Method To Align Eyes/mouths When Creating A Character?

[RoboTyphoon]

   Hello! I've been working on my first character for a few hours now (no spoilers.. yet, aha) and my current obstacle, is just getting the eyes and mouths across all the face animations to flow without any.. twitching.

 

Is there any special way to go about making them animate flawlessly like all the default characters? Or is it just up to me to try and tweak them the best I can manually?

 

I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS4, if that helps anyone in suggesting how I should go about this...

 

Any and all responses are welcome~ Thanks.

Edited September 22, 2013 by RoboTyphoon

[Heavenfall]

I don't know of any technical solution, I think you are left to doing it manually.

Edited September 22, 2013 by Heavenfall

[Seyph]

Manually, while praying to all that is holy that things line up correctly, else you pull out your hair from frustration.

[RoboTyphoon]

Well, alright. I'll keep working at it.

[TheDanaAddams]

In my guide, I added a letter to each face, and used that to examine which faces appear when - adding a letter will help you identify exactly what is showing up when.

 

You can also add a bounding box (based on the bounding boxes provided as a guide in the template textures) and use those to help you line up a screenshot.

That's how I lined up Link's faces - took a screenshot of the character in-game, lined up the bounding boxes of the screenshot and texture in Photoshop, and adjusted the positions appropriately.

 

It's a tedious process, I'm afraid.

[StormyRange]

It's a shame there's no template image of showing the boundaries of the sprites, I got a awful lot of sprite carry-over stuff and I had to change it all manually (and edit the images a bit)

[TheDanaAddams]

It's a shame there's no template image of showing the boundaries of the sprites, I got a awful lot of sprite carry-over stuff and I had to change it all manually (and edit the images a bit)

The... base character template. It shows you all of the boundaries of the sprites for each section with a semi-transparent box.

[StormyRange]

The... base character template. It shows you all of the boundaries of the sprites for each section with a semi-transparent box.

Oh right that thing, I used it once and tried applying it as the texture and it was messed up beyond belief so I didn't touch it again, I'll dig that up again and use it for reference, thanks for reminding me o3o

[RoboTyphoon]

In my guide, I added a letter to each face, and used that to examine which faces appear when - adding a letter will help you identify exactly what is showing up when.

 

You can also add a bounding box (based on the bounding boxes provided as a guide in the template textures) and use those to help you line up a screenshot.

That's how I lined up Link's faces - took a screenshot of the character in-game, lined up the bounding boxes of the screenshot and texture in Photoshop, and adjusted the positions appropriately.

 

It's a tedious process, I'm afraid.

 

 Yeah I've been referencing your guide quite a bit Dana, I appreciate that you made it, it's surely helped me create my character!(: I think I'll just go and redo all the faces (they're simple enough anyway) and make sure I pay extra attention to the bounding boxes, I hadn't really thought of them before hand.

Edited May 5, 2014 by RoboTyphoon

[TheDanaAddams]

They're tricky to line up even WITH the bounding boxes. I suggest drawing the outlines of those boxes on a new layer, with a letter on another layer to identify which face it is... then taking a screenshot of the poorly-aligned face, bring that into photoshop, line the bounding boxes up, and adjust the face layer to align it with the head underneath.

[RoboTyphoon]

 Well, I can say that I've done it! My characters eyes function flawlessly - I opened up your template Dana, and I took my character's eye set and poistioned it how I wanted on the 'default front's eyes, then I merged both layers. I then copyied the 56 x 56 selection into my character's atlas sheet, where I positioned it (the layer via the bounding box) behind all the various face sections one by one and conformed the eyes to match the original position on that layer. Funny what difference a couple pixels can make, heh.

So I suppose that concludes this thread! Thanks, all.