeping technique: An amazing hidden feature in which you can define a path of distortion and put any object to follow it. Ideal for snakes, smoke, waves, flags, etc.

Flexible locking: Another amazing hidden feature which let you have a locked bone in movement, but still locked. Ideal to easily create diferent types of walkcycles based on just one basic walk (include an anme file which explain it better than me).

Turning Head with blend morph: Using the new blend morph feature to easily create infinite angles of a turning head. It even can be useful to create a reusable turning head with lipsync.

Cartoony dust with particles: A simple technique to avoid the computational look of particles and create them on a more cartoony way.

Frame by frame script: A simple idea script (script wrote by synth) which let you make simple frame by frame animations fastly. Ideal for velocity lines, drops, wrinkles and stuff which can help to make your animations look less "digital".

Negative curvature arm: A use of negative curvature (a fantastic hidden feature itself) which let you use it for a very simple and convincent arm/leg rotation.

Workspace tip: A little tip which let you hide/show the windows (timeline, style, tools, layers) by shortcuts. Ideal for people, like me, who have a small screen and don't need to see all windows all the time.

Poses script idea: A wonderful script wonderfully wrote by Genete which let you make complex animations moving just one bone. This script was wrote before the new Blend Morph feature and the final result you get is similar.
There is an improved script wrote by Rudiger and you can look a video demo on this topic.

Improved Translate layer tool (adds visibility, transparency and blur fast access): For this one you must visit Animators Forums, the unofficial anime studio forum, which moderators are Mkelley and Synth, two talented animators/scripters which choose to start their own forum. There are interesting info there, so I recommend to visit it.
This tool is based on this request and was wrote by Mkelley (thanks again, Mike). It adds to translate layer tool propieties a checkbox for visibility, one text box for transparency and one for blur, so you don't need to open layer proprieties over and over. It makes the workflow much more fluid.
Oh, a great feature with this tool is that you can change the visibility, transparency and blur of several selected layers at the same time!

Tutorial for animate rope, clothes, hair, etc: A very short tutorial (1:26) uploaded to youtube with a very simple technique which absolutely eliminates the pain of animating ropes and similar stuff. This discover has been a lifesaver for me and I strongly recommend you to take a look.

gleeful · Post by **gleeful** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 8:49 pm

Thanks for this great set of tools all located in one convenient spot. I will be referring to it a lot in the future.

I am already having great fun with the Snake Creeping Technique.

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 11:46 pm

Please moderators, make this sticky!!!

-G

mental_bith · Post by **mental_bith** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 8:55 pm

yes pleaze V:oops:

patricia3d · Post by **patricia3d** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:04 am

Great Tutorial. Great Help. Thanks Selgin.

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 10:45 pm

I just uploaded a little tutorial for animating ropes. I strongly recommend you to watch it. The link is in the first post.

rylleman · Post by **rylleman** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 9:49 am

Thank's Selgin, great to have your resources collected at one spot!

Rhoel · Post by **Rhoel** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 10:36 am

Genete wrote:Please moderators, make this sticky!!!

-G

done

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 4:43 pm

Rhoel wrote:
Genete wrote:Please moderators, make this sticky!!!

-G
done

Thanks!

patricia3d · Post by **patricia3d** » Sat Jan 23, 2010 6:47 pm

Hi Selgin. With the script (Lua) , can we open a Text file and read the value and change the Rotation Angles of some Bone.

At Frame 10 Bone9 turn 60 Degree
At Frame 18 Bone9 Turn 30 Degree
At Frame 26 Bone9 Turn 75 Degree

like this
and Frame No will be 1st Column of the Text Value will be the name of the bone, 2nd column is the Frame No and 3rd Column will be angle value.

For Example of above the text file is x.txt

Bone9 10 60
Bone9 18 30
Bone9 26 75

and so on

Can I implement this idea using Lua in ASP 6.1

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Sun Jan 24, 2010 12:26 am

Kkrawal, I don't really know much about lua scripting. But, if I understand well, you are proposing to make a script to automatically animate ropes.

Am I wrong? If not, I'm not sure if this is a good idea for a script. First, because that calculation is the kind of work dynamic bones do. And second, because one of the advantages you get by doing that kind of animation by hand is you have absolute control on the movement.

The example tutorial is a very simple movement which doesn't show much complications, but think, for example, in a man with a scarf which exteme is taked by the man hand and throwed to his back. That movement is very complex and a script or dynamic bones can't really understand what is going on, so you are forced to do it by hand. That kind of movement is where the tutorial is more useful. Once you understand the "science" of that movement (which is what I tried to explain with the video tutorial) you will be able to solve easily that kind of complex movement.

If I didn't understand your message, please excuse me.

patricia3d · Post by **patricia3d** » Sun Jan 24, 2010 5:13 am

Thanks Selgin for your reply.
Actually I wanted to use A Text file containg the Bone Names, Frame Number and Angle of Movement to control the Bone Angles.

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:40 pm

Hi all, I just posted a new technique for Head Turns. It lets you have a head turn from center to a completely side view with no problems!

Check on the first post

patricia3d · Post by **patricia3d** » Thu Apr 15, 2010 4:18 am

Hi Selgin. Thanks for your file.
I have downloaded your file
test mascara03.anme and when I run, it works, but I get a Lua Console Error mesage.

MeshInstance: wrong order - swap the source and the copy!

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Thu Apr 15, 2010 4:22 am

kkrawal wrote:Hi Selgin. Thanks for your file.
I have downloaded your file
test mascara03.anme and when I run, it works, but I get a Lua Console Error mesage.

MeshInstance: wrong order - swap the source and the copy!

Sometimes it happens to me too. I just ignore it (maybe not the best solution, but it works so far).