Moho Forum

Question - I have a bunch of layers grouped together in switch layer for the hands of my character. From what I understand, smart bones do not work if they are bound to a layer. So to use the smart bone option, do I have to go through every layer inside the switch and bind the points to the bone? Would that even work? I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to use smart bones with switch layers if even possible before I waste a bunch of time trying.
Thank you

smart bones will only work on direct children... that means that you can't use smart bones 'through' a switch parent from a bone parent. However, switch layers can hold bones, and those could have smart actions. You could separate the positions of the child hands so they aren't overlapping, add sets of bones to the switch parent, then use the bone offset to put them back - though you're really doing something quite complicated, and I don't really see the advantage of using both switches AND smart bones...
If you just have two or 3 hands for vastly different hand rotations, each with bones, just put 3 bone layers inside your switch, rig each individually and select them. But to have many hand positions means you dont need any bones in the hands. Depends what you're trying to do!

Thanks for the reply...it does make sense. The main reason I would want to use the smart action is for rotating the hands without the small "wrist" portion coming out of alignment with the forearm. I been having some difficulty with realistic wrist movement and the main way I've solved it was point translation through the timeline, which gets to be a real pain. Any advice? I'm thinking about trying a very small wrist portion buffering the hand switch layer and the forearm that will have smart action, but if you have any tips on the subject it would help me out.
Thanks
-Casey

so really, you just need a single bone for all switch sub layers for fixing their wrists... this should work - just create the bone on the switch layer and create the two actions for it. Now for each direction of rotation go to each switch hand and correct the position - i.e. when you turn the bone ALL sub layers will be 'fixed' but still only one will be visible.

Then, you could maybe use a script like Mike Greens Bone Parent Master script to make that bone controlled by the wrist bone on the main parent bone layer.

Bone Parent Master
This matches a bone's name in on layer, with a bone of the same name in the parent layer, and makes the parent bone control the child's bone. This is useful where you have a switch layer with a bone layer parent, and you want to animate the bones in the bone layer but still deform the switch layers. Just copy the bones from your parent object to the switch layer, then apply this script in the Embedded script toggle in the Layer properties panel. It will control the length, strength, offset and position/angle/scale of the matching bone.

http://www.mikegreen.name/
(on sidebar, very bottom)