Not sure about my character set up

[JoelMayer]

Hi folks!

Im still working in my spare time on my first Anime Studio Character.

Its a girl and the problem i encountered with her is, that i want the chin to move with the lips. So i built a separate Chin layer. Now, when it comes to animating it that causes some "problems". I always have to move the chin layer with the mouth layer. Its quite troublesome. I just wanted to ask, if you have any suggestions? I attached the file, so you can look at it if you want to....

http://www.mayerfilms.ch/pics/Gwen_Test.anme



Thank you so much!

Cheers!

[jonbo]

I like your character. Well the way you made the mouth is a bit cumbersome, you have all the elements on different layers. So it will be a little harder to do. You really need to create the mouth elements and chin on one layer then duplicate that layer the number of times corresponding to the number of mouth positions you want. then make a switch layer and drag all the duplicates into it. Use the point translate tool on each of the mouth layers to make your different positions, don't add any more points to the shapes so that you can use layer interpolate option which will give you a smoother transition. An example of a simple switch would be : switch layer at top, then mouth closed layer, then mouth midway open next , then mouth open full on bottom. switch layers are really handy, so it might be good to read up on them. you can study the mouth switch layers that are in the content library that will help you understand what i mean. if you have AS pro you could use actions and blend morphs to do the mouth and chin moves. they're a little harder to explain, so you can read up on them too in the help section.

[sbtamu]

I like your character. Well the way you made the mouth is a bit cumbersome, you have all the elements on different layers. So it will be a little harder to do. You really need to create the mouth elements and chin on one layer then duplicate that layer the number of times corresponding to the number of mouth positions you want. then make a switch layer and drag all the duplicates into it. Use the point translate tool on each of the mouth layers to make your different positions, don't add any more points to the shapes so that you can use layer interpolate option which will give you a smoother transition. An example of a simple switch would be : switch layer at top, then mouth closed layer, then mouth midway open next , then mouth open full on bottom. switch layers are really handy, so it might be good to read up on them. you can study the mouth switch layers that are in the content library that will help you understand what i mean. if you have AS pro you could use actions and blend morphs to do the mouth and chin moves. they're a little harder to explain, so you can read up on them too in the help section.

LOL I just spent the last hr going over the file and when I come to post my response, jonbo more or less covered what I was going to say.

[jonbo]

Ha Steve. You must have got me about a 1/2 dozen times the same way. you explain things better than me, so i mostly don't post anything more after you post. so, for once, yea for me.

[sbtamu]

Ha Steve. You must have got me about a 1/2 dozen times the same way. you explain things better than me, so i mostly don't post anything more after you post. so, for once, yea for me.

touche jonbo

[neeters_guy]

Good advice. Putting all the mouth shapes in the switch layer will also allow you to use the lip sync function. If you use actions, you can keep all the layers separate if you wish. Just create them in the top bone layer so all the child layers are covered.

One more tip. Since you're going to do a lot of point manipulations, create named groups when you select points so you don't need to constantly reselect points, eg., upper lips, lower lips, upper teeth, lower teeth, etc.

Nice work on the character design, btw.

[slowtiger]

(Can't check the file - too new version)

In traditional animation chin movement is much rarer than lip movement. This makes sense, because lips move faster than the chin. If you put the chin in the same phoneme layers as the mouth shapes and just do automatic lip sync, you'll end up with a character with a distracting fast "chew".

Lots of recent animation uses a small chin patch on top of the face shape. This chin moves as fast as the lips (or is replaced as fast), while the overall face shape stays the same.

For your character I'd recommend to keep mouth and chin separate, which is easy because there's no detail to match. Do the mouth in the usual fashion (switch layer, with or without interpolation), take care not to overdo it ("girls speak softly - unless angry").


The chin/jaw should be a separate shape on top of the face, bound to a bone which has its pivot point where the real chin joint is: just in front of the ear. Take care to treat the throa line in a way that it bends convincingly (and not inwards!).

After setting up the lip sync move the jaw, but not too much. You might do with just three position: close, normal talk, accents. "Normal" will be the most used one, "close" for BPWF, "accents" depending on speech. If you study your own jaw by touching it while talking, you'll notice that it usually doesn't move to "close" between words.

To avoid a too smooth effect I do stuff like this in this fashion:

Code: Select all

 · + · s · + · · · · s · · + · s · + · · · s · · + ·
   c   c   n         n     o   o   n       n     c

(s = smooth interpolation, + = step; c/n/o = jaw positions)

This will move the jaw in a realistic speed of 2 or 3 frames and stay still in between.

[Poptoogi]

Hi Joel,

I was going to say pretty much what jonbo said as well but I wanted to show you an example of this as well. This is an animation quite a while ago but I did pretty much what jonbo was talking about except I made the entire head shape with mouths as switch layers. The reason I did this was for the exact problem you're having. By making the head shape a part of the mouths I could make the chin move with the mouths with ease. Once I made the initial 6 or 7 mouth shapes, this lip sync was incredibly easy!

http://www.youtube.com/user/ShoNuff93?f ... zZKfbn6QSM

[jonbo]

That's a good tip neeters, i always forget to do that first and later regret it. slowtiger makes a great point. jaw movements should be limited to the extremes to avoid that puppet mouth look. that's a good example guyver, it really fits the style of the animation.

[JoelMayer]

Thanks for the suggestion you all!

I redrew the chin including the mouth this time. But i still left the tongue, inner side of the mouth and teeth on a seperate layer. just makes more sense to me, even though the teeth have to be moved seperately now but animation is always hard work so i think it'll be fine

Thanks for the point grouping tip as well! i did that now.

Ill post further updates. I hope i can complete her soon and maybe do some animation.

[JoelMayer]

Still continuing on my girl character. I think she looks pretty sexy so far. Like Disney for sexists or something, which what i'm aiming for



Unfortunately i ran into some more problems.

First off, one line on her nose disappeared and i dont get it back. I tried everything the obvious line disappear tool, etc. but i dont get it back...



Next thing is, some of the lines dont have nice curves. More like breaks and gaps inbetween them, even though they're one continuos line....




I'm glad for any suggestions. I attached the .anme file again. So if anyone cares to have a look at it i would be happy! Maybe there are some other things i did a little stupid.

Thanks A ton!!!

http://www.mayerfilms.ch/pics/Gwen_Test.anme

[jonbo]

The problem on the nose is somehow the stroke exposure tool got used on it. With the head layer selected, click on one of the nose points with the stroke exposure tool and drag right or left to return the line to the nose. The breaks are caused by lines that are hidden. You should delete all the points that are not needed like the ones that run from the back of the neck to the break in the neck and then re-draw the shape without them. hope this helps


Edit: I made a few changes to your file, you can download it from here to see what I did.

http://www.mediafire.com/?rt4rcsggf7x81l6

[JoelMayer]

ooooh thanks a lot, jonbo !!!

btw do you think it would be wiser to make all the different body parts like leds and torso on different layers?

and: when i copy and paste a layer it always jumps to another position... why is that? do i have to reset the pivot or something?

[jonbo]

Yes, separating the body shapes will make it much easier to rig with bones and cut down on the bones influence on other body parts when you don't want them affecting them. Looking forward to seeing her..hemm..assets in action.


Edit: sorry didn't see that last question. the jumping you refer to is most likely related to the origin point of the layer. I don't mess with resetting the origin as this can cause problems later on. its' just as easy to use point and layer translate to move your shapes where you want them.

[JoelMayer]

thanks a lot i solved the problem by just duplicating the layer and paste it in there. thanks again for all your help! i think she'll be a good character to test out some "physics"