How to Animate an Arm Using Advanced Morphing
In Toon Boom Digital Pro, there are many time saving features which you can use to increase the quality and look of an animation. Morphing is one of these. You can use morphing in several situations such as effects or character animation. However, using basic morphing to bend part of a character, such as an arm, which normally follows an arc, is not necessarily the best choice. For this reason Toon Boom Digital Pro provides the Deformation Path tool. This allows you to add a pivot point and rotation angle to the basic morphing sequence.
In this article, you will to learn how to animate a bending arm using advanced morphing, and the Deformation Path tool.
 Bending Arm Basic Morphing Sequence
Before using the Deformation Path tool, you must create a basic morphing sequence which shows an arm bending. This sequence consists of two key drawings, the first drawing is of a straight arm, the second a bent one. Draw these two drawings as one level and place your morphing hints appropriately.
To perform this exercise download this sample template, uncompress it and drag it to your Toon Boom Digital Library located in My Documents (Windows) or Documents (Mac OS X). Before importing the template into your project, extend your scene to 24 frames.
Refer to the Paperless Animation chapter in the Toon Boom Digital Pro User Guide to learn more about Morphing.
Creating Your Advanced Morphing Animation
First, let’s take a look at a regular Morphing Path and see what it looks like with a basic morphing sequence showing an arm bending. As you can see, the drawing moves directly from the first key position to the last, following the shortest path. Now is time to add a Pivot point and a rotation angle. By adding a pivot point and making use of the Deformation Path tool, the movement of the arm is much more natural.
Creating Your Advanced Morphing Animation
- In the Drawing Tools toolbar, click on the Morphing Tool
 button.
- In the Camera view, right-click (Windows) or [Ctrl] + [Click] (Mac OS X) and enable Modify
Deformation Path. The default keyboard shortcut is [F11].
-
In the Timeline view, double-click on a cell in the morphing sequence.
The morphing Inspector dialog box opens.
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In the Morphing Inspector dialog box, click on the Create Deformation Path button.
A new Deformation Path appears in the list and the controls appear in the Camera view.
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Click on the Yes label, it will change to a No label and disable the translation.
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In the Timeline view, go to your first Key Drawing.
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In the Camera view, click and drag the bounding box control points so that the entire arm is
contained inside the bounding box.
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Click and drag the pivot point to position it in the inside of the elbow.
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Click and drag the first point on the Deformation Path and position it on a target point on your first key drawing.
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In the Timeline view, go to your last key drawing.
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In the Camera view, position the last control point of the Deformation Path and position it at the same target point on your last key drawing.
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In the Drawing Tools toolbar, click on the Onion Skin  button.
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In the Timeline view, extend the Onion Skin so that all drawings in the morphing are displayed.
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In the Camera view, click and drag the Deformation Path line, between the two control points, to give it a nice curve following your drawing.
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In the Camera view, click and drag the Rotation Angle control point to adjust the curve of the movement.
The advanced morphing showing the arm bending is now complete.
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