Mouth Switch and Bone Dial

[BrianLucas]

Hi guys,
I want to have an action with a bone dial to control mouth switch layer. This is that if I have 4 frame from L to U and there are, let's say, M and TH between them, they also appear. I would like to have the Bone Dial to control each phoneme jumping and skipping the ones that are in between. Is there a way to do this?
Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks
Brian

[Greenlaw]

You mean controlling the mouth shapes in the Switch layer non-linearly? Yes, that's possible!

The trick is to set the interpolation mode for the Smart Bone Dial (SBD) to Step. This will hold the drawing until the next keyframe, which can be any other drawing in the Switch layer. To do this, r-click on the SBD's keyframe and select Step.

What I like to do when I set up any Smart Bone Action is the set a keyframe at frame 1 and set that key and the following keys to Linear. Then on frame zero I set that key's interpolation mode to what I want to use on the Mainline. Usually that's going to be Smooth but in this situation I would set it to Step. Naturally, you want to use Copy Previous Key for the Default Interpolation so you don't have to keep changing modes while animating. (This option makes Moho's timeline keyframing behave similar to how keyframing works in After Effects.)

That said, for something like this (controlling mouth shapes,) I suggest using the Switch Selection Window instead of an SBD. Using the Switch Selection Window is easier to set up and animate with. Also, if you want to use Interpolate Sub-Layers, you definitely want to use this the Switch Selection Window and not an SBD.

Hope this helps.

[BrianLucas]

Thank you so much, D.R. Greenlaw... I really appreciate your taking the time to answer me.