What is the best way to add points while doing Smart Bones?

[mystd]

I've been playing around with the smartbones and I often realize that I need more points or need to add some shapes. Since I can't draw while doing an action I go to the main timeline and add things there. Now my problem is that it sometimes completely resets the part I animated when I go back into the actions timeline. Normally it just messes things up a bit.

Is the only option to redo everything or is there a better way to deal with this?

[Greenlaw]

That's a very open question and I would need to see an example to understand what the issue it.

Normally, you would simply hop out of the Smart Bone Action, go to frame zero and add the additional points where you think you will need them. Then, jump back into the Smart Bone Action and edit at the frame where you need to adjust it. In most cases, you only have a few keyframes to deal with and this should be pretty straight forward.

Now, if you happen to have edited many or all the points in your shape across many keyframes, then, yeah, that could be a problem. In that case, you may need to move the new point(s) at every keyframe you added within the action manually to match the new positions of the surrounding points. That seems like an unusual situation but I can see that happening. If that's the case, you may have to chalk this up to a learning experience and plan better for it next time.

If you have a lot of keyframes to edit in the Smart Bone Action, one thing you could try is to delete some of the 'in-between' keyframes in the Action to reduce how many keyframes you'll need to animate the new points in, then you can add the missing keyframes. If you really have that many keyframes in the Smart Bone, keyframe reduction may actually make the animation better (or at least smoother) anyway. But I can only imagine what you're dealing with since you haven't shown any examples.

I know that's not terribly helpful but I hope it clears up a few things. If you can, post an example...I'm thinking worst case scenario and maybe the solution is simpler?

[synthsin75]

Here's how I'd do that:
1. Copy the action for the vector layer to its mainline. May need to mute smart bones, if they've been animated, so they don't interfere.
2. Add your points on frame zero. You should be able to add points without harming existing actions, but deleting points could cause problems.
On the mainline, Moho tries to animate added points relative to their neighboring points, so this should get you most the way there, with much less tweaking.
3. Open action for editing and copy the mainline into it.
4. Delete keys from mainline and do any cleanup of the added points animation necessary.

Note: This works for individually add points but not for the new Split button on the select points tool.

[Greenlaw]

Ooh, that's a good tip! Thanks.

I sometimes do something similar when editing Regular and Morph Actions (apply it first, work in Mainline, and then copy back into the Action), but I didn't think about this for editing existing Smart Bones. Will keep it in mind.

[mystd]

Those are nice tips but it's not something that happens often it also might be user error. I just don't know how and why it happens. Usually the points are all out of place, you have given me a lot of tips to deal with that. Sometimes I when I leave the action and add something on the main timeline on frame 0 and go back in the action everything is reset to its default state (it completely becomes like on main timeline frame 0) even though then I have to redo everything, it's as if it doesn't save or resets everything. I was wondering how I should deal with that.

[strider2000]

synthsin75,
Thanks for sharing that technique. I've had that problem before too, and your technique was interesting enough that I thought I'd make a quick video of the issue for beginners. For beginning readers here, I also show what's happening and how to fix it by just updating the actions for the new points.

[synthsin75]

Nice video, Strider. I had forgotten we could just copy/paste keys between the two. I was still doing insert copy to the mainline and back, which grabs the channel's whole timeline and isn't usually what you want. Thanks for that little tip.

[strider2000]

Nice video, Strider. I had forgotten we could just copy/paste keys between the two. I was still doing insert copy to the mainline and back, which grabs the channel's whole timeline and isn't usually what you want. Thanks for that little tip.

Cool. I love hearing how others do their work and approach their challenges. There's always something new to learn.