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Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 4:17 pm
by ARTzuza
hI,
I need your help. I have rigged a character with arms using linear gradients. When i move the arm bone, the gradient doesn't move, making a awfull color effect in the arm when i move the arm or the entire character. I have tested animating the gradient manually using smart bone but it is not a good solution because when i move the root bone moving the entire character, the gradients are statics too. See the image:
Thanks for help me.
Re: Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 6:03 pm
by braj
Re: Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 6:07 pm
by braj
I do think this is the important bits:
Gradients DO BEND, but only by bone strength.
Q: Which bone preferences do you use? flexi-binding? Do you bound the points of the shape to the bones?
You can use any binding you like, you just need to be sure that the strength regions of the bones you want to do the bending cover the gradient.
Re: Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 6:09 pm
by braj
Looking at your bones, it does look like the strength is set to zero.
Re: Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 8:42 am
by ARTzuza
Hi Braj,
thank you for answer
Yes, I Use Zero strengh in the bones, I rigged the arm binding the points.
Re: Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 8:46 am
by braj
Well, I guess you need to change that

Do you know how to offset bones to get the bone strengths to only affect the art you want them to?
Re: Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 8:49 am
by ARTzuza
Hey braj, thank you so much, I have set some strength to the arm bone and now it is working

Thank you so much
Re: Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 9:00 am
by braj
Cool, glad I could help, I very rarely can, so yipee!
Re: Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 9:01 am
by ARTzuza
braj wrote: Do you know how to offset bones to get the bone strengths to only affect the art you want them to?
I guess you mean using "Use selected bone For Flexi-binding" ?
I used this option before , but for this character I was trying to use another technique binding points on each bone, but I did not know that gradients only bind with strength. Now I know,
Thank you

Re: Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 9:10 am
by braj
Actually I mean the Offset Bone tool. See p. 139 in the Tutorial document that is linked from within Anime Studio in the Help menu. Tutorial 3.4. Otherwise your bones might affect other parts of your character that you don't want them to. I am not sure if there's a better way to do it, but what I do is:
1. draw my character all together, with each limb on its own layer or layers.
2. Move the limb art away from the body with the Transform Layer tool, then add bones. Any art you want to be influenced by specific bones should be moved away so that bone strengths from other bones won't affect them.
3. Use the Offset Bone tool to move them back where they belong.
Re: Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 9:36 am
by ARTzuza
Ah, OK,
so what you says is a way to do it,
I used to do it with offset bone tool, but since AS10 (or 9.5 i am not sure) you can use the option ""Use selected bone For Flexi-binding" fot to say what bone (with streght) affect each form, an then actually not is necesarily to separate forms in edit mode... i leart it from a Selgins tutorial (in spanish) ... so today i use that technique
Re: Rigging and animating arms with linear gradient
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 9:47 am
by braj
Ah, yeah I'm a dinosaur then, never-mind
