Hi,
I'm having some issues creating a G3 character.  I've used a template and replaced all the sprites and re-aligned the bones, however some bones appear in grey, see below.  Can anyone give me any tips on what I am doing wrong please?  a couple of sample actions are available [YouTube]I'm having some issues creating a G3 character.  I've used a template and replaced all the sprites and re-aligned the bones, however some bones appear in grey, see below.  Can anyone give me any tips on what I am doing wrong please?  a couple of sample actions are available here 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions 

Hi...

If the bones are grey it normally means the sprites have not been correctly attached to the bones.

Are you creating the character in Cartoon Animator itself or are you creating the character in an image editor like Photoshop using the PSD workflow? If you let us know which method you are using we can point you to some tutorials which should help.

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

Thanks for that, that'd be great! I created it from CA4 itself.  I followed a few videos I found on your channel step by step (Using a template [Ted F in my case], then from the hip replace all sprites and adjust the bones), but those videos were made with version 3 and I did notice some differences in how everything works and menu options.  So, for example, I couldn't change the sprites from Layer manager, so replaced them using the Sprite editor.  Also, the hip sprite does not have the whole body as in the videos, so I adjusted the bones as I went on sprite by sprite switching between the bone and sprite editors ...

Thank you very much

It looks like the face sprite needs to be reattached to the head bone. You can do this by selecting the head in the composer, click the 'attach' icon, then hover your mouse pointer over the head bone (the one that's greyed out). When the bone turns green, click the mouse to attach it.

Other things to watch out for...

• Make sure all the bones from the ankle down are inside the foot sprite. Currently you have the ankle bone pivot as part of the shin, with no part of the foot overlapping.
• Use front facing motions on facing characters. Looks like you used side facing motions in your examples which can give odd results. Front facing 2D motions have an 'F' in the top left corner of their thumbnail in the content manager. Side facing motions will usually have an 'S'.

- TET
Animation and Video Life
The Lazy Animator - Tutorials for Cartoon Animator

Thanks for that @etourist, I wasn't able to do as you suggested as the bones would only turn green if they were already yellow, grey ones wouldn't

 
I did recreate the character from scratch, but it seems every time I replace the face of the template with my one, the head bones go grey.  Not sure how, but I managed to re-attache the head by moving around a bit, but still got the nub greyed out ... 



thanks for your help

Thanks for that @etourist, I wasn't able to do as you suggested as the bones would only turn green if they were already yellow, grey ones wouldn't

 
I did recreate the character from scratch, but it seems every time I replace the face of the template with my one, the head bones go grey.  Not sure how, but I managed to re-attache the head by moving around a bit, but still got the nub greyed out ... 



thanks for your help