Fixing issues with character when smart bone actions conflic

[Zekewolf]

Hello. I'm new to anime studio, I hope I feel welcome here.

I've already designed and rigged my character, I created actions to correct bends and do things like blink the eyes and facial expressions and head turns.

I'm having a problem with the actions conflicting with one another, my character doesn't have eyebrows, how eyes convey her facial expressions, my issue is when I turn the dial to make her sad and use the blink dial after they conflict and the points of the eye go way past where they should be the eyelashes also go out of place.

Speaking of which when I turn my characters head and make her blink the eyelashes come out of place.

I don't know how to fix it. Both the blink action and the sad action control the same points of the eye.

[Greenlaw]

Without seeing your rig, I can only guess but It sounds like you may have part of your blink animation or otherwise the points in eyelid layer keyframed inside the turn Smart Bone action. If you see such keyframes for that element in the Action, you may want to delete them. To re-position the eyelids over the face during a turn (as opposed to closing the eyelids,) you might instead consider translating the eyelids layer or the eye group that holds the layer.

If the Eye Blink Smart Bone action is clean, it should still work during and after the Turn Smart Bone. If it's necessary to change the shape of the eyes/eyelids after the turn, just make sure you do towards or at the end keyframe of the Turn Action, not at the beginning. Personally, at the end of a turn, I suggest using Transform and Shear to alter the eyes shape (in addition to the respositioning) instead of moving the points in the drawing itself. This approach is cleaner and easier to manage since it doesn't interfere with the existing points animation for closing the eyes in the Eye Blink Smart Bone Action.

Hope this helps.

[Zekewolf]

This is what's going on. When I use a combination of actions this is what happens.

[Zekewolf]

Can someone help me out? I'm still kinda confused.

[Zekewolf]

Without seeing your rig, I can only guess but It sounds like you may have part of your blink animation or otherwise the points in eyelid layer keyframed inside the turn Smart Bone action. If you see such keyframes for that element in the Action, you may want to delete them. To re-position the eyelids over the face during a turn (as opposed to closing the eyelids,) you might instead consider translating the eyelids layer or the eye group that holds the layer.

If the Eye Blink Smart Bone action is clean, it should still work during and after the Turn Smart Bone. If it's necessary to change the shape of the eyes/eyelids after the turn, just make sure you do towards or at the end keyframe of the Turn Action, not at the beginning. Personally, at the end of a turn, I suggest using Transform and Shear to alter the eyes shape (in addition to the respositioning) instead of moving the points in the drawing itself. This approach is cleaner and easier to manage since it doesn't interfere with the existing points animation for closing the eyes in the Eye Blink Smart Bone Action.

Hope this helps.

Still kinda confused, I put a picture up to show what I'm dealing with. I'm pretty new to anime studio

[Greenlaw]

Just a thought: is it possible the eyelid is being influenced by the rotating dial bone? In other words, is there any Strength on the dial bone? It should be set to 0.

I'm also wondering how your binding the vectors. Normally, you should use Use Selected Bones For Flex-Binding with only the bones that you want deforming the element. Check that the dial bone isn't also included in the selection.

[Zekewolf]

The smart dials aren't bind to anything, I used point binding for the skeleton, I didn't bind anything to the smart dials.

Also the strength on all bones are set to zero

[Greenlaw]

Here's another guess: looking at the pic, I see that you have a Smart bone for Sad/Neutral/Happy set to Sad--there is probably a conflicting keyframe between the deformation at that position and the blink position.

(The Turn bone in your scene probably has nothing to do with it since it's not active in the pic, so ignore my reference to a 'Turn bone' above. The general problem is possibly the same though, just a different bone.)

FYI, I still recommend Flexi-binding over direct point binding. I only use direct point binding if I need to lock a specific subset of points to a different bone. (Like pinning the bottom neck point(s) to a 'shirt collar' for a character that has no chin.)

As for Sad/Neutral/Happy, I'm assuming you're deforming the points to get specific shapes. Depending on the deformations, this could get messy because the deformations are going to be additive when you apply another Smart Bone deformation. (That's probably what's happening here.) It might be easier to make the eye shape transitions (Sad/Neutral/Happy) using a Switch Layer instead. If you're using native vectors, you can morph between the shapes by enabling Interpolate Sublayers from under the Switch tab in the Layer settings panel. Using a Switch Layer also opens up the ability to create an unlimited number of expressions for your character.

Note that this Switch Layer 'morphing' feature only works if the point count/order of the Layers is not modified, so if you intend to add more expressions/emotions and wish to retain the feature, be sure you have all the points you need before you begin. That said, all that will happen is that the morphing will not occur between the vector layers that have a different point count/order but it should still occur between layers that do. Typically, the effect is preserved if you duplicate an existing layer and just push the points around, and not delete or add points. (At work, I often mix morphing and non-morphing layers as it's not necessary to always have the morphing effect between Switch Layer changes.)

Another option is to create regular Actions that apply different 'expression' shapes as you need them. I do this when I have to add something in a scene that I won't need frequently enough to bother setting up a Smart Bone or new Switch layer drawing for. (Or when I'm just pressed for time.) Usually this is a scene specific thing that probably won't be used in many other scenes, if ever again.

Just a few thoughts. Hope this is helpful and not just adding to the confusion. Hopefully, you'll figure this out soon. FWIW, troubleshooting a rig gets easier the more you do this. Eventually, you'll run into everything that can possibly go wrong.

[Zekewolf]

Do you happen to have a file or something I can visually take in? I'm an artist and even though I can understand what you wrote I understand it better when I see it otherwise I'll get confused and won't know what to do.

I like the switch morph idea.

[Greenlaw]

A morphing Switch Layer is pretty easy to setup. Here's a basic example:

1. At frame 0, create your Switch Layer, add a vector layer and then add a circle.
2. Now duplicate the circle layer and squish it.
3. Double click the Switch Layer, go to Switch and enable Interpolate Sub-layers.
4. Move to a later frame. There are several ways to invoke Switch Layers but the most basic is to right-click the Switch Layer directly. A list will pop-up showing the drawings contained in the Switch. When you choose a drawing, a keyframe will be created for it. For now, choose the that's already active--this will create a 'start' keyframe for the morph.
5. Move about 5 keyframes forward, right-click the Switch and select the other drawing. This will create the 'end' keyframe.
6. Step through the keys--you should see the circles transition from one to the other with interpolated in-between frames.

There are a couple of catches to be aware, some of which was explained in the earlier post. Another catch is that you can't interpolate between groups of shapes within a Switch Layer. (Necessary if you have shapes that require masking effects.)

In practice, it's usually not a big deal though. I usually only apply the morphing feature for special cases. More often, I'll create one or two transitional shape layers instead of relying on morphing shapes. This might depend on the style of animation but I personally think adding a one or two hand drawn 'in-between' shapes looks better than relying wholly on interpolation.

Extra tip: I'll also like to add 'squash and stretch' transforms to the mouth or eyes shape layers to give the transitions a little more organic look. It's a simple trick but if you do it well, the effect can look very close to frame-by-frame animation. (Flash animator do this a lot.) It's usually better to apply the transformations to the Switch Layer because it's easier reset the shapes with one group layer, and also all the drawings can share the same pivot point (i.e., the Switch Layer's origin.) But sometimes it's better to apply the transformations directly to individual drawing layers--I guess this depends on how the character has been rigged and the animation that's called for in the boards.

After you've done this for a while, you'll develop an instinct for when and where best to apply different techniques.

[Greenlaw]

There are several ways to invoke Switch Layers...

I meant to mention the other methods:

1. Shift+Alt+Right-click directly on the drawing in the workspace (the mouth, eye, whatever.) This selects the Switch Layer the drawing belongs to. Now, use Alt-c or Alt-d to cycle through the drawings. The drawing you end up on will have a keyframe.

...or...

2. Ctrl+Alt Right-click on the drawing in the workspace. A list of all the drawings will appear under your cursor. Select a drawing and it will switch and get a keyframe.

These shortcuts are advanced methods but they're much faster and easier to use than right-clicking on Switch Layers because it saves you from drilling down in the Layers panel to find them.

I only learned about #2 a few weeks ago and now it's become the method I use more than 75% of the time. (I use #1 most of the rest of the time.)

Since you're just starting out, don't worry about these for now. Just keep them for when you become more comfortable with the basics--they can save you a lot of time later.

Edit: One more useful shortcut that you should learn now: Alt+Right-click on any drawing in the workspace. This selects and highlights the layer in the Layer Panel. This will save you a lot of time searching for a specific layer. I also like to color code my groups too, like green for standard Groups, blue for Switch Layers, and Red for Reference Layers I wish to avoid editing. This makes it much easier to find what you're looking for in a complex rig setup.

[Zekewolf]

I tried it but it transitioned weird, I have all the same points and the shapes are all the same.

[Greenlaw]

Maybe the layers are being influenced by different bones? Make sure they're bound to the same bones. That said, normally, when you duplicate a layer, it retains the binding of the original, so I don't know what's happening here.

That, or you still have some conflict with another Smart Bone dial. Set any dials you have keyframed back to its neutral state and see if that fixes things with the morph. If it does, you probably need to clear some key frames in the smart bone action.

Or maybe the issue is more obvious: maybe you've key framed a point animation on the main timeline? Check the timeline for any unintended keyframes.

That's about all I can think of without seeing the actual scene file. Hopefully, somebody else here will pop in with other ideas.

[Zekewolf]

I probably need to clear out everything concerning the eyes and start from scratch.

I tested your idea about switch morphs on a blank document, it works fine but when I go to put it into smart dial it just switches instantly and doesn't tween.

Update: Just found out switch interpolation doesn't work for smart bones, which sucks.

At some point I want the character to have the sad face but blink as well.

[synthsin75]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e2tvb4sdrjjgo ... anime?dl=0

1. Create smart bone expressions for eyes.
2. Duplicate eye layer and in the SB expressions action make keyframes for closed eyes for each expression.
3. Put both these eye layers in a switch and set it to interpolate sublayers.
4. From the bone layer, create a regular blink action by keyframing the switch to open, closed, and open again.

Animate expression using the smart bone and add the blinks from the actions window.