Problem with smart bone dial

[Mattyj]

I am just trying to rig a head turn using a smart bone dial and for some reason the bone does not work in the mainline. Aspects of the face (eyes, nose, mouth etc) are in a group folder which is nested in the bone layer, but while the head turn will work inside the action, it will not work in the mainline. Any ideas as to what I could be doing wrong?

Cheers,

Matt

[synthsin75]

Do the bone and action names match? Is the group layer bound to a bone?

[Mattyj]

Yeah they do synthesin and yes I do think I originally had the group layer bound to a head bone. Appreciate the quick response.

[synthsin75]

I do think I originally had the group layer bound to a head bone.

You might try selecting that group layer and using the menu command Bone>Reset All Bone Rigging.

[Mattyj]

Cool thanks

[Mattyj]

So removing the head bone altogether seemed to work, and now the smart bone dial for the head turn works fine. Is there any way to have a bone for the head also for say tilting it from side to side? How I would usually rig that is I would have all the components of the head/face in a group layer and just layer bind that group layer to a head bone.

[synthsin75]

So removing the head bone altogether seemed to work, and now the smart bone dial for the head turn works fine. Is there any way to have a bone for the head also for say tilting it from side to side? How I would usually rig that is I would have all the components of the head/face in a group layer and just layer bind that group layer to a head bone.

For smart bone influence to reach them, you just need to bind the sublayers of a group, individually, instead of the group itself.

[Greenlaw]

For the the head, I typically bind the main 'head' artwork to the head bone, but I also add a 'face' bone parented to the head bone and bind all the facial features to this bone. This way, I can tilt the head side-to-side and move the face bone up-and-down for a nod. There's more involved in making this setup look good but that's the general idea.

Be careful when using Layer Binding. This method binds the selected directly to one bone and it excludes the effect of all other bones. So, for example, if you use this to bind a head artwork group layer to the head bone, you won't be able to use other bones for any of the component inside the group.

The proper way to do this, as Wes described, is to bind the individual artwork layers inside the group to the head bone. You can use Layer binding with the layers if you what to exclude the influence of other bones in the rig. If you want a limited number of bones to affect the layers, use Use Selected Bones For Flexi-binding.

For face elements, I may parent additional bones to the face bone, for example eyeL, eyeR, nose, and mouth. Then I would bind the artwork to these bones. These are called 'mover' bones because I use them to animate their positions individually relative to the face bone. The face bone, of course, is used to move the entire face as a single unit. Use the face bone to slide the face over the head area to simulate turns and nods, and use the individual 'mover' bones to adjust for perspective or to help exaggerate the face animation.

in some cases, it can make sense to bind an entire group to a bone. For example, if you're using a switch layer for the mouth, you can bind this group directly to the mouth bone since you probably aren't deforming the drawings inside with other bones.

Note: You can use Smart Bones to animate the contents of the Switch Layer even if you're using Layer Binding. If often use an 'Emo' bone to animate the expressions of the drawings between happy, neutral, and sad poses. Oh, that reminds me, 13.5.2 allows you to use sub-layer interpolation in groups, which can be a powerful use of Switch Layers for mouth shapes.

Hope this helps.

[MrMiracle77]

I've had layer binding *seem* like it breaks smartbone rigging for nested layers. However, this was only true on frame 0. On any other frame, it worked fine.

[Greenlaw]

You can't reliably test a Smart Bone Action on the setup frame; there are other rigging features that don't work at all in the setup frame and they really aren't meant to.

I typically step into frame 1 to test a rig, or if I have test poses set up in later frames, I'll use Design Mode to toggle between 0 and one of the poses.

[Mattyj]

Yeah that is awesome info, thanks Greenlaw appreciate it.