Jump to content

Aligning all bones "start points/pivots"(?) to respective images' pivot points...


SymboliC

Recommended Posts

Hi,

 

I'm not sure if this is applicable or if this function does even exist but in the next release can you include a feature like "align all bone pivots/starting points(? I don't if the terminology is correct here) to their respective images' pivots"... OR equalize all XY coordinates of bones to XY coordinates of respective images?

 

Continuously pressing B to detach images from bones and positioning bones, reattaching images and this is followed by the correction of the placement of child objects is really an exhausting workflow for me...  :-|

 

Please enlighten me if I'm doing something wrong or if there is an easier way for this. I have also checked the shortcuts but couldn't achieve what I was looking for.

 

Actually, is it possible to position the bone (maybe while pressing another key) even if I don't detach it from its image?

 

Thanks a lot,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi SymboliC,

 

The title of this post is kind of confusing to me.  Why would you want or need to match the pivot points of child images to their parent bones? Have you watched the tutorial videos for setting up a character? For me setting up a fairly fully articulated human character (no finger or toe articulation ;) ) using the B key usually takes only a couple of minutes.

 

https://youtu.be/aQy7eX_CWPM?t=3m42s

 

The workflow should be:

 

1) set up all the characters body part images in the first frame in Spriter to assemble the character visually.

2) Use the alt key and left click and drag to create the skeleton for the character right over the assembled character. (should be very easy to see where the joints are etc because you're looking right at it and building the skeleton right on top) Be sure to keep in mind any new bone you create is automatically the child of the currently selected bone.. this also makes things go very fast and easy.

3) Zoom in close and perfect the size and placement or each bone BEFORE you assign its child images to it.

4) Select each bone and hold the "B" key, and then left click each image you want to be a child of the bone.  If some images or other bones are in your way, you can use the special hide selected objects feature to get it out of your way.

5) Test your rig by putting your character into new poses and fix any z-order issues as you test it.

6) While testing, you can tweak any bones size or placement by first un-childing any child Spriter or bone with the B key and left clicking... now that nothing is a child of it you can move, rotate and scale it as needed without adversely effecting any other bones or images..then re-child the stuff once you're done.. Of course, as you get better at step 3 step 6 will become completely unnecessary.

7) Animate your character as needed now that its properly rigged.

 

IMPORTANT: Don't forget, bones do NOT need to be perfectly butted against each other from end point to pivot point AND more importantly, at any point in an animation you can adjust the relative position of a child bone to it's parent for best visual quality for that section of the animation... this relative bone placement is also tweened!  Feel free to adjust how the forearm attaches to the elbow as many times as needed throughout each animation... There is no rig set-up that is perfect for all poses.  Adjust as needed.

 

Does this help?  It sounds to me like you are very prematurely assigning images to bones in your set-up process. Obviously it also boils down to experience too, as you get used to rigging characters the need to tweak repeatedly or after the initial rigging will practically vanish?  I think the biggest issue might be the point I made in bold. You might THINK you need to tweak your skeleton when in fact you don't, you just need to relocate that joint for that specific part of the animation by moving that child bone to a new relative position (just by left-clicking and dragging the thick end of the bone..WITHOUT un-childing the images or any other bones first!)

That all said, we do have a feature planned which will allow you to temporarily un-child everything so you can make quick adjustments, then automatically just turn back on the parent-child hierarchy that you had previously set up.

 

Hopefully this is helpful info and I hope my advanced age and poor knowledge of internet etiquette has not made my reply offensive, all bold and exclamation points are merely for emphasis of what I think are the most important info to save you time and annoyance, not in any way intended to be anything but helpful and humble. :)

 

Cheers,
Mike at BrashMonkey

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dear Mike,

 

First of all thank you for putting in the effort to make this clear for me.

I usually follow the typical workflow that you've written above and watched all the vids carefully,

 

3) Zoom in close and perfect the size and placement or each bone BEFORE you assign its child images to it.

....

6) While testing, you can tweak any bones size or placement by first un-childing any child Spriter or bone with the B key and left clicking... now that nothing is a child of it you can move, rotate and scale it as needed without adversely effecting any other bones or images..then re-child the stuff once you're done.. Of course, as you get better at step 3 step 6 will become completely unnecessary.

 

What I understand from your response is I think I have to pay more attention to rigging part.

 

Maybe my problem is something related to my images?

 

The issue is, I have a circular part in the body and while assigning pivot point for that image via the image library panel found on the upper right corner, I pay attention to align the pivot point just in the middle/center of that circular image/body part, so that when I rotate it, I make sure that it rotates around its exact center point avoiding elliptic movement.

But after I assign a bone to it, the bone's pivot does not match with the circular image's central point. So when I rotate that part using the bone, it does an elliptic rotation instead of a full circular rotation.

So I thought that I should strictly make the bone's pivot match the circle image's centrally located pivot point.

And considering that I have 9 more circular "joints" in the body making this correction seemed a little bit painy in case if I need to align the bone preserving the current positioning of the child image. (At this point comes my actual question, above)

My question is, when you have images and bones, which one's pivot point is taken into account when rotating that sprite?

I hope my explanation isn't confusing :???: :mrgreen:

And I really appreciate you for spending your time for trying to clarify this issue of mine! :)

 

Cheers,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah. That's the problem... It's a misunderstanding of pivot points in regards to child images VS their parent bone.

 

Bones always rotate based on their pivot point.. Any child Sprite is along for the ride, as though glued to the bone, regardless of its pivot point.  Th pivot point of an image is for rotating the image, not for affecting how it will rotate when you happen to rotate its parent bone.

 

Images can be animated, stretched, and rotated WITHOUT a bone, or in addition to whats being done to the parent bone.

 

Per frame you can rotate a parent bone AND rotate the child image, or even change the position or scale of the image despite the parent bone.

 

I think to better understand the possibilities you should first play with animating an image without a parent bone, then play with animating a none with a child image and then finally play with animating an image via it's parent bone AND its own rotation, scale, and position as well.

 

This might be the only way to really become completely comfortable with how to best achieve any specific animation goal.

 

If you want to send me your Spriter project folder (zipped up) and maybe a video explaining what you're trying to accomplish I might be able to give you some specific guidance.

 

Cheers,.
Mike at BrashMonkey

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dear Mike,

 

Thank you for further clarification.

 

Yes, indeed I'm aware that images can be rotated and manipulated regardless of their bones. But since I prefer to use bones all the time to animate my characters, and thus bone pivots affect the animation behavior, I find it a bit harder to position the bones of a rigged character compared to image pivot positioning done via upper right corner panel. That's why I suggested to be able to align bone pivots to image pivots.

 

Maybe instead of this, and instead of unparenting/parenting methods, do you think that it would be a nice addition to be able to move/poistion the bone by pressing a key combination and dragging it with mouse which temporarily locks the child image but allowing you to move the bone around without affecting its child image? Maybe to make things faster?... I know you can do this by unparenting the child image/positioning the bone/reparenting the child image... (not even counting that child bones' positions are also affected)...

 

I think I've come to the conclusion that I have to pay more attention while creating a bone rather than modifying it later. :-|

 

I'll prepare an attachment for this to make my workflow specific problem clearer...

 

Thanks a lot...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...