Current Approaches

[strider2000]

I think they're pretty much the same as always. I'd expect that bone dials have quick setup, because they have a lot in common, where as normal smart bones are more unique.

[strider2000]

Torso Binding
I'm reworking the Liz character that comes with Anime Studio Pro. Torso, binding is always something that gives me a little trouble, but I've got something that works pretty well for my rig. I thought I'd share it here in case it can help others. This is not a tutorial as much as a description of the binding I do. Enjoy I'd love to hear of any other approaches people might be using.

[neeters_guy]

Very useful exploration of mixing point binding and flex binding; you've leveraged the best of both methods. On a side note, I didn't know that dark green-blue bones meant flex bound bones and that you can hide points as well as shapes. Thanks for continuing to post these.

[strider2000]

Thanks neeters_guy. Yeah, I'm always learning new things and figuring out the binding, when I look at other people's characters can some times be a challenge.

[strider2000]

Smart Bone Rigging Tips
I just uploaded a couple of videos showing tips when rigging smart bones.

This one shows how to resolve some problems that can occur, due to bugs in ASP, when you create smart bone dials that are parented to another bone.


This one shows about debugging issues that are caused by extraneous keyframes in your smart bone actions.

[neeters_guy]

I like the idea of predefining your actions and then inserting them after creating the smart bone action.

Also that's an interesting technique of creating one action instead of two to cover positive and negative rotations. I'll have to try that on my next rig.

Thanks for sharing!

[strider2000]

Quick Body and Head Turns
Here's the technique I use for creating smart bone controls for quick body and head turns.


Much thanks
to neeters_guy
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=23865
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=27737

and GCharb
http://gcharb2d.blogspot.ca/2011/07/hea ... ogues.html

for first showing me examples to help me understand that you don't need to have a fully slow turn to get nice animation. You just need a proper understanding of animation and how it applies to the bone controlled rigs in Anime Studio Pro.

Thanks Guys!

[strider2000]

M1 Specification
As some of you may know, I love the artistry of animation, but I'm an engineering type of person, so I've been trying to design a rig system that is flexible and easy to use.

I've tried a lot of different things and have finally come up with a rig I really like.
I call it M1. M for Mitch, me, and 1, for specification 1. They're 3/4 views, but have smart bone
controls for head turns and body turns. But the thing I'm happiest with is the system for expressing emotions

I've created a number of characters with this system and have been really happy with the consistency of animation. I started designing the system in Anime Studio Pro 11, so it's fully compatible there, but I now have Moho 12 (yea, finally), and so I finished them up there. The characters work in Anime Studio 10 with the exception of the head and body turns (see my previous post). I use bone flippimg for the turns, so that doesn't work in Anime Studio 10.

Here's a video about the M1 specification



I'm definitely interested in thoughts people have.

I also have a little video that's made entirely using the M1 characters. It's a little commercial about the characters.

[neeters_guy]

I'm having fun exploring with these rigs. I like that they're easy to use but still provide a good range of expressiveness. I hope you add more characters to your catalog as there's a real need for them. (If you need ideas, check out this guy's characters.)

Great job, Mitch!

[strider2000]

Tanks for the encouragement and feedback. I love your characters, so I definitely appreciate it! Thanks for the link too. With a standardized rig I hope I can make some more characters available soon. Might be a little slow, since I just do this on my free time, but hopefully soon.

[strider2000]

M2 Specification
I've created an M2 specification, that is the same as M1, but allows for smooth head turns and up and down. It doesn't replace M1, it just specifies that the character does support smooth head turns. Of course, it takes a lot longer to create such characters

Here's a video about it.

[strider2000]

Clip Studio Paint for reference and bitmaps
I'm working on some new characters for Moho and I'm using Clip Studio Paint to create the reference drawings and bitmaps. I love Clip Studio Paint (formerly Manga Studio), but it's so powerful and flexible that, even though I've been using it for several years, there are still a lot of things that are confusing or hard to figure out. Plus, while the documentation
http://www.clip-studio.com/site/gd_en/c ... _new_0.htm
is getting better, I think it's still hard to follow for native English speakers.

Anyway, I'm starting to create some tutorials to remind myself hand help others
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 0HxPwkkPks. I'm also creating some tutorials for Krita. To import into Moho I just save as psd.

Here are two tutorials I just uploaded

[strider2000]

Crop bitmap images
Well duh, this tool is one that long time users are surely familiar with, but I haven't had a need for it until now. Or, probably more likely, I was working around it and could have used it lots of times before. So, I'm adding a tiny video here, mainly as a, "This is cool" note for newer users. So, it's definitely a "current approach" in my toolkit now.


Enjoy!

[mkelley]

Just happened to drop by and saw this thread (because you updated it a few days ago) and in starting at the beginning I came across your question about relative motion.

My Swiss Army Bone script does just that -- I've got videos that show this and you can easily find them, but it's one of the problems that it solves (and the script won't be up for much longer, as Dropbox is changing its policies and I don't know if I'll update my links).

Just a thought -- forgive me if you don't need that kind of solution anymore.

[mkelley]

Here's a very short video demonstrating this:



It's an old script but this ability still doesn't exist in Moho.