Moho Animation Forum

That's exactly the way switch layers work: no matter how many layers you put inside a switch layer, it will only show one at a time.

Right, but I'm saying, is there a way to take this whole animation (It's 12 frames; I may cut it down) and put it in the timeline at a given spot without having to tediously assign each sublayer to a frame every time you use the animation? Kind of like an action or a cycle?

uhm, you know that you can copy&paste a range of keyframes?

And a range of switch layer interpolations can be switched through actions, so you can put such a sequence anywhere in your animation once you've created the action. In fact, this is the superior method to include frame-by-frame cycles in your Anime Studio project, because you can so easily edit actions on the Timeline.

Ok, thanks.

Yes, I know you can copy and paste multiple keys, I just didn't realize you could copy and paste that assignment of the various sublayers of the switch layer.

Ok, I was going to make a QT movie of the animation to show you all, but it keeps crashing when I try to export. It'll start creating the animation, and then stop, and then I get an error message. What's all that about?

I'm on one of the new intel Imacs, running Leopard.

Try to do the same with the Batch Export.

basshole wrote:Ok, I was going to make a QT movie of the animation to show you all, but it keeps crashing when I try to export. It'll start creating the animation, and then stop, and then I get an error message. What's all that about?

I'm on one of the new intel Imacs, running Leopard.

Have you installed the bugfix for Mac OS X?

That does not sound familiar, so I"ll say no.

Then, please, install the appropriate application. It's not a full installer, just the "Anime Studio.app" or "Anime Studio Pro.app" application bundle (the program you double click to start Anime Studio).

Thanks. I just did; I'll hopefully upload something in a few minutes.

Ok, this link SHOULD work.

http://joshbass.com/Site/Home_Page_file ... -39-40.mov

Just imagine a fireball flying toward you once the hands are thrust out, and that's the idea.

I know it's not perfect, but I think it's pretty darn good.

I may take some of those frames of animation out, since this movement should be quicker, more violent, and right now it takes half a second.

Only the arms/hands are the hand drawn animation, the rest is part of the regular character with bones and everything.

I know there's something wrong with left arm, the way it's in front of his pec/chest at the first frame, in an unrealistic way, but for some reason my left pec layer is not changing, even when I animate the layer order with keyframes. For some reason, when I click on that left pec layer, my timeline is pink. What does that mean?

basshole wrote:...my timeline is pink. What does that mean?

It means that the layer is invisible. Somehow you have put a keyframe on the Visibiity Layer (eye icon). Delete that keyframe and the layer should become visible again...

Ah! I knew it was something I'd read about before, just couldn't remember where or what it meant.

Here's another query:

Ok, so, in that handdrawn animation, every sublayer is assigned to a keyframe, and furthermore, was drawn on that keyframe (layer 5 was drawn on frame 5 of the animation), not on frame 0. So if I "clear animation from document" all that work goes to crap. I thought perhaps copying the point keyframe at each respective frame (copying the "point motion" and "selected point motion" keyframes for layer 1 on frame 1, for example) to frame 0 and pasting it would set things right, make the layers "permanent", but I was wrong.

I guess I don't quite understand how to be able to be able to clear the animation from the document and still keep everything intact so it can be used again.

I hope I understand your question correctly.

In AS you can't draw a layer only on the frame. All layers start at frame 0. Each frame is a "snapshot" of time of that layer, a change of position of the points from frame 0. You can't draw a layer only on frame 5... if you do it still exists on frame 0.

What you described would be the same if you drew each frame on a new layer all on frame 0 and then used layer visibility to flip through each drawing. Or if you put a bunch of layers inside a switch layer and animated that way (easier by far).

Clearing the animation wouldn't destroy the drawing but it would clear the visibility of each layer and/or the switch layer keys.

If you have one layer and change point position on later frames to create motion and then clear the animation... yes.... you lose the animation... so don't do that.

I would venture to say that most of us using AS animate one vector layer over time. We draw on frame 0 and then change point motion on frames. Most of us do not draw unique layers for each frame.

You can put that point motion in an action to be reused.

If I got this wrong... please elaborate.

-vern