How do i make bones not affect other body parts, and move limbs correctly?

[WelshJester]

Hi

I have followed the tutorial in the PDF of setting up a character, by separating it and then adding bones, then putting it together again. But when i manipulated the bones of the arm there was a line in the ear that moved at the same time. Did this happen because i didn't separate the body parts far away enough from each other when adding bones?, if so it should be explained better in the manual. I tried a couple of times with simple tests but other limbs move when i dont want them to, I even tried region binding. Should i just move the parts much further away when adding a bone?

Also the other problem i have is getting a limb to bend correctly, i drew a simple arm as a test and added 2 bones. Manipulating it a little bit looks fine, but if i bend the arm a little more the top part and the elbow bend in too much rather than it should. How do i correct this? i have tried altering bone strength but it produces weird results and the vector overlaps its'self. I tried adding a couple of points at the joint to see if it would help but i dont think it has, do vectors need to be drawn in a certain way before adding bones?.

Thanks

[Myles]

But when i manipulated the bones of the arm there was a line in the ear that moved at the same time.

You should definitely be using region binding (that's covered in the tutorial, and it explains how region binding prevents every bone affecting every body part - although sometimes you want that for rubbery squishy characters, and for those jelly-like characters you would not use region binding).

Once you have turned on region binding, you also need to adjust the bone influence area using the Bone Strength tool. While that is covered in the tutorial, only the "Initial regions of influence" image is shown , before the adjustment, and the after image seems to have been left out, just leaving the image caption: "Adjusted areas of influence", which is rather unclear on its own. Oops.

Naturally, you want the pieces far enough apart that the regions of influence do not overlap (except for knees, elbows, etc, where you do want two bones to influence the same points) - this is covered briefly in the tutorial.

Also, any points outside the direct regions of influence should clearly be close enough to only one region of influence that they are not controlled by other bones. This is touched on implicitly (rather than explicitly) in the referral to the points making up the head that are outside the direct area of influence, but could certainly do with some further explicit clarification.

Also the other problem i have is getting a limb to bend correctly, i drew a simple arm as a test and added 2 bones.

Joints that are controlled by 2 bones are not quite as easy to rig in a generic way, particularly at the extremes of flex, and can be somewhat sensitive to bone and point placement. You may wish to run a line across the arm and make the upper arm and forearm separate fills (which often counteracts that self overlap problem).
You can peak the point on the inside of the elbow, which often looks good but then the limb will only bend one way, you can use manual binding (see tutorial 3.1), you can use completely separate forearm and upper arm pieces, and there are some clever solutions with a few more little elbow bones added and some bone constraints (see this thread for a relatively simple but very effective joint solution).

Regards, Myles.

[CartoonLearning.com]

I posted a brief tutorial on how to do arms at http://www.cartoonlearning.com/2010/02/animation-training-1/

I didn't show how to do the bones for the arms, but it's very easy:

1.  You do not need to separate the body parts when rigging this way. 
2.  Place the arm pieces where they should ultimately go
3.  Add your bones to each piece
4.  Turn the bone strength all the way down
5.  Click the layer you want (upper arm, forearm, hand)
6.  Click the "Bind Layer" button
7.  Click the bone you want to bind the layer to.  i.e. humerous bone for upper arm, etc.
8.  Repeat steps 5-8 until entire character is rigged

[CartoonLearning.com]

Here are tutorials for ADDING BONES IN ANIME STUDIO and RIGGING A CHARACTER IN ANIME STUDIO:

http://www.cartoonlearning.com/2010/02/anime-studio-bone-rigging-tutorial/
http://www.cartoonlearning.com/2010/02/character-setup-in-anime-studio/