Moho Forum

Free Anime Studio Webinar with Selgin!

Character Rigging and Animation in Anime Studio 10

Thursday, March 20, 2014 @ 11:00AM PDT

Join artist Victor Paredes in this 1-hour webinar as he shows you how to rig and animate characters using the newly updated features in Anime Studio 10. See how and when it's best to use the target bones, when to use the new Keyframe Interpolations, and how to use Squash and Stretch for bones. He will also show you the various uses of independent angle, how to hide and show bones for a clean animation, and much, much more. The webinar will conclude with a short Q & A session where you will have the chance to ask Victor you questions.

To register for this online event go to: http://my.smithmicro.com/webinars/anime ... studio-10/

Hope to see you there!

Unfortunatley, I'll be unable to attend this webinar (or any webinar if it's during normal working hours), but I'll be eagerly looking forward to the recording...

I am also in the same situation in which I am working and would not be able to view the webinar until it is released on video. I'm looking forward to another great tutorial from Selgin.

Thank you for the great tutorial Victor.
You are the best.

I was wondering if we can get that animation file of that guitar player you created?

Also I has a follow up question about lip synching with smart bones.

I know you showed us how to make all the shapes with the smart bones. (Stretch squash, open close, and the o shape.)
But I never seen a tutorial on how to make a detailed lip sync for all vowels and words.

Problem is.. I am struggling with using smart bones to make believable lip sync.
I really wish there was a detailed lip sync tutorial that shows a character talking or singing and it looks really believable.

BTW, I noticed most of Victor's own animations rarely have the character talk, or speaking, so it's hard to find out his technique.

Also another user here named Dewy said he believes there is a way to make lip syncing with the new smart bone target constraints.
So that you can target bones to make different lip shapes for different words.

Duey was explaining that you can have 4 smart bones with different mouth shapes and place those 4 bones in a circle. (top, bottom, right, left.) then put one target bone in the center and control all of them with the target bone. So if you drag the target bone closer to the mouth shape (A sound) and also drag closer to the open mouth shape, then you get an open (A) sound with one move, instead of controlling both bones.
Sorry if this sounds advanced or unclear. I am looking for the best and most efficient way to make lip-syncs with Anime Studio 10 pro.

Victor you are my hero!
Please help me make realistic lip syncs.

Here is a video of the rig. Remember that you can save it as an AS file and reuse it.
If you want I could do a webinar, just bug SM for it.


Dale

Thank you Duey, for your fast reply and video.
You are Amazing.
I love all your new techniques and how you think outside the box and use all of the new features to your advantage.
I subscribed and I enjoy all your videos.

I love what you did with switch layers for the mouth being controlled with bones and then controlled by target bones.

Is it possible to do it with smart bones instead of switch layers. Like a combination of Victor's way and your target bone circular way?
Best of both worlds?

Also I would love to see you do a webinar about these advanced techniques. I will try to contact SM and let them know.


Thanks again,

Undiscovered wrote:I was wondering if we can get that animation file of that guitar player you created?
(...)
I know you showed us how to make all the shapes with the smart bones. (Stretch squash, open close, and the o shape.)
But I never seen a tutorial on how to make a detailed lip sync for all vowels and words.
Problem is.. I am struggling with using smart bones to make believable lip sync.
I really wish there was a detailed lip sync tutorial that shows a character talking or singing and it looks really believable.
BTW, I noticed most of Victor's own animations rarely have the character talk, or speaking, so it's hard to find out his technique.
(...)
Victor you are my hero!
Please help me make realistic lip syncs.

Thank you for the nice words, Undiscovered. I'm happy you liked the webinar.
Here is the Guitarist file (you must right click the link and "save as"), it doesn't have the target bones setup -sorry, I didn't save the final file of the webinar-, but you should be able to make it yourself

I have worked in many projects with lipsync involved, actually, right now I'm working in a 12 minutes short full of dialogues. Sadly, I don't have a tutorial about animating mouths with smart bones yet and I'm not sure from where I could start.
Lipsync has to do more with animation than with a specific software or technique. I remember Nancy Beiman's "Animated Performance" book was very useful to me to get the idea. One important point is -as most things in animation- it is not about creating "realistic" animation, it's about creating a believable characters (even if they can fly or talk with no tongue). The same happens with lipsync, it's not mathematical (that's why I prefer to not use automatic lipsync) it has to do with what your character is expressing in that moment. In my opinion, a good entire body acting is even more important than how the mouth is moving.

PD: but I'm a little contaminated, anyway, I spent all my chilhood watching cartoons and movies translated to Spanish, so the mouths never matched with the words. Excepting in special and exciting cases as "asshole", which was translated to "asno", a similar sounding word wich means donkey.

Undiscovered wrote: Is it possible to do it with smart bones instead of switch layers. Like a combination of Victor's way and your target bone circular way?
Best of both worlds?

Yes this is possible. One smart bone can control another smart bone in v10. In v9.5 this didn't work. So glad it does now. It's awesome!

So in theory, you could use the technique dueyftw demonstrated but instead of keying a switch in the smart bones, each bone in the ring of smart bones would change vectors or bones directly to create phonemes.

So in theory, you could use the technique dueyftw demonstrated but instead of keying a switch in the smart bones, each bone in the ring of smart bones would change vectors or bones directly to create phonemes.

Or you could use the same setup and as you pushed each smart bone the phonemes would change. Like the have each smart bone change it's phoneme to become larger as it is pushed by the target.

Or you could keep the rig as is and add two more smart bones that just makes the mouth larger in the x and y axis.

Dale

One more thing about lip sync. I change how I will do it according to the project. Sometime I use Papagayo. Other time I will use just the volume and open and close according. And sometime I will use the volume and add in phenomenons at key points in the animation.

Dale

Victor, thank you very much for this new video.
It is always a pleasure to share your knowledge with anime studio.

Regards,

I sat down and finally had time to watch the Rigging and animation Webinar that Victor(Selgin) Headed. As always it was very informative and well done. It was a little hard to hear a few times as it seams that his microphone was picking up a lot of noise from I think the mouse or pen pad he used. BUT, not really a problem overall. I always watch these webinars a few times or more, even when I am familiar with the content presented. It never hurts to hear it again and again till it sinks in. I really enjoy that moment when I'm working on project or something just for fun and I realize something I saw in a webinar or in the forum that would make life easier and that makes me think, Hey I know how or what technique may be best for this. And then it works. ( (I'm just smiling like the cat that just ate the mouse). Sometimes I still learn little things after watching the webinars again, again............ I highly recommend watching them if you can. It has even saved me from re-asking questions that may have been gone over many times before.

ANYWAY

Something I have been thinking about for quit some time now. This SORT OF came up in this webinar when one of guest asked the following question. NOTE: I may not have the wording spot on. BUT, anyway. Someone asked what Victor(Selgin) thought was the best way to have a character pick up a glass, drink from it and set it down. If I remember correctly and because I've only seen this webinar once as of this posting. Victors answer focused mostly on the drink itself, which was done well. But he didn't really address the pick up and set down an object side of the story. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking how this is done because I have seen a few very good videos on this very subject and feel that I know how to do it well enough. My point is, Maybe we could have a better mouse trap here. As you may know, there is a bunch of steps involved to setup for this sort of thing. Right now it is done basically by putting the object in the same layer as the characters hand. We create another layer with the object by itself & linked to a single bone and we just turn the visabilty on or off on these layers depending on if the object is being picked up or set down. (this of course is assuming that you people have done this before and know what I'm talking about here). BUT, I am wondering wouldn't it be cool, or better yet VERY practical, if there were a feature added to bones with a way to turn off or to unlink itself at will from one bone to another or to NONE. You know, maybe a way to animate a bones child status. Basically animate to which bone the objects bone IS OR IS NOT linked to. I believe this would eliminate the need for the extra layers and turning them on or off when needed at any given time. At the very least it would cut back on the confusion and clutter that comes with such a setup for both new and Pro users. I also think this would open new doors of possibilities for such a feature. Not just for picking up an object and setting it down. BUT, maybe moving an object between characters or other moving objects or something. How about an EXAMPLE: Lets say, two characters were catching a ball(with the ball having its own bone). If we could animate at the moment each character catches the ball, that characters hand bone would then become its parent bone, and when the ball was thrown by that character it would then be NOT LINKED to anything(making it easy turn to animate the ball in the air) till the ball was caught by the other character. Then that characters hand would become its parent bone. This of course is just one possible way this feature could be used. Maybe this could be done with a checkbox added to the Bone Constraints that includes a pull down menu to choose the new parent bone. OR, maybe some sort of switch layer ability. OR maybe this could be done with a Script or something. I not sure of all the details involved, I'm not that smart, I'm more of the idea guy in this case.

I have had this idea for a little while now. BUT, what triggered me to bring it up now was the addition of TARGET BONES to AS10. You see Target bones are almost already doing this, with the exception of the ability to control at will to which bone is the target OR Parent.(That idea, Just maybe be a completely new and possibly good addition to Target Bones OR maybe its just crazy talk. WAIT! I think a white van and a guy with a special jacket with really long arms is at my front door ). Anyway, The target bone almost gives us some of the freedom I am talking about doing above with animating the parent child relationships. WOW, its just a though. I'm glad I got that off my chest. Peace!

I'm sure you guys hear peoples feature idea's all the time. In most cases they are probably very specialized situations, making them not very practical. If that's the case with this one too, then let me know and I will go away peacefully. BUT, I think I may be onto something here and it would be very practical. I can't be the only to have thought of this, so sorry if I'm just bringing it up again. Only time will tell.

After having typed all that, I realized that this may not be the proper place to have brought this up. For that I am truly sorry. If anwone feels that is should have been maybe posted to "Feature request" area instead of here, I will gladly remove it from this post and place it there by means of Cut, copy and paste. Then delete this post. Its just that I got so excited about it.

HammerJammer

hammerjammer wrote: Something I have been thinking about for quit some time now. This SORT OF came up in this webinar when one of guest asked the following question. NOTE: I may not have the wording spot on. BUT, anyway. Someone asked what Victor(Selgin) thought was the best way to have a character pick up a glass, drink from it and set it down. If I remember correctly and because I've only seen this webinar once as of this posting. Victors answer focused mostly on the drink itself, which was done well. But he didn't really address the pick up and set down an object side of the story. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking how this is done because I have seen a few very good videos on this very subject and feel that I know how to do it well enough. My point is, Maybe we could have a better mouse trap here. As you may know, there is a bunch of steps involved to setup for this sort of thing. Right now it is done basically by putting the object in the same layer as the characters hand. We create another layer with the object by itself & linked to a single bone and we just turn the visabilty on or off on these layers depending on if the object is being picked up or set down. (this of course is assuming that you people have done this before and know what I'm talking about here). BUT, I am wondering wouldn't it be cool, or better yet VERY practical, if there were a feature added to bones with a way to turn off or to unlink itself at will from one bone to another or to NONE. You know, maybe a way to animate a bones child status. Basically animate to which bone the objects bone IS OR IS NOT linked to. I believe this would eliminate the need for the extra layers and turning them on or off when needed at any given time. At the very least it would cut back on the confusion and clutter that comes with such a setup for both new and Pro users. I also think this would open new doors of possibilities for such a feature. Not just for picking up an object and setting it down. BUT, maybe moving an object between characters or other moving objects or something. How about an EXAMPLE: Lets say, two characters were catching a ball(with the ball having its own bone). If we could animate at the moment each character catches the ball, that characters hand bone would then become its parent bone, and when the ball was thrown by that character it would then be NOT LINKED to anything(making it easy turn to animate the ball in the air) till the ball was caught by the other character. Then that characters hand would become its parent bone. This of course is just one possible way this feature could be used. Maybe this could be done with a checkbox added to the Bone Constraints that includes a pull down menu to choose the new parent bone. OR, maybe some sort of switch layer ability. OR maybe this could be done with a Script or something. I not sure of all the details involved, I'm not that smart, I'm more of the idea guy in this case.

I have been asking for this feature for a long time. It's in several different wishlist threads here in this very forum, dating back several years even. CrazyTalk Animator has this feature, and has since it's first version, and it makes working with props a breeze.

On the subject of the webinar, I'm very sad and disappointed at the sound quality. Victor has a fairly thick accent which is difficult enough, but the muffled noise of the microphone has made it almost unlistenable.

I have been asking for this feature for a long time. It's in several different wishlist threads here in this very forum, dating back several years even.

OK, cool! Maybe someday this feature will be added. I'm sure its at least possible. The ability to move objects around like I described above just makes sense and would simplify the process a lot.

HammerJammer

Thanks for your feature suggestion, I will be sure to pass it along to the development team.

I apologize for Victor's audio. With the exception of the tablet pen, his vocal audio was fine on our end. The webinar system quality always varies from person to person, depending on the connection, but this time it seems to have been a bigger issue. We'll be sure to look into it for future webinars, sorry about that.

~Michi