Moho Forum

Hi there,

I've been through most of the tutorials in the help files and feel a little more comfortable using anime studio pro but I have a question....

if you have 2 or more poses of 1 character like front, side and back, all rigged with bones ready for animation - and you want to make the character turn from one direction to another or 360 using all the poses already built, how do you show only the front pose, side pose, then back pose, then side and then front again... on one timeline?? how would you go about doing this??

I saw some other animations just cut from shot to shot if a character changes direction, is that because it can't be done in anime studio??

and they resort to building seperate files or shots for each part of the story, or can you have all of your shots, your whole animation in one file??

I hope someone can help me answer these questions as I have a huge project on over the next 2 years and I need to get started in the right direction

Please can you try to address all of my questions so I don't miss out any info, thanks alot, hope someone can help...

thanks alot

Lee

You said that every pose is rigged with bones ready for animation... So they must be in separate bone layers each.
Just place each pose bone layer into a switch layer and show only a pose every time.
Switch layers only show one of its child layers at the same time. To show another child layer in another frame (and hide the rest) just insert a switch keyframe (right click the switch layer and select the child layer by its name or press the switch layer button and go to "Active child" drop down list below the menu at the main window).

Alternatively you can use visibility of the pose bone layers through the time but in that case you have to do that manually. Maybe you need to have more than one pose at the same time (for example if your character is looking itself to a mirror). Then need to go to manual visibility.
-G

There are really just few ways to turn a character:

Draw each frame by hand between the two views.

Create a "3D" character and turn it.

Use a morphing technique to create an interpolated sequence from one frame to another.

Or in my case, use bones to simulate a "3D" turn.

Each of the examples have limitations and benefits. The hand drawn turn gives you maximum control over the entire process. You can make the turn look exactly the way you want.

The "3D" option is a lot of work and limited by an applications support of 3D.

Morphing is probably the most popular option used in AS, at least for head turns anyway. You use a copy of one view and move the points around to create another view then use interpolation in a switch or just point motion to interpolate the motion.

If you don't need completely smooth interpolation you could draw a few frames of the turn and run through them quickly to "hide the steps" or use motion blur. This would be a sort of hybrid version of entirely hand drawn and interpolated shapes. In this case the shapes don't need to match perfectly since there really wouldn't be a smooth interpolation.

I and some others on the forum have started using bones and constraints in AS to distort the points in a logical way to create the illusion of a head turn. This method probably has the most flexibility, but it is still difficult to get a complete turn in one step.

A head or body turn can be done in AS. The technique or processes difficulty is based on what you need for the final look.

If you look at many cartoons or animations (Esurance commercials for example) there are very few actual smoothly interpolated "turns". The turn is quick and maybe motion blurred but it is still VERY EFFECTIVE.

A style of the animation that is more "disneyesqe" or "smooth" would require more effort than a style that is more "anime" and lower "FPS".

-vern

thanks for the replies!!

Genete, the idea of a switch is what I'm after, is there anymore details on the net about how to use the switch?? Think thats the way to go. thanks

heyvern, thanks alot for the help but I'm not looking for a shape morph between stages of turning, just looking for the concept of changes poses on one character to imply a turn has taken place. Only showing one pose at a time.

thanks guys, more info on the switch would be great, ill play around in work tomorrow with it!

thanks again