Moho Animation Forum

Hi all,

I've been following Darth Furby's head turn tutorial and I'm running into some problems with depth sorting.

I'm trying to change the Z-depth of an eye to conceal it as the the head changes to a side view, instead I find that other vector layers are popping in and out of visibilty.
I've searched through the forum to see if anyone else has come across this problem and the closest thing I've found is maybe I saved the .anme file whilst making an action. Could this have screwed things up?

This is a link to the file
http://www.mediafire.com/?clwxmny3z3i

Hi!
There are some problems:
1) I never understood why DarthFurby selected also sort by true distance when it is not necessary. It is only needed when you are rotating layers to create 3D scenes what is not the situation. If you check off that option for the bone layer, the Left eye would appear again at frame 0.
2) You have not defined properly the layers depth for each situation. If in the actions you define 0.0001 for the Left eye to be above the face layer (what still at 0.000) then you should define the opposite action to -0.0001 and not to -0.01 if not the eye disappear at the very beginning of the transition.
3) I have also re-inserted the actions at the proper places because I think sometimes 1 frame actions references are not updated when you modify the action itself. No idea why
4) Don't cross from front to side directly. Make a 3/4 view. It would produce a better smooth rotation. Take account that the horizontal translation should be like a math sin movement (fast from front to 3/4 and slow from 3/4 to side) so if you do a front to side transition you'll obtain a "flat" movement. Also the Left eye should not disappear until the very end of the rotation (maybe at a half of the transition of 3/4 to side. Meanwhile should be covered by the nose.

To "restore" the file do following:
1) Sort by true distance = off
2) Correct the actions to make them symmetrical in term of Z depth for the layers. Take account nose, ears eyebrow and ears also.
3) Re apply the actions at proper place.

Here the file corrected as far as it is possible.
http://www.mediafire.com/?8yasuiw1svt
-G

That's great, I wasn't exactly sure what effect Sort By True Distance had on layer order. I was just going by the Head Turn tutorial.

If in the actions you define 0.0001 for the Left eye to be above the face layer (what still at 0.000) then you should define the opposite action to -0.0001 and not to -0.01 if not the eye disappear at the very beginning of the transition.

Oops! I hadn't noticed that I'd used an unequal value in the side view.

As for a 3/4 view, I do intend to build one. I just wanted to save drawing one by hand and instead use the inbetween point of the head turn and tweak it slightly.
I'm currently working through The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams and the advice on head turns and lip sync have been a big help.

Thanks for taking the time to look at my file.