Moho Animation Forum

This describes a technique I just came up with for constructing a realistic head in Anime Studio when I want to combine head turn and head up and down movement. The intention is to minimize points, yet still be able to create the key prominent features in front, 3/4 and side views. Of course this level of construction isn't needed for simpler heads. If others have better or different techniques I'd be interested.


In the video you may see that I have switch layers, I don't use them to do the head turn. I just had them in there to show the construction technique with the colored points. I can use this head as a basis for any head. My approach is to load the Anime Studio object/file, then import front, 3/4 and side drawings from my character design (or draw them directly with ASP11 ), and then just shift-transform individual points to align with the drawings (of course I have to scale and position the imported drawings first. I can of course flip the drawings to create the other direction.) The same idea applies to creating the up and down movement.


PS
Posting this video was a real adventure When I was doing the screen capture a windows dialog popped up and so I needed to edit it out. I use liteCamHD to capture the video and I typically use Premiere Elements 10 to edit video. For whatever reason that I don't know yet the output quality of Premiere was jumpy and the text was blurry. The kicker is that I just wanted to clip out a section and had no desire to change the format. I tried tons of things, but haven't yet figured it out. I finally thought, "Man this should be easy, even Movie Maker could do this!" So I tried Movie Maker and in about 5 minutes I was done. If others have recommendations of what video editing and screen capture programs they use I'd love to hear. I'm not interested in spending a ton of money, but if something is robust, not too costly and works well for screen capture and combining ASP output I'd like to know. Thanks

Interesting ideas on head turning. I'll pass along a few tools that I've come across that may be of help.

The first one is Fazek's Reverse Points script: Not really Flip Points but Simulate it...
This script will take a closed mesh and swap the positions of opposite vertices across the y-axis. This isn't flipping the points as ASP does it. The tricky thing is to be aware of is the origin vertex because this determines the direction of the y-axis. It's best if the origin point is vertical with the opposite vertex as seen here:


The other tools are heyvern's: What's needed for a full character using smart bones.
These two relevant script tools are:
1) Mirror Points Horizontally
2) Mirror Points Translation
These tools aid in making your front view symmetrical. Use the Mirror Points Horizontally to copy the position from left-to-right or right-to-left. One restriction is you must use the layer origin as the y-axis; center your mesh to the middle of the layer before using the tool. Then use the Mirror Points Translation tool to tweak the shape while maintaining the symmetry. The tools are little fidgety, but once you get used to them they can quite helpful.

I'm currently working on a head turning rig and I'm finding it tedious to manually manipulate left and right views. These scripts help tremendously but the shapes need to constructed correctly at the outset, otherwise you'll end up with a tangle of points.

Cool. Thanks for sharing neeters_guy

neeters_guy wrote:Interesting ideas on head turning. I'll pass along a few tools that I've come across that may be of help.

Hello Neeters_guy! I'm newly registered with your community. I have seen many of thread on this forum and you guys doing a great job. Thanks for sharing