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[Arik_the_Red]

I am looking at animation options for the current challenge - "fierce...awwww"...

I have made a basic character of "Piglet", and have been wondering if  morphing would work for the primary movements - making him walk, make expressions, etc.

Piglet is a very curvey character - lacking any real straight shapes (per below artist rendering)... I want to show more proper motion in the bending of elbows and knees, etc., and I don't see it being easily accomplished with bones and such as they are generally straight, sharp and angular. Is morphing the better way to accomplish this for what I want to do?

I haven't really done any morphing and have only read the basic tutorial...

Also in these regards, would it be best to have Piglet's body parts as separate morphing pieces, then assembled for the whole character?

Looking for ideas and ways to make this come out "really great"... well, at least as "great" as can be made with anim8or....

I will be working with tests using a "basic Piglet," and then once I determine what works best, I'll move on to the "fierce Piglet" character I'm putting together.

[ENSONIQ5]

The big problem with morphs, particularly in regards to character animation, is that vertex points morph from one target to the next in a totally linear fashion, they cannot be forced to accelerate or decelerate, neither can they follow arcs.  This means that morphs are an unrealistic option to make something "swing", like an arm or leg pivoting at a joint (unless you define a lot of intermediate morph targets).  Headwax is a morph aficionado, he should be able to give some tips if you choose to use morphing, but I would definitely use bones and weight painting on a single mesh for this character.  With enough bones up Piglet's spine you should be able to achieve the same sort of "bendiness" as these pics, though it will depend hugely on your weight painting.

[rellik420]

i could been completely wrong on this but i think there is a script that will export an animation each frame as a .3ds model. if you cant rig it right u can still make the animation but have the mesh all deformed then import selected poses and fix those and use them as morphs. it would be really tedious work but it might be easier doing it that way rather than trying to move all ur verts into a pose.

[johnar]

  you can use both. 
 Rigging is the way to go for legs, arms and other extremities, (mostly), so you'd want to rig him as you would a normal 'humany type character', coz he'll mostly be standing upright, rather than on all fours.
 If you can model him in a stand-up kind of position,  then he'd be pretty straight forward to rig, and you could use morphs on the one whole object. (piglet).
 You might want to bone his ears as well. (i see he has no fingers, thats cool. none to rig)

  Using seperate objects for 1 character has points for and against.
If you do use seperate objects on piglet, then you won't have any skinning issues, and you can be a lot 'free-er' in your animations, without having to worry about deforming meshes.
 But the downside is, that they will look like seperate objects because theres no proper joins like there would be in a single mesh.
 That mite not be a bad thing if thats the look that you want though. A bit sort've 'manikin puppety'

 Use morphs for facial expressions, eyebrows, nose etc. You can morph things like 'breathing in', by making an 'expanding chest' morph. Or a bounce in his belly, and things like that.

 So for all the general movements like walking, and moving arms and legs around, definately use bones.
 Personally, i would model him as one object. Make sure you finish him before you add morphs.
 Eyes are a matter of individual preference.  Bones are a good way, but morph targets can be too.

 

[hihosilver]

To help with the curves of the figure when he bends his waist, or legs, etc. instead of them having sharper angles like elbows and all, you can simply make the model simpler.  If you have less edge loops through the torso for example, then when you rig the character and have a few bones along his spine, only a few vertices will be affected keeping the smoothness of the mesh.
Does that make sense?