Smart Actions (turns) point animation vs. layer transformation

[arglborps]

So I've gone trough the tutorial from Bloopanimation and found it very informative and easy to understand. What surprised me was in the tutorial, every smart action was done using bone and point animation. This surprised me, because I've seen others doing head and body turns using bone and layer transformation for most of it.

I guess this might be due to personal preference, but I wonder whether any seasoned animator could share her/his take on which would be the default go-to way for doing head/body turns or other smart actions.

Here's my two cents on this:

• Controlling width/size/position of eyes for head turns via layer transformation seems to be the better choice, because it won't interfere with eyelid animation that is usually done with point animation
• Pupil control also seems to be way easier if you do it via layer transformation, what's the benefit of doing that with point animation?
• Animating face parts via layer transformation for a head turns also seems easier, because it won't move points and if you combine a left/right turn with a up/down head tilt it tends to just work. In the Bloopanimation tutorial the animator had to do a lot of trial & error fixes for the initial point placement and curvation to create a combined head turn/tilt with point animation that would work for all positions
• Animating eyebrows via point animation seems to get really tricky if you combine it with head turns – why not use bones for the eyebrows?

Given that the result of that course looked absolutely professional and better than anything I could produce, I couldn't find any fault with the point animation only approach, I'm just wondering whether this is how most other people do it, too

[synthsin75]

I mostly use bone and point motion in my smart actions. Point motion just gives so much more control that layer transforms. It allows noses, eyes, mouths, etc. to change both perspective and shape.

Probably overkill for a very cartoony style.

I tend to use both bones and point motion in smart actions for things like eyebrows. If you only keyframe bone position and scale in the smart action, you can still animate rotation from any character angle. For things like pupils, you can have one bone handle animation and a parent bone handle smart action turns.

[SimplSam]

So I've gone trough the tutorial from Bloopanimation ... every smart action was done using bone and point animation ... I've seen others doing head and body turns using bone and layer transformation ... I'm just wondering whether this is how most other people do it, too

As a non-seasoned-animator -- I can't recall seeing any videos/tuts where points animation has not been used in credible Smart Action Head/Body turns. Could you point to one or two examples?

[Greenlaw]

I use a lot of different techniques but there are certain practices I follow for most character rigs.

For face elements in a head turn, I parent everything to a Face bone, and use this to move the face parts across the head.

I also have child bones for moving both eyes together, each eye individually, and separate bones for moving the iris of each each. The 'iris' bones are usually controlled outside of the head; this means I don't have to worry about offsetting the bones for different eye positions when the character changes to a different set of drawings. It's easier when Iris bones are always above near the head regardless of head orientation. The eyes artworks each exist in their own groups so I can use separate masking techniques foe the eyes, and every layer is individually bound to the eye bones that control them. The animations for blinking is entirely controlled by Smart Bone Dials (sometimes multiple dials depending on the character type).

The nose group is usually bound with Layer Binding since it doesn't have any bones deformations, just point animation controlled by the head turn SBD. Same fo rthe mouth group, which is usually a Switch Layer. The switch layers position is usually controlled by the mouth bone parented to the face bone, but I'll apply squash and stretch transforms directly to the switch group layer after I've animated the lipsynch. This makes the mouth motions look smoother even when I'm using a very limited number of mouth shapes.

The reason I have most of the layers/groups bound to bones is so I can do the bulk of the animation in just one (Bones) layer. This is much easier to manage when setting up a Smart Bone Action and when animating the character in general.

I also do point animation on the timeline but this is usually for secondary or corrective animation after I've done all my bones animation. This is often done for capes, long hair, or bushy tails. I sometimes do this for eyes and mouth shapes when the head is in an unusual angle, or when I need to exaggerate or create 'new' mouths from existing ones.

Oh, just remembered: Eyebrows! Over the years, I've used a number of techniques from swapping drawings to bone chains, but what I've settled on lately is using a bone to animate the position and rotation, then using the Magnet tool to reshape it. This has been made much easier with recent layer selection tools like Layer Shortcuts or Layer Selection Buttons. I demo this technique in the Layer Shortcut video (scrub to around 1:20). When using this technique, be sure to keyframe the current eyebrow shape, and offset that keyframe a few frames earlier before using the Magnet reshape the eyebrow. Once you get the hang of it, this is a very fast way to animate your character's expressions. It can also makes the animation look more organic little extra effort, and not so canned like when you simply select preset drawings in a Switch Layer.

[Greenlaw]

I mostly use bone and point motion in my smart actions. Point motion just gives so much more control that layer transforms. It allows noses, eyes, mouths, etc. to change both perspective and shape.

Probably overkill for a very cartoony style.

Not at all. Almost everything I do is cartoony and I use a lot of point animation for secondary animation. But this usually comes after I'm done animating the bones and layer transforms, and it helps make the animation look less 'digital'.

I use point animation inside my Smart Bone Actions too, but I prefer to transform bones and layer as much as I can because that's easier to manage. But sometimes, you just gotta get at those points though. (The 'eyebrows' thing mentioned above is a good example; for me, it's been so much easier to just animate the points. But I only started doing this after you released Layer Shortcuts.)

[chucky]

I normally use a similar technique to Greenlaw,
Attach group to bones,
Obviously it totally depends on the situation, but generally and increasingly, I prefer to limit the amount of point movement if I can help it.

One thing I really , REALLY want to achieve is LESS rigging.
Anything I can do to just replace parts and the better, I want to animate not rig.
I'm even looking at more and more at having mesh layers deform contents, so I can switch art for example an arm and the mesh will control the smart deformations of the new art.

[Greenlaw]

One thing I really , REALLY want to achieve is LESS rigging.

100% agreed!

I totally feel that way, especially after working on a show that seemed to require new character rigs with every episode. I'd love to spend more time animating than I do rigging.

Moho's evolution made some of the features I used build into every rig obsolete. Mouth shape Smart Bone Dials immediately comes to mind; ever since we got the Switch Selection window, I don't bother to set this up anymore. And Wes' Layer Shortcuts made it easier to select the Mouth Switch layer for Switch Selection. Easier to set up and easy to animate!

I wish to see Moho continue to develop features that make it easier to animate a character so we don't need to spend so much time building everything from scratch, but still keep the flexibility we have to make the rigs as powerful as we need.