20120213

Lost Wiggle Tool

...v20120206_0245b_b for Anime Studio Pro 8.1+


3rd "Lost AS Tool"! The "Lost Wiggle Tool" was initially conceived as an Anime Studio® Pro mouse/motion capture solution, but soon it started to evolve into some kind of “All In One” tool with lot of animating helpers and extra features, which I’ll treat to expose breafly here but, for more details, there is (this time) too a Users Manual awaiting just after the jump!


Although the above "Users Manual" is not totally finished and it has some gaps, I think it still can be very useful to totally get both, the basics of the tool and many of its peculiarities; for a quick overview OTOH, you always have the "Readme" file and the following...



...OVERVIEW!

Wiggle Modes (or Tool Modules)

  
1. Mouse Wiggle Mode!: Animate practically any object (Layers, Bones, Points or even Camera), as well as some of its properties, in any way and with a trace of your mouse! Perfect for natural, complex or funny motions, as well as like a big helper for Mograph.



2. Morph Wiggle Mode!: Use Morphs in order to get richer real-time results and manage them directly on viewport and/or from the "Morph Wiggle Control Panel" window with easy and taking advantage of its benefits. Please, keep in mind this feature is actually UNDER DEVELOPMENT, and it has been included mainly with demostration/ testing pourposes; in fact, you'll have to activate it from tool's Settings Window in order to get access to it.

 The "MorphWiggler" allows you blend WiggleMorphs directly on viewport.

 Alternatively, you can manage "WiggleMorphs" from the Morph Wiggle Control Pannel too.


3. Audio Wiggle Modes!: Audio Wiggling is something like a well known ASP feature; but think that now you can make use of it to animate practically any element/s and with much more options. Again, perfect for Mograph!, among other things...




Tool Controls (Core)


This is from where you control and monitorize the behavior of the entire tool to get it work over the desired elements and animation channels. It, basically, operates like this; form the first group of buttons, you say the tool which item/s you are about to work (Layers, Bones, Points or Camera) and from the second group of buttons/controls you choose what action to perform over that item, that is: Translation, Scaling, Rotation, Sensitive (or the most convenient "next" action), etc... Then, you are able to use the tool and its different modes/modules and it'll react as expected.

As a shortcut, you can quickly switch between modes too directly in viewport by means of pressing "Shift key + RMB", in order to call the "RingMode" and, then, dragging:




Animation Helpers


Animation helpers adds extra control to the different tool modes, like "Document Frame Range" specification or "Force Rewind", which provides a handy "trial & error" way to get exactly the desired movement. Helpers include too some shortcuts to the most recurrent timeline related ASP preferences, such as "Consolidate Timeline Channels" and (very specially) "Default Keyframe Interpolation" in order to have it at hand, more accordingly with its daily usage.

Other general tool benfits and helpers, focused on speed up some animation tasks but useful too under other situations are:

  • "ViewKeys", a handy way to "see" directly in viewport which items (Bones & Points) has keyframes and what kind of them! :D


  • The "ViewRing", a viewport navigator helper which will result specially usefull for multiplane and multi viewport setups:
  • Integrated "Selection Mode", save time and clicks making selections without the necessity of leave the tool by means of the "Alt" key. All the expected combinations are possible by means of "Shift" & "Ctrl" modification keys.
  • Saving and Reload all camera animation data is now possible thanks to the integrated (just bellow Camera Mode button) import/export system.
  • Last but not leas... Magnet Mode (accesible here as a Point Mode Sensitive Channel) is able  nore to act over several selected layers at a time!



Tool Settings...


Customize some tool aspects and behaviors by means of the "Tool Settings" window, from the double-click speed to the toolbar size or tool keyboard shortcuts, to name some of its possibilities.

And that was all about the new tool and it's main features; please, as I still said, take a look to the users manual in order to get some basic concepts and keep in mind that, as usually, this is still an unfinished work that may suffer modifications as well as (hopefully) improvements, that I'm not able to carry out right now...


SUMMARY...

Known (on Windows 7 at least) Issues:
  • At the moment, and contrary to normal MouseWiggle captures, WiggleMorph captures MUST be done over a clean (with no keyframes) Timeline range, in order to avoid weirdness.
  • "MorphsRings" must be correlative for now! So: "#1.0_mainMorph, #2.0_mainMorph, #4.0_mainMorph" is not allowed (more concretely, it cause problems...)
  • Use Bone Manipulation mode on frame 0 (usually for testing purposes) is not possible for reasons beyond my control... [AS's Lack]
  • Mouse Wiggle Mode "Tolerance", intended to automatically reduce keyframes after a mouse capture should work well for translations, the other channels seems to start to work too, but it's actually a WIP.
  • Actually, ASP doesn't provide a way to get audio feedback during captures; but the feature request for it's still done, so... fingers crossed.
  • Scaling points by means of the X/Y numerical boxes can lead into unexpected results at some (zero) point, so it's recommended to use "gizmos" in this case.
  • Follow Path Mode's key presssing for layer bending seems broken. [Ramon0's: 20111227]
  • Mouse Capturing Issues: No keyframes reduction after Curvature nor Mouse Manipulation captures; Camera Tracking mode seems to need overhaul [20120116].
  • Lots of things to polish up, but this is still (and always will be?) beta...
  • Pressing a button into a pop-up dialogue still seems to make (sometimes) an "onMouseDown" call. [AS's bug?]
  • Open a link "method" be means of AS should be revised and probably redefined (it doesn't seems to work on Mac OS at all).
  • As always, (very) dense and redundant code here and there...

Upcoming? Features:
  • The Post-Smooth feature, intended to reduce keyframes after wiggle captures in any (and not only translation) animation channel.
  • Thinking about the best way to include the old "Lipsync with Actions" utility in someway.
  • Add some "RingMode" sensitiveness to automatically set the Tool Mode in base of the element under the click (plus some other tweaks and automations).
  • Considering if Tool Modes shouldn't remember it's own last Wiggle Channel state, hmmm...
  • Simply, I just can't wait to start to experiment with the new "multi-touch" possibilities.
  • What about have total/more keyframe control/managing directly from the ViewKeys? Thinking on it...
  • Probably, any other greyed out button or widget you can find around the tool.



NOTE: Again, this is still a Beta version of the tool, so install and use it at your own risk. Of course, any feedback or suggestions (with "Morph Wiggle Mode" in mind) would be very welcomed :)


LINKS

Download | ReadmeUsers Manual | Support | Archive (Other Versions)

8 comments:

  1. It is not working at anime studio 8.21

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    Replies
    1. Hi, I've had no problems running the LWT on Anime Studio Pro 8.2 (there is no 8.21 AFAIK). OTOH, to make it works on the new Anime Studio Pro 9 will require a "fix", mainly due to the Layer Tools combination. But I repeat, it should work on ASP 8.2

      So, could you offer some more information? Any, error/s details, installation problems or whatever... Thanks!

      Delete
  2. Buen! Buen, pero muy Buen trabajo! gracias por compartir... los scripts de edición de capas y dibujo me srvieron de mucho... no tengo palabras para agradecer... :) soy un gran fan de AS...

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  3. But other Two Tools are working ! plz help

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  4. @ JORMER3000: Pues gracias también! Y sí, "este programa tiene magia" (o algo) :D

    @ Anonymous: So... I assume you have installed it just in the same way than the others, is't? And that part should be OK. Anyway... as I said, I hardly can help you if I have not more info or details. Maybe... wouldn't be the Anime Studio Forum's post like a better place to tackle the problem? Or you can find my e-mail address in the "About..." window of the other tools just in case you want send me some screen captures or whatever, anything would be better than nothing...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Is there a way to get these excellent tools to work for anime studio 9?

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  6. Excellent work. Very excelent. Thank you!
    Like Autodesk Maya marking menu.
    Left, middle or right mouse click and shift or ctrl or alt or another shortcuts - appears menu (Ringmode) with multiple commands.
    You would be thinking about next "Ringmodes"... colors(?), animation keys, etc...
    Maya has ability to do own marking menus for every commands. AS is starting... By the way it is mark of quality and user friendly software.

    ReplyDelete