Moho Forum

Well... it's actually a render.

Been organizing the bones so the interface isn't so cluttered.

I changed the parenting of the bones so all of the controls are in 3 groups:

Eyes
Mouth
Brows

Each "tab" on the screen for the group can move the controls around for easier access and to get things out of the way if needed.

I added a parent bone and tab for the the Head Turn control so that also can be moved around. It drove me nuts when I kept dragging it out of reach.

Each control moves the sub controls. For example if you move the upper lip bone the two side lip controls follow along.

It works pretty good so far. I may add in some box outlines to indicate the optimal maximum range of motion before the rig "breaks".

The best way to use it will be with constructive curves turned off completely in AS. I put in a vector layer indicating the location of the control bones. On the final version I plan to delete the names of bones that aren't used specifically for control.

I keep wondering if some of these controls could be added to a scripted window... but there aren't any sliders or controls of that type in AS scripting... maybe in a future version of ASP.



-vern

I am amazed. I still cannot believe someone can make so many things with ASP. I wonder if I'll ever reach that point of knowledge...

Thanks!

I hope by selling these rigged characters people can learn from them or just enjoy animating. I plan to create a whole series of these.

I have to admit... I took a break for about a week from this project and had a little bit of trouble remembering exactly how everything worked.

I am now documenting EVERYTHING so that won't happen again.

-vern

Are you useing your master controller script in this rig so you move a pseudo bone and leave the vector effecting skeleton intact?

What sort of price are you hoping to get for these characters?

Can we get a sneaky peak? (for a price?)

Heyvern,
Is all this done with scripting in Lua?

All my best wishes and best selling of this amazing character setup.
It looks really professional, vern.

But you should make a compilation of your internal notes and the "howto do it" and also a good manual for the final user (which should -must- be completely different things). One for let you (or other animators that agree with your copyrights) create easily (hehe) new characters and the other that let the non expert user play with the file without messing it all up.

I know you're in the way. Cheers!!!!!

Best
Genete

PD: If you need any beta tester, you know you can count with me .

Since this is a first version... and it won't have a ton of bells and whistles I am looking at a fairly modest price in the 25-50 dollar range. I have not completely settled on that yet.

I really want to get this rig done so I can start pumping out more characters so I might not go into as much detail on applying the rig to your own characters in the first version.

I will provide that info but I had originally planned to specifically make it easier to set up. I have enough work to do just getting this first version ready to go. I might do another version later with more detailed instructions at a slightly higher price (I have to eat!)

After this first guy is done I plan to do some additional clothing styles. This would be a cool way to be able to provide additional add ons. Buy a new set of clothes! Buy some props or a set of hand switches... etc.

At this time there won't be a full profile version as I had hoped. Maybe that will come later.

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99% of the motion is based on bone constraints.

However, there is one very small and simple layer script that was "hacked" together from several scripts that Rasheed wrote just for me! I love that guy.

The script does two things:

Translates a child bone's absolute position based on it's parents rotation.
Translates a bone's rotation from another bone's translation.

In the first example I needed the eyes to ever so slightly rotate around the head. This is done using a chain of 3 bones that... uh... well it's a bunch of math and 3D stuff Genete knows about.

So when a bone is "moved" because the parent rotates it to a new spot... I get that absolute position of the bone (well... just the X axis translation really). AS can't get that value for a constraint on its own.

The second part of the script allows the head rotation bone to drive the rotation of that "3d" bone using translation. So translating that head bone not only moves other bones with constraints it also causes another bone to rotate.

This part was a cheat actually. I didn't bother trying to find vectors of angles and pointy directions... I just took the X value of the translated bone and tweaked the number till it worked and used it as a rotation value for another bone. I only needed a small amount of X translation. I don't use any 3D conversions for Y rotation at all.

The only part of the face that uses any pseudo 3D motion are the eyes. Everything else is just plain old translation constraints from a master bone (I may apply a bit of 3D motion to the nose... but maybe not. I think it's working okay now).

EDIT: The ears are the most difficult part. Think of them like an umbrella folding and unfolding. A series of bones that collapse based on a bones translation. I drew the ears open and closed on a separate layer. Bones were positioned on the open ear. Then I tweaked constraint values on each ear bone so it closed to the correct position. It works!

The beauty part is... any ear drawn to fit those bones will pretty much work. I don't have to reinvent the wheel each time.

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Originally the script was HUGE... since I know exactly the bone IDs involved (there's only about 4 bones) I hard coded them in the lua script and took out all the looping crud used to find a specific bone by name.

This is a kick arse way to code let me say! I plan to do this more. It saves a ton of time. Instead of all those variables and lists blah blah... just tell the stupid bone to do something already. It's like sending a note to a whole series of people down a chain to tell someone to tell someone to do something. Instead I just call the idiot on the phone directly and tell him to do his dang job already!

(This of course means I have to change those IDs if I delete any bones "behind" those bones... so... I have to watch out for that.)

I had to create a custom bone selection tool that reveals the internal ID of the selected bone. It is sooooo easy. I click the bone... there's the ID... pop it into the script.

In a future version I hope to expand this concept by 1000% so I can REALLY cut down on the number of bones. I could use this trick for the mouth which is a real pain in the but. Tons of bones for the mouth due to the rotation. For now I'm staying with what I've got.

If efrontier could add a "slider" or "knob" to the pop up window scripting interface, my dream would be to have a floating window that can control all the facial poses. I've gotten quite proficient with that part of AS scripting but realize it has limitations.

-vern

Wooohooooo Yeeeeeeehaaaaaa!!!!

Get this!

Only one bone's translation channel. That's it. To rotate the head only one bone, one channel key frame to worry about. Everything is based off of this now. Just one single key frame for one bone for the whole mess.

Before I fixed this there was always a rotation and multiple translation channels of controlled bones. I finally figured out how to eliminate all the key frames needed except ONE SINGLE BONE to control the entire head turn.

This is FANTASTIC! It will simplify editing of the key frames!!!

I'm so happy I could cry.

Right before I did this I had a serious problem with the eye controls. The eyeballs are kind of complicated. A top bone that moves both together and two sub bones that control each eyeball individually.

Because the key frames were being generated for the top bone AND the sub bones the eyes were "jittering" all over the place.

In the process of fixing that I fixed the whole darn thing! I even made my layer script shorter and simpler!

-vern

Previously, you shared your demos with us via video captures.

I'd like to see you video capture your current rig...

I'm in the process of doing a bunch of video samples for inclusion with the project and to demo what it is capable of.

At the moment I am working on lip syncing examples mostly since that is its main strength. I will also do some full body action scenes once the body rig is finished.

I will include some with the bone interaction as well. I plan to include interface videos as part of the demos before purchase.

I love lip syncing with this rig. It is so much fun. It's so easy and free and flexible... like "drawing" with facial expressions. I can go back and forth and change an expression here... make him more angry there... change it back.. just dragging a few bones.

Rendering a new sample as we speak... should be done in a few minutes...

Here it is (there is a bit of the interface showing):

http://www.lowrestv.com/character_rig/c ... e-rig7.mov

-vern

I am going to include phonemes and expressions as actions with the final version. It should be an easy matter of copying the mouth bones from what I've done already into actions for easy access.

I have got to figure out how to import papagayo dat files for action phoneme lip sync. If I can do that... yikes!

-vern

Vern, I have almost no idea how you are achieving these results but it's amazing to me. It feels like you are on the verge of revolutionising 2D animation! Seriously...I haven't seen any other 2D software produce anything like that.

Amazing...

Two things.

First, we are witnessing the first ever 2.5D modeler. This is a job title that will be worth a LOT of money one day.

Second.

The official creators are Heyven, Genete and Rasheed. This is so the textbooks get it right.

The product of their combined efforts will change 2d animation production forever.

Brilliant heyverne. Can I ask what you have planned for the rest of the body?

D.K