What the Peg? And Bone construction

Retired Products Toon Boom Studio General Discussion
1

i am a 3D animator moving to the 2D world, and i mostly understand the Peg concept (as in traditional hand-drawn, hold everything evenly format) but having serious problems grasping it for building a “puppet.” i have read a few blogs but not really able to make it work for me.

Also, anyone got a blog on bone construction? i know how to do it in Maya and was expecting this to be simpler…

2

hi lacey,

here is a very comprehensive tutorial on pegs and hierarchy to help you build and animate your puppet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Bdow74rf8

here is a free bones tutorial pdf:
http://download.toonboom.com/files/documentation/tbs/TBS_BonesTutorial.pdf

best,
debbie

3

Hi Debbie,
I’ve been going through the tutorial but I can’t seem to get my legs parented to the hips. The thighs seems to only want to go to the shoulders which are the small end of the triangle bone symbol.

Have I missed something? I can get the legs to work if I reverse the ‘spine’ direction but then the shoulders want to go to the hips.

Any help appreciated.
Pete

4

For the influence setting, it is better to separate arms and legs and head from the body. Then you can setup the bone to be close to the body. Check the example of skeleton from Library>Toon Boom Template>Bones for better understanding.

5

Juho,
thanks for the suggestion though it is appreciated. Though I have tried to follow exactly what happens in the manual, my puppets in pieces awaiting some surgery :-). I just can’t get the computer to accept that I don’t want to parent the big end of the thigh bone triangle to the small torso triangle point (this is at the shoulder) The large end of the torso bone is at the hips and I don’t get the red line option when hovering here with a mid clik/drag mouse.

I’ll worry about the influence areas when I get the wee mans anatomy sorted. I had the same problem with the skeleton pirate.
Regards,
Pete

6

Pete:

This seems like strange behavior. Not sure what to tell you. Are the legs below the torso in the timeline hierarchy? Sorry if that is obvious?

Perhaps try creating a 2nd very small bone at the hip level that you could try and link to?

Otherwise I would try customer support!

7

Thanks for that Dunkman I’ll give it a whirl :slight_smile:

Pete