Bones not seeing nested layers.

[Julian Childe]

I've built my first character in AS9, and have started rigging him. Problem is I've done cell shading using groups and masks, and the result is nested groups (Arm --> Sleeve, Cuff, and Fist, with each of those as a group containing a graphic and its shading, for example).

Now that I'm trying to rig the character up, the bones aren't working right. For instance, in that Arm --> Sleeve/Cuff/Fist example, I have a nice little bone chain on the bone layer, but the upper arm bone moves everything, and the child bones have no effect whatsoever.

Edit: I'd like to add that I've already converted the group layers to bone layers after nosing about the forum a bit.

[slowtiger]

Layer bind a group layer to a bone.

[funksmaname]

do you mean flexi bind slowtiger? I think he's trying to avoid the layer being all controlled by a single bone.
do your bones have influence?
smart bones don't support nested layers at the moment - do the bones have actions?

[Julian Childe]

My bones don't have actions yet, but I was going to do the smartbone thing, so...

The bones have influence, and the bone layer is set to region binding.

Re: slowtiger. I need 2+ bones to affect the group. Can you even bind a group to more than one bone?

Anyhow, it's looking like I'm just going to have to rebuild the character with a different design philosophy. Thanks, though.

[funksmaname]

since this is your first character I highly reccomend you just build some 'parts' to develop a style and rigging structure you're happy with before you get too far. there are a lot of different ways to build characters and how the layers are structured effects the rigging (and its limitations)... as a rule, I try to use as few layers as possible, and nest as little as possible.

[slowtiger]

Any group or switch or bone or image layer can only bound to ONE bone, via layer binding. Anything inside is not affected by bones outside, because bones only influence stuff directly inside their layer.