Fiziwig's Animator Studio Tutorials

Gary's Anime Studio Experiments is my collection of experiments, in tutorial form, put together while learning how to use Anime Studio. I hope you find them useful.

If you haven't already looked at part one, You can find it here.

This next section will focus on building a new version of the Egg Man character I first built in tutorial 7. This version will be designed to be able to do a full 180-degree turn from facing left to facing right.

To execute a full 180-degree turn will actually require two seperate heads and two seperate bodies. One set will be rigged to make the turn from facing left to full front view, and the second set will be rigged to make the turn from full front to facing right. The two bodies will be enclosed in a switch layer so that the correct body can be selected as needed. The two heads will also be in a switch layer.

We'll start by creating a switch layer called "Body" and making a bone layer called "Body Right" inside the switch. This will be the version of the body that goes from full front to facing our right. Inside the bone layer Body Right we can add vector layer called "Body" where the new egg-shaped body will be drawn as shown below. (Note that I used an outline line width of 1.5. Yes, you can use fractional line widths.)

We will also need the put the arms inside the Body Right bone layer, so that the arms can be turned as the body is turned. But the arms will need bones of their own in order to bend and move. Inside the Body Right bone layer, add another bone layer called "Front Arm Bone". Inside Front Arm Bone, add a vector layer called "Front Arm". On this vector layer we can draw the forward arm as shown:

Finally, arrange these layers so that the Front Arm layer is in front of the Body layer. So far, our layers list should look like this:

In order to have a front view, Egg Man will need some shoulders for his arms to attach to. But these shoulders must not appear in the side view. In the Body vector layer, draw shape, not attached to the body, which will form the shoulder for the left arm. (Out left). Be sure that Auto Weld is turned off. Move the arm layer so that the arm is positioned where it will go, and draw whatever shape is needed to fill out the shoulder shape as shown:

Notice that this new shape is placed under the body shape in drawing order. This is so that when we move the shape out of the way for the side view, it will be hidden behind the body. The only problem with this is that the outline of the egg-shaped body still shows in front of the shoulder shape. To prevent this from happening, make a copy of the shoulder shape, but turn outlines off. This copy will be placed in front of the body shape to act as a moving mask to hide the body outline whene the shoulder is extended. Move the points of the mask shape in just a bit so that it is slightly smaller than the shoulder shape itself. Here is an animation showing the the placement of the shoulder shape behind the body, and the shoulder mask in front of the body:

Next comes the job of rigging the bones to make the shoulder shape appear and disappear in response to scaling the Scale Control bone, as we did with the red and blue balls in Part One. We start with a vertical root bone named "Root". Next comes a horizontal bone called "Body Scale Control". This is the bone that we will scale to rotate the body. Add to that a vertical bone named "Front Shoulder Transfer" which will transfer the tip motion of the Scale Control bone to the Front Shoulder Offset bone, to be added next. A final vertical bone, Front Shoulder Point Control is added to be used in controlling the extending of the shoulder shape, as well as the positioning of the front arm during the turn. The whole rig should now look like this, with the bones named as shown:

Notice the extra little horizontal bone in the belly of the body. This bone seems to be necessary to prevent the scaling control bones from grabbing control of some of the belly points and moving them around.

Now go to the Front Arm Bones layer and using the Bind Layer tool, bind this layer to the Front Shoulder Point Control bone. Next, go to the Body layer, and using the Bind Points tool, bind the points shown below to the same bone. It helps to turn off the visibility of the arm layer while doing this. You can grab the correct points by selecting all the points of both shapes by clicking the Point Select tool on any line of the first shape, holding down the shift key, and clicking on any point of the second shape. Then, still holding the shift key, clikc on the top two points of both shapes to de-select them.

Next comes a little bit of trial and error as we select the Front Arm Offset bone and open the Bone Constraints panel. Set the Scale Control bone to Body Scale Control, and play around with the values in the scale factor. I found that 5 worked just fine. Now if you go to frame 1 and try scaling the Scale Control bone, you should see the arm and shoulder move from side view, with the shoulder hidden, to front view, with the shoulder fully extended.

In the layer called Front Arm Bone we can add the bones to control the bending of the arm. I won't go into detail on that, because the subject of simple arm and leg boning has been covered in earlier tutorials. Here is the complete Anime Studio file for the project so far, with all the bones and layers named as indicated above.

The front arm moved from the side of the body to the front. The back arm will have to move from the side of the body to be hidden behind the body. It must be correctly positioned, however, because when the arm swings, as it does while walking, we still need the back arm to stick out correctly from behind the body. Likewise, the back shoulder will have to hide behind the body in the same way the front shoulder did.

Let's begin with the back arm. Then after we see where the arm will go we will have a better idea how and where to draw the back shoulder. Start by creating two new layers. A bone layer, Back Arm Bone, under the Body layer, but still within the Body Right bone layer. Inside the Back Arm Bone layer create a new vector layer named Back Arm. Now copy the arm shape from the Front Arm vector layer and paste it into the Back Arm layer. Move the layer to position the arm so that it matches the placement of the left (front) arm.

Now we need a Point Control bone to move the Back Arm layer, just as the Front Shoulder Point Control bone moved the front arm. Using the Front Shoulder Transfer bone as parent, Create these two new bones as shown below, naming them Back Shoulder Offset and Back Shoulder Point Control. Since we are using the bone we previously called Front Shoulder Transfer to transfer the motion to both shoulders, let's just rename that bone from Front Shoulder Transfer to just Shoulder Transfer.

Now comes more trial and error with the Scale Control values. Select the new Back Shoulder Offset bone and open the Bone Constraints window to set Body Scale Control as the scale control bone. Give it a scale value of 5 to start with. The goal is to make the two arms line up with each other when they both reach the center of the body. After some fiddling around I discovered that I couldn't make them line up by adjusting the scale control value. The control was not fine enough. What I discovered was that by going back to the original Front Shoulder Offset bone and changing its value from 5 to 10, (meaning that it takes a smaller movement of the Scale Control Bone to make a larger movement of the Front Shoulder Point Control) I was able to go back to the Back Shoulder Offset and set the control value to 6, and the two arms lined up when they reached the center of the body. (You may have to turn off the visibility of the Body layer to see the alignment.)

As a general rule I've discovered that when setting up the first bone, use a large value for the scale offset value. When setting up the very first bone, any value at all will work. Larger values just mean that you have to move the Body Scale Control a smaller distance to get the desired movement, and the larger numbers give you more wiggle room for adjustments to later bones.

Here are the two arms moving entirely under the control of the single Body Scale Control bone.

Once we have the control bones working properly we are ready to draw the back shoulder. If we simply draw the same shape as we used on the other shoulder we immediately notice a problem. The shoulder patch is above the body, and above the back arm. Being above the body we can fix easily by selecting the shape and using the menu Draw > Lower to Back. But that doesn't solve the arm problem because the arm is on a whole different layer which is always below the body layer.

A little thought will tell us that it is not possible to put the back shoulder patch on the body layer and have it be below the body and below the back arm. Another choice is to move the shoulder patch to the back arm layer itself. That solves the biggest problem, but introduces two new problems. Notice, in these two images, that now the body outline shows in front of the shoulder patch, and when the shoulder is fully retracted, one corner of the shoulder patch shows poking out from behind the opposite shoulder. A third, more subtle, problem is that the top shoulder line on the right does not move the same way as the matching line on the left shoulder. This is because the left shoulder patch has its shape deformed by the move, while the right shoulder patch is not deformed, and the topmost point does not remain anchored to the top of the body as it does on the left shoulder.

These problems seems just as impossible as the earlier problems when we tried to put the shoulder patch on the body layer. Since the Back Shoulder Point Control bone moves the entire Back Arm layer, there is no way to arrange for one point on that layer to remain motionless.

The only solution, it seems, is to put the shoulder patch on its own layer, behind the Back Arm layer. While it seems like that makes the whole figure more complicated, added complexity in the figure itself is acceptable when the end result is making that figure easier to use.

Creating a new layer, the Back Shoulder Patch layer, behind the Back Arm layer, and within the Body Right bone layer, allows the Body Right bones to control individual points in the new layer. Moving the shoulder patch to this new layer, use the bind points tool to select all the points except the very top point, and bind them to the Back Shoulder Point Control bone. Now the shoulder patch moves correctly and hides itself properly.

The only remaining minor problem is that the body outline remains above the shoulder patch in the full front view. We solve this the same way it was solved on the opposite side, with a small moving mask object on the body layer, bound to the same Back Shoulder Point Control bone, as shown. (The shoulder patch is shown in green to make its shape clear. The highlighted points are the ones to be bound to the Back Shoulder Point Control bone.) The very top point of the shoulder patch needs to be bound to the body Root bone, the spine, or else the shoulder patch will not move when the body moves.

Now the question is, was it worth all that trouble? We now have a figure, or at least the arms and upper body of a figure, that can be turned throuogh 90 degrees by the simple scaling of a single control bone. Here is what the simulated rotation looks like so far. (The Anime Studio file of the project to this point can be downloaded here).