Smart Bone Inception

[SneakySam]

Hello! This is my first time posting on the forums, and I just had a quick question about smart bones! Sorry if it a repeat question, I did not see an answer when I was looking before, but it is possible I missed something. I know you can use a smart bone to control a smart bone, but it seems like if you try adding another on the chain, (so Smart Bone 1 moving Smart Bone 2 moving Smart Bone 3,) things stop working. I made a separate document to test it in case it was just the rig I have been working on, but it seems like it moving Smart Bone 1 only will move the second smart bone in the chain. Is there any way to get more to move? Thanks!

SneakySam

[synthsin75]

You can make as long a smart bone chain as you like. You just need to be careful what bone's you're keyframing in each smart action. Each should only have the bone being controlled and the smart bone directly controlling it keyed.

[SneakySam]

Hello again! I went and tested it out, and it still did not work. I might be doing something wrong, but I made sure that each action only had the controlled and the controller bone being moved. Could it be the version? I am running version 12.5.1. Here is a gif of a quick test file, where instead of creating actual dials, I created an action for each bone movement. I also made sure not to keyframe anything that was not necessary, so the 3rd bone is not moving. On frame 0, it looks like it works, but once I go to any other frame in the mainline, it won't move the third bone.

https://im5.ezgif.com/tmp/ezgif-5-79dc353121.gif

Thanks!

SneakySam

[synthsin75]

Oh, you're right. I tested on frame zero.

[Greenlaw]

Here's a trick you can do if you need to go only one extra level in your Smart Bone Dial (SBD) chain.

First, this is the normal daisy chain setup with the results described earlier. The action is happening on frame 24, not frame 0.



As we already know, when daisy chaining SBDs, an SBD will drive only the next SBD in the chain when turning it on an animation frame (frames after 0.) I think this is by design to optimize performance.

However, I found that I can boost this 1 extra level by targeting another bone to a Smart Bone Dial. Like so...



I think this somehow keeps the second Smart Bone Dial aware that it's a Smart Bone Dial when it's being turned by another SBD.

Note that it's not necessary for all the bones to be targeted, I just did that for this example. For the above example to work, only BoneA actually needs to be targeted by the extra bone. The other targeting bones have no effect down the chain and are unnecessary.

Bonus tip: when I need to use this trick, I'll Shy the small targeting bone since it's not meant to be touched by the animator.

Here's the project file if you want to play with it...

sbdChain.moho

BTW, for me it's very rare to have to use this. As a matter of fact, in the 9 or so years I've been actively using Moho, I can think of only one instance where I needed to use the above trick...and even then, I believe I dropped this trick in the final version and used another method. The problem with daisy chaining SBDs is that it can become a mess to animate and it isn't terribly practical for production use.

Hope this helps.

[SneakySam]

Thank you guys so much! I only needed to get one more layer working, so this is perfect! I had guessed it was an optimization trick to, but I did not see any settings in moho preferences. Thank you again, so much! You are a lifesaver!

SneakySam

[Greenlaw]

Yeah, I agree, there probably should be a option to keep the SBDs active. I can see how this could be useful in some situations.

In some 3D programs I use, there's a mode to force the program to do full scene evaluations. The mode can drastically affect performance for complicated scenes so you don't want it enabled all the time, but it's handy when you really need it.