Specialisation: Project Breakdown | Turns out I broke down
- Savannah Edwards
- Aug 23, 2019
- 5 min read
See: Pitch and Overview
Toon Boom Harmony has become an industry standard program for television and more,. With an impressive number of awesome shows under it's belt (Tangled Before Ever After, Teen Titans, Futurama, Adventure Time, Spongebob Squarepants, etc), I decided why not give it a try. After reading up a few articles and watching some tutorials I discovered that Toon Boom has the capabilities to do what I wanted but couldn't do with rigging in After Effects, and this I began a long, arduous journey.
So, Toon Boom Harmony is hard to learn in just a matter of weeks. I discovered that the hard way. I started out confident that I could totally create a fully rigged 360° turning body rig. Boy oh boy, was I wrong...
Body of Work
Although unfinished I completed and applied envelope deformers to majority of parts in the front view of the rig and completed the node work for the eye, pupil and eyelid.
Turning 2D Rig | Workflow Breakdown
1. Research and resource collection
Seeing that Toon Boom Harmony was a brand new software to me, I needed to curate a thorough collection of tutorials for rigging. My search started on Youtube , and after watching a number of tutorials I didn't understand I finally discovered the official Toon Boom learning channel on Youtube which lead to the the official learning website which is the holy grail for tutorials for learning every aspect of Toon Boom from beginner to advanced, for free (here), new tutorials come out when there are also updates to the software.
2. Deciding/Designing a character to rig
Seeing as I was a beginner in this software, it was important to decide on a character that was not too complex but also appealing. Initially I was going to use my original character design but after watching a number of tutorials I simplified and stylised the character to the point I thought I would be comfortable working with.
3. Planning the rig and designing the "unseen"
Designing the unseen is basically making sure I am keeping parts of the rig that are not seen in the front view of the rig that will reveal later in mind. This meant the tail, back of the vest, stripes and the back and inside of the ears for me. I also realised in this stage that making a 360° degree would be too tough for me and so I scoped it down to a 180° rig (still not scoped down enough - discovered that too late).
4. Creating the turn-around reference sheet
From the simplified character sketch I needed to create as accurate of a turn around as possible with a profile, quarter and front view. It wasn't necessary to colour all of the views in the reference sheet as long as all the colours were there in the front view,
5. Set Toon Boom preferences to have the optimal settings for turn around rigging
For each kind of activity you are doing in Toon Boom, there are specific preferences needed.
6. Import the reference sheet into Toon Boom
For best rigging, the reference sheet was placed in the safe zone of the drawing and camera views, as to have a centred and scaled workspace. .
7. Creating basic drawing and composition node hierarchy
After importing the reference sheet, I needed to create the drawing and composition node hierarchy. Essentially you seperate the drawing nodes into Body parts --> Body Group composition --> Upper or Lower Body composition--> Master composition --> Original Composition --> Write & Display. In regards to the body parts, I created an individual drawing node for each feature from top to bottom (including separating the stripes into individual stripes). It also needs to be noted that the order in which you connect the drawing nodes to a composition is the order in which they are displayed, much like layers in photoshop but more convoluted.
8. Creating basic peg node hierarchy
Pegs are comparable to symbols in Adobe Animate . They are a layer hierarchy of animation layers, to which you apply various kinds of nodes to - rarely directly affecting the original drawing layer.
9. Line & colour clean up parts into respective nodes and layers
When cleaning up, there are 4 layers that can be use to clean up within a drawing node: Overlay, Line, Colour, Underlay. Each body part is drawn and then coloured in their respective nodes and layers.
10. Re-arranging and adding any extra drawing, composition and peg nodes and drawings
After clean up, it's easy to find irregularities and layer order issues so it's best to adjust and add at this point
11. Creating pivot indicators on underlay layer for accurate joints
Although it isn't necessary in all cases, marking pivot points make it easier to get accurate and smooth joints without much popping.
12. Adding pivot points directly onto respective drawing nodes
Self explanatory.
13. Adding various kinds of deformers to the peg nodes of the necessary parts of the rig:
+ Envelope deformers: Allows for detailed and flexible deformation of a whole image. Usually used for character rotations.
+ Curve Deformers: Best for features such as eyebrows and hair, it allows you to deform using a vector curve with points and bezier handles.
+ Bone Deformers: Allows for bone-like structures in rigs with flexible articulations.
+ Game Bone Deformers: Fundamentally the same as a bone deformer, however it is optimised for game engines.
14. Creating masks with cutting nodes and colour selector nodes
! DISCLAIMER: I only managed to get up to step 14 !
15. Creating articulation merge systems
16. Adding inverted cutters
17. Adding line colour reveal system
18. Finalise node view
19. Position views on the timeline
20. Pose quarter, front and side views
21. Adjust rotating rig systems
22. Add extra drawings to rig
23. Adjust interpolation between views
24. Pose quarter back and back views
25. Add additional poses
26. Add constraints (Static, two point, transformation limit, dynamic spring)
27. Set up pose copier for rig
28. Set up master controller widgets, grid and wizard
Research, Resources and Annotations*
*only including resources I actually used
Rigging Artist | Toon Boom LEARN. Retrieved 15 August 2019, from https://learn.toonboom.com/journeys/rigging-artist
This was my life blood in learning Toon Boom Harmony. Especially being the official learning site, it was an invaluable asset to me. All the tutorials are thorough and are designed in a way that you cannot cut corners. There are short quizzes at the end of each article or instructional video unit to help solidify what you learned in the video. Even more, they provide downloadable resources for each course that you take for free if you wish to follow along with the video. I managed to get almost through the whole journey they provide for rigging artists, skipping the cut out animation course and getting a quarter of a way through Rigging 3.
Reflecting and thinking on the future
Thinking back on this, although I'm disappointed I couldn't finish my rig, I have actually learned a lot in the timeframe I had to learn and practice. Some of these steps took from under an hour to more than a week to wrap my head around. Some things that did help was having the predetermined courses by Toon Boom. Finding this resource helped me save time from digging around trying to find tutorials.
I think one of the major downfalls in this project was my overconfidence and lack of knowledge going into the project. I didn't plan well as I had started a bit later than I should have and threw myself into it without looking at my plans or updating my Trello board. Moreover this trimester, I didn't follow up on my communication with facilitators and should have talked about getting an extension due to some traumatic personal and family issues I was experiencing which I failed to mention at all.
In future, I want to go back to working off a plan, being more openly communicative with facilitators actually using the services we have on campus to help myself with some of these issues. In regards to learning, I would love to continue working on rigging with Toon Boom as I feel it will be a huge asset for me to have in my showreel.
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