Continuing from where we left off last time we are going to continue working on the head, we will make the model move the head up and down. After we are done with that, We will have a look at rotation deformer.
Let's go through what the plan is here
We are going to work on the "Angle Y" parameter. In other words, I will try to show 'before and after' screenshots of the warp deformer mesh.
We are going to prepare the body of the model for deformation.
We are going to talk about rotation deformer and assign several body parts to rotation deformers.
Without further ado, let's get started.
The Angle Y Parameter
The Y parameter will be set up the same way as the mouth and eye Y parameters. Just like before, I will remove the front hair parts for the deforming part of the face.
The deformation here should be a bit easier than left and right. Since the idea of the face at least, is to move all the face parts up for looking up, and down for looking down. Once the face is done, we can move the hair parts up and down and the result will look fairly legit.
As you can see, the difference here is very subtle, I don't intend to make her look down too much, just a little bit, and the rest I will leave it to the hair to make it look dynamic. Basically the idea is to move the front and side hair down, while moving the hair in the back up. That way, it does look like if the head is tilting downwards.
Vice versa I'm going to do the opposite for when the model is looking up. Finally, once I am satisfied with the results, I will use the 'synthesize corner' command on each of these parts as I've been doing with the eyes a couple of chapters ago. Now do be aware that this won't do a perfect job like 99 times out of 100. You will have to go the the corners and fix those positions (looking top-left/right and bottom-left/right.
The end result should look more or less like this:
Preparing the model for body animations
In order to setup the model for animations on the body, we need to make similar preparations as we did on the head. In other words, adding a mesh to each part and assigning them to deformers. I usually always use the torso as the center of the model, meaning that the center is part of the 'root' and each other deformer is assigned to the torso, or to a deformer assigned to the torso.
Here's a rough plan to visualize what I mean:
Torso Deformer
Head Deformer
Front Hair Deformers
Face Deformers
Back Hair Deformers
Penguin Deformer
Left Shoulder Rotation
Left Arm
Left Wrist Rotation
Left Hand
Right Shoulder Rotation
Right Arm
Right Wrist Rotation
Right Hand
Left Leg Rotation
Left Leg
Right Leg Rotation
Right Leg
Rotation Deformer
We are going to talk about rotation deformer for a moment. As you can see, I have added some rotation deformers on this model now.
These do, as their name imply rotate parts around themselves. They are a big part of Live2D and complement the warp deformer. I usually use them for the joints and the 'Angle Z' deformer (to turn the head left and right.
Some people use them for the hair physics, but as you've seen in one of my previous posts, I prefer using paths, one major reason is also, that the method I am using is better suited for free version users.