Best Way to Keep Body Parts Together

[FoundPebble]

I'm trying to animate characters in Anime Studio 9.5 without using any bones. Whenever I tried to use bones, the body parts would distort or just not bend at all, even after watching tutorials. The character I am making needs to be able to bend forward and backwards. However, I know if I use a switch layer to change the body shape, the head and arms will not follow and will be floating in their original position. I know I can fix this manually every single time I use a switch layer, but I want the body parts to line up the same way every time, including in new projects. Is there a better, more accurate, and faster way to do this than just manually for every frame?

[slowtiger]

Yes: use bones.

Seriously, you will not make much progress if you avoid bones completely from your workflow. That said, the problem may possibly be solved in an earlier stage, in storyboard/ staging.

I have several scenes right now where a character bends forward to the camera, but since they are only visible from chest to head I can easily achieve the effect by just scaling them.

What kind of movement do you want to achieve? Bending forwards and backwards sounds like someone in the gym. In that case think of a caterpillar: several body segments stacked on top of each other. Now you can animate their layer order (as soon as they are in a bone folder) and scale them independently. One of these could have the arms as well.

[FoundPebble]

I didn't mean anything with a perspective change like bending towards the camera. I mean the character is mostly in 3/4 perspective all the time, and the bend forward or down to pick up something, and maybe they bend backwards or bend up to look at something above them. I wanted the animation to be more stilted like an animatic with only a few smooth movements, but I didn't want one million switch layers with every single pose with the character always on one layer. I'm still breaking up the character. However what I mean is instead of moving the head to be where the body is every time I need that pose or instead of having to copy frames and somehow import theminto new projects, I want to just each body part for each pose oce and then be beable to reuse that pose againt. I was thinking of doing it without bones on the body but I can use bones for something else. I also don't have vitruvian bones so If I want a completely different shape for lets say the hand and arms, I'm not sure the regular bone system will work.

[FoundPebble]

My other option was to animate my project a similar way to what other people do which is by drawing each frame like an animatic, puutting each character and object on their own seperate file, and putting that in an editing program and stitching that together. I was going to do that, but then if each character is on one layer, I can't simply move the arm up or switch the arm and keep the same pose. I could put everything on it's own layer, but since there are no switch layers, there's just going to be a ton of images out there. Also, there's the issue of scaling where everything may not be to scaleand in the right position so I would have to make a ton of single pngs to figure out where everything should be and the scale. I like how I can organize everything in moho in folders and switch layers, and can open them when I need to.

[Hoptoad]

Well, you might make "actions." Initiate an "action," animate the character bending backwards, title the action "bend backward," and then every time you need the character to bend backwards, employ the action with a couple clicks.

Yes, you still have to animate the difficult movement, but at least you only have to do it once.

Poptoogi on YouTube made a tutorial video on actions and smart bone actions. You might check them out.

Also, onion skinning may help with placing the arms properly as the torso moves.

[FoundPebble]

Thank you, that's a good idea. If I were to use bones though would a bone system ever work on the types of designs I have? Most of the characters have very short and stubby arms. Some of them have arms that get wider at the fingers kind of like a rounded cone. I have tried before a couple of times but it doesn't really work. The arm doesn't bend, even though I tried making the arm one big shape, splitting the arm from top half to bottom on one layer, and separating them into two layers.

[Hoptoad]

I think bones could work in your situation, but you might need to be a little creative with how you bend them. Usually, bones are rotated so that the bone doesn't move from its pivot-point. You could try doing two things: rotating the bone AND translating the bone or scaling the bone at the same time. You might also need to move a few points here and there, to fix any bad deformations. In the end, what matters the most is that, in the end, the bending looks good.

Every rig I make, I get a little bit better - and I've made dozens. And I still have yet to make a flawless rig. But the nifty thing is, a person can still create quality animation with a terribly rigged character.

[synthsin75]

Use bones. They are meant to do exactly what you want.

If you have problems with distortions or binding, post images, files, or specific problems, and we can get you sorted out.
Trying to do the same thing without bones is just trying to reinvent the wheel.

[FoundPebble]

Okay, that makes sense. Doing it without bones would require too many switch layers which would probably affect the program's speed too. I will take a crack at trying to use bones again.