Moho Forum

Hi all,

My name is Kris and I am starting to learn a copy of Anime Studio Pro 11 I bought a few years back. I have actually bought this software many times in the past and just never got around to learning how to use it to its full potential . I am really giving it a go this time and here are a few sequences i made over the last month.







They are both Venture bros. themed as I was participating in a podcast about the show. I usually post on Instagram at @book.smarts.false.starts. I plan on asking a lot of questions after I've had some time to look over past forum posts, consider this my hello to the group!


Kris

Hi Kris, welcome to the forums

You can't use html/iframes in a forum post, but you can embed youtube videos with BBCode like this:

Hi Kris,

Congrats on finally getting started! I can relate because I purchased nearly every version of Moho from 1.0 and up, but I didn't start learning and using Moho until it became Anime Studio Pro 9.5. Since then, Moho has become my favorite way to animate cartoons.

Keep animating, and Go Team Venture!

Greenlaw wrote: ↑Tue Jun 22, 2021 2:48 pm but I didn't start learning and using Moho until it became Anime Studio Pro 9.5.

I loved version 9.5 because of the power of 'Smart bones'.

thanks all, i don't think i was in it from 1.0, but I've definitely had at least 4 copies of the software over the years. I finally got 11.2 to run with my license so I am putting in the time. Lukas, thanks for the format info, been a while since my last forum post. Right now I am trying to get the hang of smart bones making some universal hand rigs. Not working like i expect but I am figuring it out. Very interested in scripting to so looking forward to talking with you all in those discussions as well. will share more as I go, thanks for looking!

Kris

Yes, Smart Bones are great for hand/finger controls!

Creating the hand setup used in Boss Baby was an interesting challenge. From what I recall, for each hand, I set up Smart Bones to...

1. curl a finger (5 individual Smart Bones)
2. close all fingers (1 SB to cascade the above SBs.)
2. spread all fingers (1 SB for all fingers)
3. turn the hand around wrist (palm, inside, back, outside)
4. switch between the turning poseable hand and a switch filled with custom 'standalone' hands (which were drawn and added as needed.)

So, a total of 9 Smart Bones for each hand. This setup was super flexible because we could easy mix controls for almost endless posing possibilities, and it worked well for most of our animations. And for the poses it could not do, I made a 'hand construction kit' so we could quickly build custom 'standalone' hands for the Switch layer.

The hands themselves only had one bone inside for bending at the wrist, and the SB animations for the fingers were all done with point animation. This made it easier to animate because it meant we didn't have mess with multiple hand skeletons for each angle view.

One really nice feature was that, when the hand was turned, the finger poses stayed matched in each angle view.

The best part about this hand rig was that we could re-use it for new characters. When I built this rig, the intention was to re-use the hands only for baby characters, changing only the skin color as necessary, but we had the good fortune of having Victor on a few episodes, and he figured out how to use mesh warp to reshape the hands for adult character, and preserved all of the original hand controls! (Victor is awesome!)

Normally, my hand setups for Moho are much simpler than what I made for Boss Baby, but the extra effort was totally worth it in this show. (There were a LOT of babies.)

I'm not sure how much hand animation you can see on my 2019 demo reel but it might be worth a look.

BTW, it's on my long 'to-do' list to make a video about making this type of hand rig, but there are videos by other animators for similar hand rigs on YouTube, so no need to wait for me.

That said...

If you did want to create multiple hand rigs for different angle views, the new Vitruvian Bones system seems ideal for that. I might have to give it a try.

thanks for the breakdown, Greenlaw! It looks like i am on the right path. I have similar plans for an all purpose hand with switch images to cover the most complex or unique positions.Unfortunately I am still using ASP11, so no mesh warping or Vitruvian Bones yet. I figure I should get skilled with what I have before dropping another $400. I assume the skil lset will be similar enough when I do make the plunge? I am mostly building rigs for experience, and to be honest its a struggle. I can't figure out why my transform bones tool wont appear when creating a smart bone dial with name of the bone for instance. I am putting in the time to try and understand if the wonky issues are caused by my inexperience, software issues, my ancient computer set up, or some combination of the above. I do appreciate having pros to talk with here, and when i feel like I know enough to not ask a dumb question I will pick your brains a bit. My goal is to get into the industry building off some of these skills so I appreciate the insight you and the others can provide.

thanks again
Kris

Greenlaw wrote: ↑Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:30 am If you did want to create multiple hand rigs for different angle views, the new Vitruvian Bones system seems ideal for that. I might have to give it a try.

I made a little proof-of-concept for a palm hand rig and side hand rig using Vitruvian bones. Switching between the two is nice but, IMO, the bones in the side hand are not practical to animate (it's too cluttered,) so I'm going to stick with my SBA point animation setup described earlier--this setup is easier and faster to animate. I'll demonstrate and show a comparison in the video.

Greenlaw wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 3:54 am I made a little proof-of-concept for a palm hand rig and side hand rig using Vitruvian bones. Switching between the two is nice but, IMO, the bones in the side hand are not practical to animate (it's too cluttered,) so I'm going to stick with my SBA point animation setup described earlier--this setup is easier and faster to animate. I'll demonstrate and show a comparison in the video.

You could always have the side hand bones include a spread out set that the hand bones are constrained to, if you didn't want to use SBAs.

Oh, that's an interesting solution. I don't think I want to animate hands this way but I'll keep this trick in mind for something else.