Moho Forum

A month ago, I needed help with bones and joints for a character I was working on. Now, I'm wondering if there's a way to prevent the vectors from cancelling each other out when they overlap (DL the current character and move the legs, and you'll see what I mean). I'm also wondering if there's a way to manipulate long hair so that when it's bent, there's no sharp edge created.

Current character
http://pages.suddenlink.net/rk/lc-j-43.anme

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Looking for Mr. Touched on this next one:

The first character (How do I do the shape-displacement effect with the hair?).
http://pages.suddenlink.net/rk/lc-d-43.anme

As we explained to you in the other thread, to prevent the overlapping of the shape you should divide the limb into two shapes. In this case the Right Longcoat layer should have two or more shapes that are properly binded to the skeleton.
Review the examples on the other thread and do the same modifications but for the Right Longcoat layer like the one we did for the arms.
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Also reviw the "Joints" thread under the Tips and Thecniques forum. Download the example file and study it depply, It is very educative.

Regards
Genete

First I'll address the bending of the long hair. I accomplish hair movement with long chains of very small bones, which can be selected together and rotated as a group. I notice in your newer sample that the long hair has a length on both sides where the points are very far apart. It's important to note that bones can only bend a line if there are points at which to bend it. As it is currently, if you try to bend the back hair with bones, it'll rotate stiffly, without bending around the lower middle. So just add some points in there, preferably between bones when you add them. I always place points between the bones in my long chains.

As for the shape displacement (which is actually called bone offset), what you have to do is move the hair out of the way on frame 0. Move it far enough away that it doesn't overlap any other body parts, and also far enough away that it's outside the influence radius of any other bones. Then add bones into the hair, with the top bone parented to the character's head bone. Once that's all done, select the Offset Bone tool, and grab the top hair bone and move it back where it was supposed to be. From then on, on every frame except 0 (your setup frame), the hair will be in its proper place, and you can adjust the hair bones without disturbing the bones in the body and vice versa.

I would do the same thing for the front hair, the head itself, and perhaps the long coat and the skirt, depending on how much movement you want to put in the animation.

Frame 0 will be your "exploded view", with a bunch of stuff pulled apart, but it will look normal on all other frames. It will also look normal on frame 0 if you have either the Offset Bone tool or the Manipulate Bones tool selected, but that's a temporary view for testing and checking purposes.

Here's the Joints thread Genete mentioned. This is where I learned how to properly handle creases in arms and legs.
http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4970

Here's my edited version of the file, with the hair offset and boned and with some points added. I put in a keyframe to show it bending.
http://drowtales.com/~whiteradish/moho/ ... ouched.zip

Also, I notice that when I was working with the hair layer, the points were released or otherwise immune from the bone influence. I had to correct that before the offset would work.

I'm sorry about my last post. I readed arm instead of leg. Anyway the arm still having that classic overlapping of the shape over itself.

Ooops!!

Good luck.

Genete

(BTW: Great explnation Touched )