side view and overlap problem

[buddhanature28]

Hi I am making my first attempt at a side view of a character and I am having two issues I would like some advice on. First of all from the pictures I am adding you can see that in the o position her left arm looks awkward at the angle its at and I am not sure that it shouldnt be drawn better, differently but uncertain what exactly needs changing. Also as you can see from the next picture when I move her arms there is an overlap and i don't know how to correct this. My layer structure is a Switch layer and then a bone and vector layer for each view. With the entire character on one vector layer. Thanks for any help in advance!

[hayasidist]

in a (typical) front view, arms stretched out sideways, thumbs need to point "upwards";
in a (typical) front view, arms down, thumbs point to the legs just as you have it; or (e.g. holding a bag) they point forwards.
in a (typical) side view thumbs need to point forwards; so in your drawing her left hand is "upside down".

Anatomically, this "twist" happens in the forearm; but animators usually do this by keeping the forearm fixed and having a set of hands, switched at the wrist, that includes:

- view of the back of the hand, hand open
- view of the palm of the hand, hand open.

Just take a look at your own hand (and bare forearm) to see the different views and the way that the forearm rotates...

the overlap (pic3) is because of bone binding issues as in a previous post ....

... and one way to solve this plus the need to have the hand "flip over" in different poses, is to have multiple layers.

bottom line: IMO, side views are tricky (not impossible, but rarely worth the bother) to do with the whole character in one vector layer.

Have a play, but if you're stuck I'll upload a rig that "works for me".. it's the one I used for both characters in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrVfDJ1ASfE (which is part of a collaborative improv going on in http://www.kelleytown.com/forum/animato ... IC_ID=1267). Try to study how the hands change .....

[buddhanature28]

Hi Hayasidist,

Thanks for your ongoing help...

I will take a look at the links you sent me. I am sure they will help. And yes it might be helpful to sent me a sample rig so I can see how it works for you.

I note that you say that for side views it is almost never worth having everything in one vector layer. But I am so confused! Every I come across a different tutorial there seems to be someone saying to split the character up (and even then I don't know what works for folder layering!) or someone saying that you have to have it all in one layer. Are you suggesting doing the front in one layer and the side views broken up? If so could you give me an example of the folder hierarchy??

Much appreciated,
Heather

[buddhanature28]

So far I have detached the left arm and created a separate bone and vector layer in the under a switch layer so it now goes like this:

Switch folder: Base
then multiple switch folders each with a skeleton layer and a vector layer within that skeleton layer within the switch layer for each view. Does this sound right? In the side view switch folder I have an extra skeleton and bone layer for the separate left arm.

[hayasidist]

as you'll see, you're all but there...

here's the example rig I promised http://www.mediafire.com/?4fq3nf2xjogbskn In this example, the individual limbs have their own bone (group) layer which is layer-bound to a bone in the main skeleton; the arm groups also have the switch layers for the hand. Hat also is in its own layer and bound to a bone. The main root bone is the horizontal one with zero bone strength, and is used to move the whole skeleton... for example where he walks (middle of the animation) and falls (at the end); obviously, other bones also come into play to move limbs (whole limb movement from main skeleton) and bend limbs (using bones in the individual limb group). Mouth and eyes are also switch layers (and bound to the head bone) - I've chosen smooth interpolate for these...

have fun!

[buddhanature28]

Thank you so much for sharing this example rig with me and the accompanying explanation. One of the reasons I was hesitant to break limbs off into separate layers is because I couldn't then get them to move with the body to see how they joined. Having the control bones on the main skeleton as a way to control whole limbs is a brilliant solution. So thank you for providing that important missing bit of information for me!
Also are these vector switch layers for the mouth part of a common sound list for animation? (Just curious). Once again you have helped me understand crucial bits of layer structuring that I was missing. Thank you!!! H.

[hayasidist]

Hi - sorry for slow reply - been away (again!).

mouth shapes: yes - standard names are used for the Preston Blair (a talented animator 1908-1995) (PB) set of 10 key mouth shapes. There's a program called Papagayo that helps to lip-sync dialogue. It does this by providing the animator with a way to tie the written word with the spoken word and then with the PB mouth shapes.

Papagayo uses the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Pronouncing Dictionary, which is a machine-readable pronunciation dictionary for North American English that contains over 100,000 words and their transcriptions into a set of 39 phonemes (sound fragments). Papagayo then maps the sequence of CMU phonemes to the PB set of mouth shapes.

So what you see in the mouth switch is the 10 PB mouth shapes named such that Papagayo "works"; plus other "accent" shapes - surprise, fear, boredom etc (I can't remember exactly which ones are in the sample file). I use Papagayo to generate a switch data file for lip-sync, then manually add non-vocal mouth animation in AS.