Why Won't It Move?!

[AirStyle]

I'm trying to animate a star subtly growing and shrinking in size. Right now, I have one that works just fine, but the other one refuses to move.

Here's a gif showing it (the largest star on the right with the halo):


Let me walk through how this star, like the moving one, came to be.

I was going to make small star field, but I didn't want to make a whole bunch of stars with light blooms and have to animate each one by hand. So, I decided to make some template stars, animate them with actions, and then add reference layer groups to the project referencing those stars, and just plug in the animations where I wanted them. And for the first star it worked just fine.

I clicked on the star's Layer Folder, clicked in the action window and created a new action, named it, animated all the layers for the star, saved, inserted the reference layer group where I wanted it, and then inserted the action reference into the timeline. When I tested it in the editor window, it worked just fine. When I previewed the animation, via the File menu, it worked just fine. And when I finally exported the animation, all worked perfectly. "Alright good. Let me do that with the next star.", I thought.

Following all the steps I did to get the last one up and running, I created the new star (I call it quasar). And just like the last one, I added it to the project and tested the animation. In the editor window, it worked. In the animation preview, it worked. However, when I exported the animation, it would refuse to move. "Ok", I thought. "Well, maybe the action was too subtle for for me to see it. Alright", so I went back and edited the original star's action (not the reference), made the grow/shrink part of the action more pronounced, and tested again. Still the same effect: no movement.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Even the action animated like I wanted to. Can anyone help me out?

UPDATE: I plan to add a different video to this, showing the action and preview of the star.
Here it is: https://youtu.be/N3hv8aii_go

[synthsin75]

Without see a file, my first suggestion would be rendering with multi-threading disabled.

[AirStyle]

I tried it without the multi-threading and got the same problem.

How do you post a .anime file like this? Do I use this tinypic thing?

[synthsin75]

You'll need to upload the file to somewhere like Dropbox, FileDropper, or MediaFire and paste the link they give you into a post here.

[AirStyle]

Okay. Here's the link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ji2orxviw009c ... t.zip?dl=0

[synthsin75]

First thing you should do is update to AS 11.2. http://my.smithmicro.com/anime-pro-updates.html

You shouldn't be able to edit an action from a reference. Maybe doing so introduced a bug in the file.

But for now you can either insert a copy of the action, which breaks the reference, or insert the reference action on the original...as long as that channel is synced in the reference.

[AirStyle]

OK. I've updated and tried this again, and what I found was this:



They're all Reference layer groups to the real ones.

The top ones' actions are inserted via copy; the lower ones are inserted via reference.

I'm confused as to why an action reference insertion won't work on a reference layer group. Seems like you can make the Channel Animation Viewer unnecessarily messy and confusing, especially if you don't ever plan on altering any of those keyframes.

Nonetheless, I've found what I needed to do in order to get the result I want. I just thought I'd let you know what happens, and wanted to see if this behavior was intended.

[Greenlaw]

Just wondering, are you expecting to edit references of the Action? If so, that's not possible. There can only be one version of each Action, which is shared by the original and all references...you can't reference an Action and make a variation of it. It's possible to add motion on top of the Action in the reference, otherwise, you should just create different Actions and apply them to duplicate groups.

If what you're really complaining about is the error that appears when you have a reference layer selected and you try to edit a related Action, yes, that one is annoying. To work around this, you first need to be on the original layer, and then open the Action you wish to edit. After that you can select the reference layer and edit it. (I personally think Moho should just open the Action directly and not report this as an error. It's kind of a pointless error since you obviously can edit a reference layer in an Action. I do it all the time.)

[synthsin75]

I'm confused as to why an action reference insertion won't work on a reference layer group. Seems like you can make the Channel Animation Viewer unnecessarily messy and confusing, especially if you don't ever plan on altering any of those keyframes.

Nonetheless, I've found what I needed to do in order to get the result I want. I just thought I'd let you know what happens, and wanted to see if this behavior was intended.

I can verify it is a bug in ASP11. It has been fixed in Moho 12.