Pro 9 Smart Bone Rig

[CSCorbridge]

I'm feeling so stupid I can't figure this out because I got quite proficient with v7...So I'm having issues with the smart bone thing in v9. For example, in v7 for an arm i would create within a bone layer 3 separate vector layers - the upper arm, lower arm, and one for the hand. Then I'd bind the bones to their respective layers, turn off the influence, parent the bones and everything worked magically. Now to use smart bones, it seems I should have a single vector for the upper and lower arm and two bones inside. Now I can't get the arm to bend the way I'm seeing in all the tutorials, it just stays straight. It doesn't seem I can bind 2 bones to one layer...am I even supposed to do that step? It's ticking me off...what am I doing wrong!? Please help
Thanks,
-Casey

[Víctor Paredes]

Hi, I think you are confused.
There are several ways to rig, binding entire layers to specific bones is only one of them. There are other ways, like using bone strength, bind specific points to a bone or make a combination of all the ways, following the needs of your character.
Now, when you bind a layer to a bone, you lose the ability to move only some points of that layer with one bone and some other with another bone. That bone only moves the entire layer.
So, since a smart bone is a combination of point and bone movement, it doesn't work if you bind an entire layer (because bones doesn't move the points, but layer).

Some time ago I made a webinar about rigging vectors in AS (and some images), it was made before Smart bones existed, but still having many tips which are useful now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO4LrtMe9DE

Last week I made another webinar about smart bones, I think it complements the info of the previous one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVfvkYBb1SM

I know it's a close recommendation, but I think this webinars could be useful for you.

[CSCorbridge]

Thank you for the links to the webinars, I watched them both and am now playing around with the new way of rigging other than binding layers. However, most of my past characters were created with bone-layer binding. I've been trying to improve them using the smart bone technique but I can't get it to work! So --> I name the bone, set an action under the same name and change my points as needed in the action line. Then when I switch back to the mainline and manipulate the bone, and the smart bone action doesn't occur at all. I can get it to work fine with an unbound strength rig as shown on the webinars, but it fails if the bone is bound to the layer. Does binding a bone to a layer actually shut off smart-bone capability? It doesn't seem like that should matter - if it does that seems a serious limitation. Any ideas?

[ulrik]

..... but it fails if the bone is bound to the layer. Does binding a bone to a layer actually shut off smart-bone capability? It doesn't seem like that should matter - if it does that seems a serious limitation. Any ideas?

Yes, if a layer is bound to a bone, smart bones will not work, you have to "release layer" then smart bones will work. I don't see it as a limitation because if you use smart bones, all points will be bound to the bone and I can't see any use of also binding the layer when the shape/shapes on the layer already will be controlled by the bone/bones.
I hope I have understood you right.