'Wings of Fire' Head Rigging

[DreamCatcherWolf]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ixO2ekcmB14

I have been looking at the youtuber DragonfoxArt for their expressive dragon faces. This isn't moho...but if you were to rig a head similar to her style of Wings of Fire (WOF) dragons how would you go about setting it up in moho. Obviously there is the long way with frame by frame or switch layers...But what about a more helpful smart bone rig of the face going front to side and up and down. What shapes in what layers/masking order would you use?

[slowtiger]

Anything with a long snout or beak is easiest animated FBF or in 3D. It's possible to do in Moho, results depend on amount of detail.

I recommend to play around with paper cutouts to answer your question: just draw the nose, front teeth, eyes, upper skull, ears, cut them all aout and stack them, and then shift them hrizontally to create different turn views. This will give you a good idea.

[hayasidist]

IMO, trying to rig a 2d model to behave in full 3d is a waste of time and effort -- Blender is free (but, again IMO, has a steep learning curve) - however, you can achieve excellent results with it e.g.
https://discord.com/channels/1123979330 ... 6178811966
(If I read the chain of posts correctly, this was modelled and animated in blender to create a reference, then fbf motion with vector flames in Moho - but please correct me if I'm wrong here)

If you're sticking to Moho (and wanting to avoid fbf) I'd have a shot-by-shot storyboard planned. The number of panels and the intended movement within each panel will, to a significant extent, depend on the genre.

For example, some low-cost / quick to produce forms have essentially static objects (bgs, secondary characters, non-speaking primaries ...) apart from the "active" character - and the animation of the active character is minimalistic (e.g. mouth shapes / little or no "body turn" / ...). IOW rigs are per-shot and minimal. It's the artwork that gets reused and, if drawn in moho, the different poses are NOT achieved by a rig transforming the points, it's something you (the artist) will do "offline". It's kinda fbf but without creating a sequence of frames.

Ofc, at another extreme, you may want a rig that can deliver complex movement in multiple aspects of the character ...

[DreamCatcherWolf]

I do think its worthwhile to have a quick head turn function and up/down function even if its not perfect.

Yes DragonfoxArt does use a 3-d reference model and definitely have mastered drawing their dragons.

While I don't know blender, I have made/used clay head models as my reference and may end up doing so again.