Trouble with smart bones in combination with Layer binding

[Lukas]

Ok here's a problem I'm facing, and I'm wondering how you guys handle this...

I have a smartbone "Head X" to simulate a horizontal head-turn. And many vector layers that are moving if you turn the bone left and right. It looks good.

But then, if I layer bind the layers that contain the head's elements to a regular bone connected to the characters neck, that rotates the head. The smart bone is broken for those layers.

This means I'm forced to use flexible/region binding. I personally like setting bone strength to 0 and manually bind with layer binging or point binding. But this doesn't work with smart bones.

So yeah, any ideas? I'm not sure if this is considered a bug. I'm stuck here.

[Lukas]

Hm, I got what I wanted by using Mike Green's 'Bone Parent Master' scripts. I just put the entire head in a bone layer, and the bone layer mimics the main layer. Works just fine, but I'd still want to layer bind, I don't like useless folders/layers.

Does anyone know if Mike Green is still around? His script also makes a bone uses it's parents bone translation, I only want rotation, but I'm no good at scripting...

[funksmaname]

Layer binding doesnt work with smart bones, but why don't you just select all and point bind the contents of the layer?

[Lukas]

Wow, I thought I tried that, but I guess I didn't...It works

Well, at least because of my frustrations I now have the entire head in a bone layer (and can still manipulate it with a smartbone in my top bone-layer). And because it has it's own bone layer, I can easily squash/stretch it. Wouldn't be possible with my previous plan.


I'm now facing a different problem though. The eyes of the character change shape in the turnaround. And I used another smartbone for a blink. It works fine with the character facing front and sideways (both left and right). But on 3/4 the blink is broken. Is there a way to make an action for smartbone-combinations? So it would look at a combination of 2 smartbone directions? The eyes design is quite simple, but just a little too complicated for ASP to make it look good on its own...

[funksmaname]

perhaps its better to make a separate '3/4 eye blink' bone control - that way you use one or the other based on position of the head...
Since you can 'see' the effect of other smart bones while creating any smart bone, put the head in the right position, and then work on your point animation there.
You can also create a standard action (or blend morph) to position the various smart bones into a pre-defined combination (you can also do this to make phenomes or facial expression sets made up of different smart bone rotation combinations)

[Lukas]

A seperate 3/4 blink control would work, but what I think is so cool about a smartbone rig, is the fact you can:

1. animate a head turn
2. add a blink
3. it still looks like a nice 2D design

or

1. animate a blink
2. add a head turn
3. it still looks like a nice 2D design

If I need to make seperate controls for different angles, I could only go for the 1st way of animating. And would not be able to change the pace of the head turn, because the blink would break.

The solution probably lies in scripting...

[funksmaname]

I'm sure your characters are more complex, but the principle is the same - is this not what you need?



the blink was created on front view, mixing the turn and blink works fine...

btw, I've been looking at your website - love your work!

[Lukas]

Thanks for the input Funksmaname

I think it works because the eye doesn't get deformed in your video when the head turns.

Here is a screenshot, look at what the eye is doing (some other things are wonky aswell, but I'll get to those later). The eye changes shape when the head is turned.

I wish I could somehow tell the rig how the eye-vectors should behave in a combination of Head X/Head Y/Blink smartbone action... (Making it listen to 3 smartbones, instead of 1.

[funksmaname]

nice character - you you use a brush to make the outlines like that?

what I suggest is that you have two blink bones, and just use the one that works best at a particular rotation - you might also be able to create the blink at the 3/4 view, but have the straight view at say 90% rotation of the blink bone, and only blink to 100% when you need to (or vice versa, as it seems the probalom is that the blink is over compensating when the eye is becoming smaller.

Also, it might help to have one bone for the blink of each eye separate, as one seems to work well, it means you can 'tweak' one less or more closed than the other depending on your eyeball size/shape...

what you suggest would probably get quite complicated, what if bone 1+3 are combined but 2 isn't? how would the software know what to do? you'd end up having to spend more time posing every possible combination than just fixing it manually

speaking of which, even if you do have to correct the action a few times throughout the scene, you're still saving a ton of time - so take it on the chin