Making a smart action - everything dissapears.

[NealF2]

Hi,

I'm new to actions but I'm following several tutorials and it's not doing what it's supposed to

The first problem (and that's all I'll mention for now) is that after I Make a smart dial, when I click on create an action, everything disappears.
I do get a new timeline but it's maroon and not blue. So I double click the bone layer and re make it visible.

The character does come back but it's moved and a different size.

I won't go into the other weirdnesses now. Trying to keep this simple.

Thanks.

[NealF2]

UPDATE:

I finally got it working.

Still have several mysteries, though.

1. Why does the character disappear when I create the action?
2. Why does the smart dial and character change position when creating the action.

Also, when creating the head looking down position, I thought I could move all the parts of the head (eyes, mouths, brows, etc) together since they're all in a folder.
But I have to move each vector layer individually. Takes longer, but no big deal.

[Greenlaw]

Hi Neal!

I don't have answers for everything because I would need to see the project, but generally speaking, it sounds like there may exist conflicts between the current Smart Bone and one or more other Smart Bones.

This can happen in two places:

1. Check that other Smart Bones aren't being unintentionally activated in the action. You can tell this by the bold highlight on any of the bones...only the bones you want activated should be bold. It's pretty easy to activate other bones, Smart or otherwise, if you're not careful about using Ctrl+F, or when you accidentally click the background with Transform Bones while other bones are selected.

2. Check that the Smart Bone Action isn't fighting with another Smart Bone Action over elements in your rig. This can happen when both actions are active, so you may not notice this right away.

I suspect the latter is what's happening. To prevent this, I try to animate different items to do the same thing in different Smart Bones so there is no conflict. For example, I might animate the layer in one Action and the Points in another, or I'll parent the items to a bone and animate the bone instead.

Re: moving the parts of a face, if they are moving the same distance, parent them to a 'face' bone and move the bone instead. If you have two controls, one for vertical movement and one for horizontal, be careful to animate only horizontal motion in one and only vertical in the other. Or, separate the motions to different items as described above.

Some of this info is covered in my recent YouTube tutorials on using Smart Bones.

Hope this helps!

-DRG

[Greenlaw]

Oh! This is just another guess, but check your bone binding or the keyframing of an item in the action. When a Smart Bone is activated, it's possible that an unintended binding or setting, or an item's keyframing, is throwing one or more items way off-screen, so they appear to disappear.

[NealF2]

Thanks, Greenlaw.

I'll be looking into those suggestions.
Right now there's only one action. But I did go through a lot of trials to get to that point. So maybe there's a smart bone that has no action?

Won't know till I look through everything.
Thanks for the suggestions.

BTW, still not getting notified when there's a reply. And I made sure to check the notify me. Weird.

[NealF2]

I went too far without figuring it out so now it's impossible to find what I did. But I think it IS something to do with cross orders from actions. So for now, I just figured out a work around that's okay.

I now ran into another phenomena. I've got a face turn all worked out in an action. I put the eyebrows and pupils in a neutral position and they move left and right (or up and down) the correct way.

But if I try to move the pupils, brows or mouths in the main timeline, they won't stay where I put them. They just snap back as soon as I go to the next frame.

I'm thinking that somehow the action is negating the move in the main timeline.
If this is true, is the only way around this to take the pupils, brows etc, out of the action and put them into another layer? Of course, then I would have to carefully sync them to the face turns. A bit tricky.

Also, since those features are in the layer order they need to be, I'm not sure how to take them out of the action and put them somewhere where they could be independent.

Whew! This is pretty complicated stuff and I appreciate the help.

[Greenlaw]

Hi Neal!

But if I try to move the pupils, brows or mouths in the main timeline, they won't stay where I put them. They just snap back as soon as I go to the next frame.

To me, this sounds like a Smart Bone has keyframes for these items, and it's overriding your manual keyframing. Remove the keyframes from these items in the Smart Bone Action, and you should be able to keyframe them manually. If you want to use both with an item, Smart Bone-driven animation and manually keyframed animation to be applied additively, it's best to do the manual animation on another item, like a child bone or group layer.

the pupils, brows etc, out of the action and put them into another layer? Of course, then I would have to carefully sync them to the face turns. A bit tricky.

I don't use Smart Bones for these items. It's easy enough to animate them manually, and I have more control this way. To me, using a Smart Bone to animate pupils and eyebrows seems like more work.

Also, since those features are in the layer order they need to be, I'm not sure how to take them out of the action and put them somewhere where they could be independent.

I only use Animated Layer Order in a Smart Bone Action when I'm very sure I won't need to manually change the Layer Order in the Mainline. This is because an active Smart Bone will override any manual changes I want to make.

Instead, I will duplicate the layers, place the duplicates in the stacking order, and use the Smart Bone to animate their visibility. This isn't moving the layers, but the result is visually identical. Plus, I still have the option to manually animate Layer Order when I need to, and I don't have to worry about breaking the setup by adding or moving layers.

Or, when the layer structure is straightforward enough, I don't bother setting up the Smart Bone to animate layer order at all. To me, it's like moving Pupil bones; animating Layer Order is usually easy enough to do manually...just select it and drag it to the desired new position. If it helps, try color-coding the layers to make them easy to identify. Of course, now you're keeping track of keyframes in a second layer, which can complicate things. If it helps, remember you have Timeline Visibility to keep keyframes for multiple layers visible simultaneously.

My advice is to go with whichever method is easiest and most appropriate to use during animation. Smart Bones are indeed cool, but don't get too distracted by their 'sexiness'. IMO, many items are probably easier to animate directly, and it's better to reserve Smart Bones for actions that are actually tedious to animate manually, like opening and closing eyelids, turning body parts, or bending fingers.

Hope this helps.

[NealF2]

Hi.

I'm having to study some of your answers as this method is new to me.

I did look for key frames in the pupils layer. There aren't any there. So that's not interrupting things.

I like the idea of manually moving pupils, brows etc, but can't see how to keep them from being in the action.
Here's my layers from top to bottom. BTW, I'm not using bones in this animation except for the smart bone dial.

Bone Layer containing everything including the head and body. (I made it a bone layer thinking I might need bones. But I haven't used any except for the smart bone dial.)
Inside that layer are:
Head group containing:
Mouth switch layer
Sunglasses
3 positions of eyelids
Pupils group with individual pupils inside.
Left Brow
Right Brow
face
Side hair

Since I'm using the smart action to move the head side to side I'd need to take the sunglasses, lids and pupils out of the action somehow.
So I guess I'd have to take them out of the Head folder and put them above? Or maybe above the Bone Layer?

Btw, the pupils, lids, sunglasses are all images. the face is vector. No particular reason. Just the way it turned out. Don't know if that matters.

Interesting thing happened when I opened the file today. The pupils and lids, while not working 100% started to work a little. Still playing with it to see how far it'll go.

Thanks for your detailed instruction. I'll be studying it.

[Greenlaw]

Hi Neal!

If you haven't seen these already, I recently made a couple of tutorials on using Smart Bone Actions...

Let's Make Moho Smart Bones! Endless Nachos, Pt 3

Expert Smart Bones Tips! Endless Nachos, Pt 3 1/2

Hope this helps.

[NealF2]

Hi Greenlaw.

Lost Marble still isn't notifying me when I get a response. I have it checked, but... Anyway..

I'm actually getting to feel like I understand enough in Moho to get around. I've been working on a 2 hour animated musical and I'm learning as I go.
So with each new section of the film I have to up my game and try out different aspects of the program.

Your tutorials and replies have been extremely helpful.

I'll check out the two links you gave me above.

Thanks again.

[Greenlaw]

Lost Marble still isn't notifying me when I get a response. I have it checked, but... Anyway..

I don't think the option has worked for a long time. Out of habit, I just check in every day.

I've been working on a 2 hour animated musical and I'm learning as I go.

Wow! This sounds like a real passion project! Good luck and best wishes, Neal!

[NealF2]

Thanks.

Yeah, I'll just have to make checking here a habit.

As I've been playing with the actions I came across one other thing that might be something I'm expecting Moho to do but might not. At least not this way.

I working on a face turn. In the Bone group layer I've got all the parts of the body. I've also got a group for the face which included a mouth switch layer.
The character is in 3/4 view so some of the mouths have been drawn with that angle. Mainly the mid lower lip crease.

I've got the head turn working. I tried flipping the mouth layers that needed to face the other way. I put the flip midway through the turn.
The problem is that if I have that mouth selected so I can move the points (in the action layer), when I come back to the main timeline, it's all screwed up. The action thinks I want just that mouth to show.

So I'm thinking there might be another way to do this. I tried lifting the mouth switch layer out of the Head group. So now it's not part of the action. But then I have to animate it separately, which is a lot of extra work.

I'm I doing this the only way it can be done? Seems like it.

Thanks.

[NealF2]

Well, one thing that'll work in a pinch:

I put the mouth switch layer back into the head group and just didn't do any switching.
Then in the main timeline I only used the switch when the head wasn't mid turn.
I then put the flip when the head turn lands.

That'll work if there's no alternative. Still looks fine.

[NealF2]

I had it working.

Closed the file. Came back and the head no longer is attached to the smart bone dial. In the actions timeline the head moves when I use the timeline wiper, but the smartbone dial doesn't move.
And for some reason, one of the eyebrows disappears. And when I go to look for it, the program crashes.

In the main timeline the head turn key frames that I put before, still make the head turn. But the dial doesn't turn and the dial no longer makes the head turn.

MAN! This program is frustrating. Too many bugs. Been working at this one thing for a week. Keeps coming up with new surprises. And just when I thought I had it working... blam!

---------------
EDIT:
Just opened the backup. That works fine. So the original must have gotten corrupted somehow.

[Hoptoad]

MAN! This program is frustrating. Too many bugs.

With all due respect, the odds of a bug being your problem are extremely remote, virtually beyond contemplation.

I used to think the same thing, but over the years I realized that 99.99% of the time I was to blame. I had done something wrong because I was experimenting, thinking I knew what something ought to do and boldly doing it. Such an approach allows the rig to be constructed with a flaw. When a rig is wrecked, the damage is seldom evident at the time, but is discovered later, making it hard to identify the true source of the problem.

Furthermore, if one of my rig problems went away on it's own, I assumed a corrupted file somehow de-corrupted, but that was simply false. I had actually fixed the problem without realizing it, because I never understood the problem to begin with.

Very likely, IMO, somewhere in your understand of smart bones is a flaw: one of your mental Moho cogwheels is missing a tooth or two, disrupting your otherwise well-crafted machine. I recommend that you create some simplistic practice rigs where you test the smart bone after every single change until you locate the error in your thinking, otherwise you'll continue creating mysterious problems for yourself.

One of my Moho problems was traced back to copying smart bones. Oh boy, that one took me a while to track down. Another involved stacked identical shapes. Another involved a vector layer I had moved outside a masking group.

Moho tutorials explain what to do within a specific circumstance, but they rarely warn you of the dangers of applying that knowledge under a slightly different circumstance. Rest assured, everything you want to do can be done.

That being said, you're also trying to create advanced solutions to basic animation challenges. Sometimes -- not always, but sometimes -- the time spent building a robot to pass the butter would be better spent on polishing the script or watching a cartoon or whatever.

Closing thought: few people on a software forum are willing to help with advanced problems, because even if they were standing at your side, it might take them an hour to get to the root of the mistake, as there are countless possibilities to consider. The only clue is a mysterious symptom. It's the difference between identifying which tire on your car is flat versus identifying the source of a clanking noise emanating from under the hood.

Hey. Anybody reading this, please don't get mad at forum members for not helping with advanced problems. The odds are nearly 100% that if you become a MMX (Moho Master Level 10), you won't help solve advanced problems either. Who has the time, communication skills, patience, and deep Moho knowledge? Nobody.

Well, apart from Greenlaw, of course.

Good luck!