Bit of a newbie question on cutout animation

Hi

I’m a bit confused about whether the tutorial instructions are still valid. The use of rotation layers seems to overlap with what Connecting Exported settings through the Group Transformation Widgets is designed to do?

Long explanation below - but short question is; should I still be using the Tutorial’s Rotate Layers Copy & Paste approach? If so, I’ll trash everything & start again with that.

I can’t QUITE get either to work at the moment - Connecting multiple levels of Group Transformation Widgets seems to break at the 3rd level. My arm follows my hips but my hand doesn’t follow my upper arm at all.
UpperArmGroup (Connects HipsOffset & HipsAngle)
-> encapsulates ShoulderPivot which exports its ShoulderOffset & ShoulderAngle containing UpperArm.png
then ForearmGroup (Connects ShoulderOffset & ShoulderAngle)
-> encapsulates ForearmPivot which exports its ElbowOffset & ElbowAngle containing forearm.png
then HandGroup (Connects ElbowOffset & ElbowAngle) - this is the bit that seems to break
-> encapsulates HandPivot containing hand.png

If I use the Copy & Paste of Rotate layers, I’m getting a slight offset on one arm which grows as the Hips rotate.

I looked at Skeleton Deformation too but that does too much warping around the connected areas of the figure with medium-large movements.

Thanks for any advice!

Hi choddo,
which version of Synfig Studio and OS do you use ?
On the top of the page is is written “Version 1.x series users, check here the Cut-out Animation using Group Transformation Widget tutorial.

Please check Basic_Bone_Tutorial and Skeleton_Layer for use of bones/skeleton.
You could also purchase the full training course for Synfig Studio 1.0, which contains full tutorials on cut-out, skeleton and walk cycle :wink:

Hi

1.0.2 on Win64. I did see the link to the newer tutorial (after going quite a way down the old approach path) - I think I’ll start again with that one.

I can’t get skeleton (sans deformation) to work with my bitmapped character. It just completely randomly mutates the images - I kind of assumed it was designed for vector splines etc.

Will also check out the training course, good suggestion, thanks.

Hi!
The current tutorial about cut-out animation using the group transformation widget is a tad complex. I know cos I wrote it. I have to rewrite it when I find the time. There is a more simple approach for pure cut-out when you use the group transformation widget and that is by using nested layers without any exported values or links. I will attach an example. I made it more or less selfexplanatory. Just go to sets (next to layers) and open the pivot folder and double click any folder inside to select a pivot point. Although the file contains vectors it also works with pixel images.
Greetz!

cutout.sifz (8.38 KB)