The "Sandwich" Technique In Rigging

[@DarrenTAnims]

This looks really useful. Lots of great tips. I think I'll have to watch it a few more times, to get all the info out though :-)

[@amccandlesandcameras]

Wow, I have seen some very simplistic versions of this but I am having a hard time even grasping how well your transitions worked for a complicated face. I will be watching this video over and over. Thanks

[@joshuashute7341]

you bet.

[@simplycinema4d975]

OMG, thank you so much for uploading that

[@joshuashute7341]

sure thing :) glad you appreciate it.

[@awiggan1]

More please!

[@Snapai]

I've been using this technique a ton in OpenToonz as part of a proof of concept- except using a more Toonboom Harmony style approach - rather than creating a copy of the wet art on a new layer parented to it, you can pull out just the fills or lines using the "Palette Filter" FX node. I actually use a macro FX for this called autopatch (named after the Harmony node) - which clips the extracted fills with the extracted linework.

[@joshuashute7341]

I had added a video earlier this year running through using palette filters to achieve this effect ( Since releasing that video in june I've tweak that node setting up some what) but unlike harmony, opentoonz doesn't have a live preview for fx and on a mac the plastic tool makes previews "complicated". This removes fx from the equation and gives me a real time preview of what's going on. I'll have to look into macro fx. The closest harmony equivalent would be separating your line art and color art layers of a drawing(o,l,c,u) which most people already do, cloning the layer in the timeline, in layer setting saying one layer only shows line art and the other only shows color, then re-ordering or nudging the line version back in z space. Different approaches with the same result; Toonboom has really thought about, simplified, and perfected a lot of different approaches for cutout animation.

[@finleynever4441]

Have you considered making a vid on how you warp and shape your rig? I've never seen anyone animate like you!

[@AdamEarleArtist]

thanks for sharing man. this is awesome

[@joshuashute7341]

no no no... you are awesome

[@AdamEarleArtist]

joshua shute no no no you arrrrre awwwwwweaome.

[@joshuashute7341]

"did we just become best friends" kzbin.info/www/bejne/aV69hneqlqyZaas

[@AdamEarleArtist]

joshua shute my spouse is jealous. This might be as far as I can take it before I have to give up half of my possessions. But you are so sooooo awesome. Oh Yes. Ohhhh yessss you arrrre. 😃😃😃

[@Orphanlast]

I would love to get my hands on that rig. And study it. Snapai has some crazy weird ways of making rigs. But this actually looks much easier to work with... less FX in the Schematic. Anyways -- I'd give your channel a shout out. It'd be a type of collaboration and promotion to your channel and work if you're interested.

[@joshuashute7341]

I have an older video running through setting this up in the fx schematic. each approach has their own advantages and moments to shine. "Anyways -- I'd give your channel a shout out. It'd be a type of collaboration and promotion to your channel and work if you're interested" you are welcome to shoutout. you lost me at "collaboration and promotion". perhaps elaborate.

[@cj013810]

How hard is it to import a rig from one scene to another?

[@joshuashute7341]

Not hard at all. Super easy. When creating a rig, let's say for a character named Rudy, you will make a scene exclusively for Rudy that only contains the elements that make up Rudy's rig; this is not for animation it is only used to hold the rigging information (parenting, colors/styles, initial drawings, fx connections). this allows you to drag and drop Rudy's scene file into whatever other scenes you'd like Rudy to appear in and Rudy's rig will be imported (or loaded but I highly recommend importing) as a subxsheet.

[@cj013810]

Thank you so much, you are such a big help.

[@Orphanlast]

So the sandwich it's on a different level? And it's parented to the rig? It looks like you're editing the rig with the selection tool... but... the selection tool is destructive editing... Where as the animate tool animates. Somehow you're morphing the rig with more accuracy than I've ever had.

[@joshuashute7341]

It can be both.......but I'm not editing the RIG with the selection tool, just the drawings. selection tool This "sandwich" has deep roots in digital cutout animation. in the old days of flash, you didn't have "rigging". if something was "parented" to something else all that meant was that they were nested (collapsed) into the same symbol (think subxsheet). so when I'm editing the hand, it closely resembles that old approach except that I can forgo the buried timelines, for simplicity's sake, because of groups. Since the hand is a sandwich inside of one drawing, the transformation of the fingers is done with the selection tool and the magnet tool and the movement is provided by auto inbetweening across multiple drawings. so in this case, it's In one level. I have another video showing what you can achieve with this. perhaps I'll make another video taking a closer look at this process. the hand as a whole, however, is parented to the forearm and is animated using the skeleton tool. Animate tool just my opinion, the skeleton tool offers more functionality with easier accessibility when compared to the animate tool so I only use the animate tool for scaling and adjusting stacking orders (because I can't do those two things with the skeleton tool); for all else, the skeleton tool is king. In the case of the forearm (and torso), it is split into two levels with the back most of the two columns parented to the front most of the two columns so that you only need to animate one to move them both. A tip: when using this approach and dealing with a frame by frame heavy animation, the merge and clone features from the cell menu are so very handy. "Somehow you're morphing the rig with more accuracy than I've ever had" I'm not sure what you mean by "accuracy" but I'll take a guess. cutout animation can look stiff and feel rigid if you let the rig dictate what you can achieve. this stiffness can be loosened up by adding slight scaling throughout the rig as you animated but ultimately, if you avoid breaking the rig, you're limited to the rig's limitations (what I said at the end of the video). push what you need to, change what you need to, tweak what you need to get the job done. the end result is all that matters.