Bone and layer set up question.

[djwaterman]

Hi. I have set up this character who is riding a bike, really the only things that need to move are the wheels and legs (although if I get those working I might add other movements).

The problem I have right now is how do I have the bones in the legs only effect the respective leg layers. I can't use binding because the legs are just strokes so there is no foot, shin and thigh parts, just one long stroke.

Here is the set up the way I have it.




And the layers...




I guess my question is something like, how do I have certain bones only affect certain layers? I must be overlooking something obvious so any assistance would be very helpful, even if it's just to tell me to search the manual.

[djwaterman]

I've sort of solved it, I don't know if it is the correct way but it will work. I just moved some of the points of one leg into a standing position so that it was away from the influence of the other legs bones, and then repositioned the bones to fit the new pose. It does work (will work) for this particular animation, but it is probably a bit of a hokey solution.

Thinking about it I realize I'm trying to rig a character that was already in pose, so that of course was gonna introduce problems when rigging.

[slowtiger]

No, you're on the right track. Look up "offset bones". Basically you build your character, then, before rigging, separate the parts. Draw bones, the with the offset bone tool grab the top of each part and drag it to where it belongs.

[synthsin75]

9.5 can also solve this with nested layer control.

[djwaterman]

Groovy. I went ahead with my solution and it was okay but returning here and seeing these answers I went in and did more testing and now I think I have the nested layers thing working properly, with a bone layer as the top of each leg layer, this allowed me to just draw bones even in the posed character and not have any influence issues with other layers.

Although this also separates them in view when animating, which is not how it should be, so still have to figure this out a bit.

[djwaterman]

Okay, so I ended up doing as Slowtiger suggested, that seems the safest most stable way, thank you both for your help. I'm really starting to like this program a lot now as I find out more.

[slowtiger]

Btw I like your design, it's quite original. You could improve it a bit by spreading the wheel's spokes not quite evenly, this also prevents them from shuttering. Also you should think of giving him a little bit ore movement: just a tiny bit of up and down on teh body as the treads, and the tails of his coat should move as well.

[djwaterman]

Thanks, yes good suggestion on the spokes. I'm playing with him right now, I realize that the animation does explode apart on frame zero now for some reason, but I guess that's how it is.

[slowtiger]

Frame 0 is for rigging only, always start your animation at frame 1.

[funksmaname]

considering your legs are made of strokes with, like, 3 points - why don't you just manually bind those points to the required bone? you can remove any leg bone influence that way...

p.s. I also really like your design! look forward to seeing what you're up to.

[djwaterman]

Yes I was hoping that was possible but couldn't make it happen. I'll look into it now.

[Víctor Paredes]

Can you share the file? I think I could help.

[djwaterman]

Thanks, I will. How can we up load files on the forum? Or is there a better way to share files?

[funksmaname]

unfortunately, you'll have to put them somewhere first and just link to it (e.g. mediafire, dropbox etc)

[djwaterman]

Can you share the file? I think I could help.

Looks like I had a mediafire account already, don't remember setting it up though.

http://www.mediafire.com/?51vr5amgol5067e

If you have the time to work on binding the strokes to bones let us know. I'd like to know how to do it in the future. I'm really excited about using ASP, it's really a fantastic tool.