Moho Forum

Hi guys, the manual is very basic and not very descriptive and this question comes from a beginner so please be patient.

It doesn't tell you the steps in importing character artwork into the program and manipulating the characters.

Sure I understand about bones and how they affect the character and how to animate. But how does the program recognise that a bone attaches to a limb and so on so they all move together ??

The manual tells you that you can import most formats PNG, JPEG etc... but when I do this, I can't add the bones because it doesn't allow me to. Does that mean (in a seperate editor) I need to separate each limb first and then I can add bones. For example arms, legs, head etc....

I went through the tutorial files and all they gave me were ANME files which has bones already so I cannot see what format I should be working with.

I hope I making sense :<

Can anyone help?

Hello pabmove,

pabmove wrote:But how does the program recognise that a bone attaches to a limb and so on so they all move together ??

Run through Tutorial 4.1 again, paying particular attention to the last part, binding an image layer to a bone. Note that the image layer is a sub-layer of the bone layer.

pabmove wrote:Does that mean (in a seperate editor) I need to separate each limb first and then I can add bones. For example arms, legs, head etc....

Yes, you've got it - you need to separate each part/limb in an image editor.

You add bones as a separate layer.

Repeat Tutorial 1.4 for adding a bone layer and adding bones, except instead of importing and using a vector character you'll be importing several limb images then binding them to the bones (Tutorial 4.1).
(Anime Studio was originally designed for animating drawn vector shapes - image import/animation was added later - and the tutorials partly reflect that).

In summary:

0. Make sure you are on frame 0 (the "build" frame).

1. Create a bone layer (Tutorial 1.4). Don't create any bones yet.

2. Create/import your image layers (Tutorial 4.1). Position, rotate, and rescale image layers as necessary to roughly assemble your character (try the Tool Groups chapter if you need more detail).

3. Drag each image layer onto the bone layer (so it becomes an indented sub-layer of the bones layer) - see Tutorial 1.4 except there it uses a vector layer. (If the currently selected layer is already a sub-layer of the bone layer, creating a new image layer will create another layer immediately above it which is already a a sub-layer of the bone layer - as in Tutorial 4.1)

4. Once more position, rotate, and rescale image layers as necessary to assemble your character more accurately.

5. Add bones to the bone layer to match the assembled character (Tutorial 1.4) - pay special attention to bone hierarchy - new bones automatically become children of the currently selected bone.

6. Bind each image layer to the appropriate bone (Tutorial 4.1)

7. Test your bone binding (Tutorial 1.4) - using the Manipulate Bones tool for this only works on frame 0.

(Instead of binding each limb to a single bone like a shadow puppet, you can let multiple bones warp and bend an image layer - see Tutorial 4.2, so bones could actually bend a leg or arm. Set the bone layer to use Region binding for more controlled results if you try this.)

Regards, Myles.

Hi myles,

Thank you for the detailed reply. Now all is clear.

I really thought that I could skip disembling a character with this program but I guess it was just too good to be true!

Still it still has good points compared to another I was looking at (toonboom).

Thanks again