Moho Forum

Hi Chucky and others.
Many many thanks for the encouragement. I'm doing this and sharing it on my own spare time and I don't get a lot of that so it all helps.

Here's a basic tutorial on the scale rotate method. Really...it's extremely easy to do but has it's limits....rotation was limited to about 45 deg but now with animated layer ordering in AS 5.6 this can easily be breached.

http://www.wienertoonz.com/scalerot/SCALEROTATE1.htm

The skeleton has a few more bones all set to different values. The trick when making complicated shapes is to look through your model and focus on the points and imagine how far they need to rotate to look correct.

The skeletons teeth are a good example of how far different shapes need to move to look correct. The teeth at the sides and back are set at different depths to self mask as they move behind each other.

I will do another tutorial on how to do scale rotate modelling when I get more time.

Cheers
D.K

oops....made a mistake in the tut.....the value of the nose scaling bone is -5 not -10.

EDIT: Fixed and uploading.


Sorry
D.K

I am just starting to look at this scale bones 2.5 D rig, and one thing immediately occurs to me.
Am I right in thinking that the control bones that operate each side of the face have to be adjusted separately, which means a little fiddling to make sure the two sides don't get closer together and make the object get fatter and thinner?
I might have thought of a start of a solution concept using Vern's aimbone script.
With a single addition of a parent control bone in the centre of the head (at front on) with two perpendicular (left and right bones) from there you could use AIMBONE (scaling version) on the original 1,2 bones and maybe then the whole rig could turn using the one master control bone.
This may or may not work and could need a little empirical adjustments to get right.
Thanks for the tute and files DK will watch now.

Hi Chucky.
The idea is to set up the scaling keyframes on the timeline so you have a good sweep of rotations. Then, copy past the keyframes to where they are needed in the project. Kinda like actions. You could actually set these up as actions.

EDIT: If you go back and look at the old threads you will see a LT of ideas went into this including some of Verns scripts that allowed you to control two bones at once.

There is also a way to make the head look up and down too.

D.K

There is also a way to make the head look up and down too.

D.K

Oh coooool, , uh action yup hehe.

DK, Excellent tutorial. This is the fastest 2.5 rig technique I've never seen. Congratulations!

The only drawback issue of this technique is that the pivot axis of the rotation is misplaced in front of the character instead in the middle back position (at the neck axis). Maybe is any way to compensate that using a global translation in the opposite direction?

Did you know that meanwhile using the "Add bone" tool you can select a bone with "ALT-click". It would save lots of mouse travels... . Alternatively you can select the Select Bone tool pressing 'B'
Anyway for tutorial proposes is better to explicitly show what's the used tool

-G

Genete....you are amazing....I jus posted an email to Vern asking for help on how I can parent the head bone structure to the bone that is controlling the backbone (exactlt where the pivot point for the head should be). You read my mind......

Cheers
D.K

Well....the only solution I can come up with myself is to manually move the head layer to match the horizontal movement of the backbone....this is'nt as hard as it sounds. You use yur switch keyframes as markers to copy paste the layer movement in exactly te same place.

http://www.wienertoonz.com/skeleton2.mov

Cheers
D.K

DK,

I sent you a sample I did. It is pretty much the same but I used another bone layer. I put the head and body into this bone layer and bound the head to a "head" bone. It also requires translation and rotation to stay attached to the neck... but with bones it's a little easier to see and understand.

-vern

Hmm...

I don't have time right now to play with this but... why couldn't the head and body be in the same bone layer? You could parent the head "bone group" to a single bone to translate/rotate independently of the body rig.

-vern

Okay just for grins I transfered the body bones using my copy bones tool button, to the skull... yikes. Lots' of funky layer translation... and what's with the body being flipped horizontally? Why scale keys on constrained bones?

I'm kidding. Just giving you a hard time.

Anyway, it works. I only did the ribs layer. So, you could have the whole thing in one bone layer... if you wanted to. With it all in one layer you could have a "master" parent bone for the head to translate it to offset the rotation from the body. However it gets funky with all the bones and trying to figure out which one turns the head or the body on which frame.

So... I would strongly recommend adding in some "control" bones. You scale one bone for the head, one bone for the body and it scales those "1 and 2" bones that control the turn. This would make it much easier to keep track of key frames for the turns.

I think this came up in the original thread. There is only one bone for the head and one bone for the body to handle the turn.

-vern

Sorry Vern I was out..... It's all starting to come back to me now. Yes I remember it started to get complicated and having the same "Too many control bones" problem. I think it's worth another look though. Maybe we can rework a few things. Hey, at least something amazing has already come out of this I dubbed it...the synvern manouvre

viewtopic.php?p=66395#66395

I'll just keep hacking away at it.

Cheers
D.K

Ok...I managed to solve the pivot point problem. Vern sent me a file that got me thinking about the bone rig again.

I created a new bone rig for the body and layer binded it to a bone in the head that travels horizontally and maintains the neck pivot point. So the body always swivels in the correct position but can rotate independantly to the head.

http://www.wienertoonz.com/DK25Dskeleton5.swf

http://www.wienertoonz.com/DK25Dskeleton5.anme

I know this sounds a bit complicated but once it's figured out I'm sure I will be able to step by step the process clearly so that anyone can make any character.

Cheers
D.K

Hey Dk, why don't you start with a standard rig and just add the control bones at the end, rather than starting from the face and moving down?
There must be an answer to the forward shift, just as there is to the backward shift that you are using. It's a tricky one
.

I DID IT

http://www.wienertoonz.com/DK25Dskeleton6.swf

I managed to break the pivot point problem!!!

EDIT: The reason I can't start with a standard rig chucky is that there is no standard rig for this developed yet. I started with a head and am still working my way down.

D.K