smart bone begins

[Greenlaw]

...I'm in a pinch right now with a deadline looming, so experimentation is limited - what works, works.
I have to create 7 more characters now ...

Yikes, seven characters on a tight deadline!

I totally understand. Under ideal circumstances, I like to put in plenty of time for R&D and rigging because that effort can (hopefully) save me a lot of time when I start animating. But of course if I spend too much time rigging, I have less time to animate. And the less time I have to work with, the more I want to rely only on what's tried and true. It can be a real balancing act. Also, if there's a team of other animators waiting for rigs to animate, that can force me to take shortcuts. But so long at the rig remains flexible enough for them to make their own mods easily, it still all good.

Situations like that make me wish was easier to repurpose rig parts for other characters in Moho. Eugene's MR Transform Rig Tool helps speed up the process, but the tools is probably not something you want to take time to learn and experiment with when in a pinch.

Anyway, good luck!

[slowtiger]

The story continues ...

Same client 2 yrs later, 3rd project with them. Much shorter story, only 5 talking characters. My storyboard is approved, so I know which shots and angles I need. I decided to only to the heads in Moho, but as vectors like 2 yrs before, because lots of dialogue. I don't need any full turns, just some quite subtle poses.

Time savers:
- I could just re-use the files from 2 yrs ago. Same style, same line width, just a bit different colours and proportions. Much fast! Glad that I already had found useable solutions then.
- This time I do the rigging in v14, on my Mac Mini, on my new Cintiq. Last time I was doing that stuff with a mouse on an iMac. The difference in work speed is amazing.
- Moho 14 seems to be less glitchy than 13.5.
- This time that bit with the start/neutral position in the middle of the dial works.
- Rendering on Mac Mini is fast.

Troubles:
- It's hard to edit smart bones. I select the bone and chose "make smart bone dial", a very misleading wording. Creating an action and naming it correctly to match a bone so far didn't work, so I stick to that other way with the menu command creating the actions.
- Rendering on Mac Mini changes colours a lot. Have to do some tests about how to compensate.