Bones on a long dragon character?

[Amirattus]

Hello fellow animators!

I am quite a beginner with Anime Studio Pro 11 and unfortunately I need some help with the bones of my character.


I have this really long dragon and I'd like her to move, wiggle and curl smoothly (of course). I assume I should do the bones differently than this...

I have already tried binding the points to the bones and corrected the movements with smart bones (actions window). But the smart bone correcting seemed to just make the bending worse and I assume it's because I corrected the same points with multiple bones.

I tried to search for some tutorials, but couldn't find any that would cover my problem. I would be really thankful if someone could help me to get on the right direction with this. ^^

[Greenlaw]

Hi,

I did a quick test to see if I could replicate what you're seeing but here's the result using the defaults:





Maybe it has to do with the placement of your points? Just a thought. In the example above, I tried to keep the top and bottom sets fairly mirrored and evenly spaced. At a glance, I think you might not be using the best binding method. In the above, I'm just using regular flexi-binding. If you need to isolate the deformations to specific bones, use Use Selected Bones For Flexi-Binding. You may need to clear the existing binding for this to work.

For the most part, It shouldn't be necessary to use SmartBones to correct the deformations in this body--that method is usually more appropriate for jointed areas like elbows and shoulders.

Hope this info helps. If you could display your points, that might also help see where the problem is.

G.

[Maestral]

I second with Greenlaw and would add just a few drops of attention to curvature, on these "protuberances" - due to the overlaping. Also, since it looks like this dragon will use his tail a lot, might be better to create a separate parts which would enable the tail to swing on both sides of the body (thankfuly to the Animated shape order).

[slowtiger]

For stuff like this the grid comes in handy. I place the points evenly on each side - more points are better. Once the shape is complete I can select just one row of points and rotate them to my like. For the bones I use the same grid, making a chain of many small bones. (You know you can adjustthe grid spacing to your needs?)

I wonder why you have your bone chain starting from the tail, I'd let it start from the head.

[Greenlaw]

This is just my personal thought on the matter but I think the skeletal structure is generally fine.

If I were to change anything, I'd probably start the 'hip' region (where the tail and upper spine bones part) closer to the top of the upper leg bones. I would also add a shared parent Hip bone for the first upper spine bone and the first tail bone (see my pic) and the upper leg bones. This gives you a clear 'handle' to rotate and reposition the whole rig with.

This shared parent is sometimes parented to a separate COG bone for 'Center Of Gravity' bone, which can be useful for rotating a character in a flip or tumble. I typically add yet another parent bone to the COG, positioned at the ground between the feet. This is usually called the Root bone and it can be used for another level for positioning, like sliding the character across the ground when animating walks. If you animate the character's Y-position using the COG bone, the Root bone can also helps you see how high off the ground the character is without constantly checking surrounding frames. (Drawing non-rendering guide lines in a separate layer also helps. )

This setup is fairly common for rigging a character for 3D animation and I find it works well for Anime Studio characters too. IMO, this gives you a more 'natural' skeleton and the additional parent bones may make it easier to animate the dragon in walking and flying.

This all depends on your intended animation of course but I think the above should work well for most conventional situations.

G.

[funksmaname]

to fix the overlapping 'empty holes' you need to segment along the tail and have multiple fills instead of a single one. That way you could animate the tip or some other part over or under any other part and you don't get that 'masking' effect. use the line hiding feature to quickly hide all segmentation lines.

[Amirattus]

Thank you so much for all the comments and tips! I managed to get the skeleton to move smoothly by making the points even and adding them a lot (by using the grid) and making new skeleton with more bones.
However... I faced a new problem. I somehow can't manage to bind the body to the bones?? The shadow on the belly binds just fine, but the body doesn't move anywhere, even when they are flexi-bind. Any idea what I might have done wrong? Could there be somekind of lock that keeps the body still?

[Greenlaw]

It sounds like you have the shadow and the body in separate layers...is that necessary? In other words, can you paste the body into the shadow layer? Not that that answers your question but it might solve the problem.

As for the points not moving with the desired bones, I think you may need to be clear any existing binding from the points before you can bind them to the selected bones. When I run into binding issues, that usually fixes it for me.

Another thing that sometimes trips me up is a bad Smartbones action or an errant keyframe before frame zero. If you're completely reworked your rig, be sure that any pre-existing Smartbones actions or keyframes are deleted. BTW, pre-zero keyframes are tricky to find because AS doesn't allow to look at the timeline before frame zero. To find the keys, you'll need to slip each track forward in the Sequencer. If you find any keys, kill them. Remember to slip the track back to align with frame zero. I don't know if any of this info is related to the issue you're seeing but maybe it will help track down the problem.

Hope this helps.

G.

[Amirattus]

Thank you once more for everyone who helped! Your tips were really useful and I managed to get my dragon as I wanted it. She can even blink, move her eyes and change expression from sad to happy. Can't wait to see how she will work in an animation!



I tried seperating the tail to different segments so that she could fold on top of her body, but I managed to get everything else work except the shadow. The shadow will leave holes or do overlapping when segmented and the character is bent. :/

[funksmaname]

is the shadow a layer effect or its own vectors? you would just need to segment them in the same way as the main fill
Looking good!