Moho Forum

Hello
Have upgraded to pro 10,smart bone dials brill!, one thing i have found, i made an eye ,then with smart dial had it closed frame one, fully open frame 100 ,when i annimated it kept jumping in timeline ,it wasn't smooth , i then found if you moved the end frame to about frame 48 on the smart bone dial layer,it worked perfecly! don't know if anyone else had same problem ,or is it just me! only had pro10 couple of days, very good !

For something as simple as an eye closing, you don't really need even 48 frames, you can do it in two and it will still interpolate based on the position of the smart bone, meaning it won't just snap shut. You really only need to have extra frames in the Action if it's something really complicated like a head turn or something, and even then you can still do it in two, the extra frames are to just help the complicated moves go smoother...

I really think that "dials" is a grossly misleading. There are no dials they are levers. Poser has dials and I was really excited to hear ASP had them now too only to find out it doesn't it still has the levers.

InfoCentral wrote:I really think that "dials" is a grossly misleading. There are no dials they are levers. Poser has dials and I was really excited to hear ASP had them now too only to find out it doesn't it still has the levers.

Just out of curiosity, why would dial be better than the levers Smart Bones uses?

Any bone can be a smart bone, just add actions by hand. Giving a name to the bone, zeroing out the bone strength, turning on the label for the bone, creating an action for the bone -- all has to be done by hand. And can be prone to error as can sometimes happen when doing things manually.

Smart bone dials, have its own action created with the length of frames established in the dialog, it has the bone strength set to none (or zero) and the label for the bone turned on.

Personally, I feel that all that's created by Smart Bone Dials automatically makes the name logical and descriptive. I can't think of a better name, so in my mind, there's no issue.

Lever...


Dials...

Well the controls in Poser don't do anything different to the controls in Anime Studio. You could have a series of SmartBones to control each finger etc. I don't really see why what you call them has any relevance at all?

InfoCentral wrote:Lever...
... snipped ...

Dials...
... snipped ...

This doesn't explain why they're any better... And it's not entirely accurate either. Typically a lever is only a switch, on or off, but Smart Bones are not lever, since there's interpolation between the two states. It acts exactly as a dial would. Sooo, why do you think a "dial" would be better than "Smart Bones"?

Smart bones the way they are used in Anime Studio, are "dials" that can be "rotated" to change values.
A dial can have multiple positions or values selected by rotation which is the primary use of smart bones.

A "lever" as already explained and by definition is a "toggle" and only has TWO positions; ON and OFF.

The name... eh... who cares. It describes exactly what it is and what it does. The only issue is that it "isn't round" like a dial. It still does what a dial does. The "dial" in poser doesn't look like a dial either. It's a rectangle. it's actually a slider not even a dial.

I think Animation Master had sliders. Poser has dials. I was watching the YouTube by SM for AS9 and starting about 10:45 he gets into what he refers to them as "control levers." Clearly in this tutorial SM refers to them as "levers" and not dials. I wonder why they changed their terminology from them being a more correct "control lever" to a "dial" from AS9 to AS10. I say misleading. And to say a lever just turns something on or off is not a "lever' but a "switch."

LEVER
A lever (/ˈlɛvər/ or UK /ˈliːvər/) is a machine consisting of a beam or rigid rod pivoted at a fixed hinge, or fulcrum.

Whatever they are called they do exactly the same as Poser or Animation:Master. Yet, according to you it's "grossly misleading". How? What don't they do that you expected them to do? Forget about the naming. Apparently you've been mislead.

This "complaint" is just... splitting hairs. It's making a mountain out of a mole hill. When they come up with a new feature they come up with a name for it. There was discussion during the v9 beta about what "Smart bones" should be called. I can't remember some of the original names but there were quite a few of them... I think Magic Beans From Heaven was my favorite but no one seemed to like it.

Every program that has similar "gizmos", like sliders, switches, dials, often have different names for whatever it is. It really doesn't matter what they are called as long as they indicate their function.

You are comparing Poser, Animation Master and Anime Studio, 3 completely different applications created by completely different people in different places at different times. You are trying to determine what something should be called based on what all of these other unrelated programmers did. All of these programmers and developers don't have quarterly meetings to determine what all the widgets should be called. It isn't like the W3C.

If they called Smart Bone Dials something like 3D Rabbit Dropping Scooper Widget® then... yes... that would be VERY misleading... oh wait! How about Spinning Levers of Terror? That one has both "spinning" like a dial and "levers". Or maybe... Revolving Selectors of Extreme Power

p.s. If I ever create an app I am definately going to have a 3D Rabbit Dropping Scooper Widget® feature.

If you want, you can always attach a circle to the bone so it looks like a 'dial'. Either way, it will still behave like a dial.

G.

I don't necessarily think that "smart bone levers" would be a better name than "smart bone dials" but I have to admit that as a guitar player, when I hear "dial" I can't help but think guitar amplifier knobs and the dials on audio software plugins, which are all, of course, round. Regardless, I'm loving ASP10 no matter they're called!

imagine the bone as the little line indicating the position of your round knob, rather than the knob itself.

Additionally, these are better than knobs in that they are actually infinite in either direction - i.e. you could have a smart action that is 100s of frames long that works over 3 clockwise rotations... it doesn't 'zero' at its starting position or stop there (unless you want it to act as your guitar knobs do, and therefore fix it with a min/max angle constraint)

Levers would have been a much less descriptive name.

I like 'infinicycleaction bones'