Hi, i am fairly new to moho and am trying to develop an advance facial expression system. So far i have used smart actions instead of bone dials because i did not know the difference clearly, and i am unable to find it still.
But i realised that its not working as intended. For example i made an action where a bone rotation is linked to different positioning of some points (naking eye brow shapes), and i thought it would work as a dial to smoothely switch between two eyebrow shapes. but when i animate it, the result is simple bone rotation revealing all the shapes between the two i wanted to switch between. I realised just maybe thats what smart bonea are for?
So is there difference a between the two? And what exactly if someone can elaborate? And can i convert my smart actions into smart bone dial for that reason?
I am not sure how clear i am here in explaining, so please ask if anything unclear.
Smart Action Vs Smart Bone Dial
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Re: Smart Action Vs Smart Bone Dial
A Smart Bone Action is a type of action that can be controlled by rotating a bone. This action can be anything you can keyframe in Moho. Any Smart Bone can have up to two actions associated with it, but it's possible to daisy chain Smart Bones to operate more complex actions.
A Smart Bone and a Smart Bone Dial are both bones that have a Smart Bone Action assigned to them.
The only difference between a Smart Bone and a Smart Bone Dial is in how they're used. A Smart Bone, for example, might be the forearm bone of a character so that when you bend the elbow, it drives an action to redraw the shape of the elbow. A Smart Bone Dial is a control or 'dial' that typically sits outside of the skeleton, and can be used to control a head turn or to blink an eye. Technically, they both do the same thing (control an action through rotation,) but Smart Bone is a general term and Smart Bone Dial is specifically describing a Smart bone used as a UI element.
So...all Smart Bone Dials are Smart Bones, but not all Smart Bones are considered Smart Bone Dials.
Hope that clears things up.
A Smart Bone and a Smart Bone Dial are both bones that have a Smart Bone Action assigned to them.
The only difference between a Smart Bone and a Smart Bone Dial is in how they're used. A Smart Bone, for example, might be the forearm bone of a character so that when you bend the elbow, it drives an action to redraw the shape of the elbow. A Smart Bone Dial is a control or 'dial' that typically sits outside of the skeleton, and can be used to control a head turn or to blink an eye. Technically, they both do the same thing (control an action through rotation,) but Smart Bone is a general term and Smart Bone Dial is specifically describing a Smart bone used as a UI element.
So...all Smart Bone Dials are Smart Bones, but not all Smart Bones are considered Smart Bone Dials.
Hope that clears things up.
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Re: Smart Action Vs Smart Bone Dial
Smart bones/dials only allow for interpolating between shapes that are actually animated from one to the other in the smart action. So it won't let you animated between the first and last without animating through all the others in between. If you don't need smooth animation between the poses, you can use step interpolation for the dial's rotation. This will switch between poses without animating through all the intervening poses.
But if you really need animation between each pose, you probably want to use regular actions (in this case single-frame poses) that you can just insert in the timeline and allow to animate to the next pose.
But if you really need animation between each pose, you probably want to use regular actions (in this case single-frame poses) that you can just insert in the timeline and allow to animate to the next pose.
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Re: Smart Action Vs Smart Bone Dial
Thanks for the explanation, its a bit clearer now.
I was trying to manipulate points through bones and then setup those bones with a smart bone dial to get various poses of the points (eye brow) readily available to animate. The idea was to get both ease and smooth interpolation, but i guess that's not possible yet and would have to animate by manipulating bones in main timeline.
Although while on this topic, could you also explain regular actions and morphs? As far as i know regular actions don't contain bones manipulation, but what are morphs?
I was trying to manipulate points through bones and then setup those bones with a smart bone dial to get various poses of the points (eye brow) readily available to animate. The idea was to get both ease and smooth interpolation, but i guess that's not possible yet and would have to animate by manipulating bones in main timeline.
Although while on this topic, could you also explain regular actions and morphs? As far as i know regular actions don't contain bones manipulation, but what are morphs?
Re: Smart Action Vs Smart Bone Dial
Regular actions can contain any kind of animation like bone animation, but this kind of actions are not automatically activated by a bone rotation like smart actions. Instead, you manually insert a copy or a reference of the action in the timeline using the action panel. A morph is any regular action that only contains one frame, so Moho lets you do some extra fancy things with it using the morph panel.
Re: Smart Action Vs Smart Bone Dial
Got it, will try accordingly. Thanks a lot for the info!