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.