Moho Forum

I have a problem with the manipulate bones tool. I construct a very simple animation consisting of two image layers within a bone layer. Then I add two bones, making the first bone the parent of the second, and bind each bone to a different layer. Then I reduce the bone influence to zero on both bones. At frame zero I can manipulate the bones with the manipulate bone tool fine. The layers move with the bones and if I rotate the parent bone it rotates the bound layer and the child bone and layer move as well. Of course as soon as I do something else all the bones snap back to their original position. So far so good.

However, if I then move to a later frame (say frame 10) and try to manipulate the bones I can still manipulate the child bone, which rotates around quite happily and will drag the parent around as it moves, but if I try to manipulate the parent bone then it refuses to rotate at all. Instead it seems to be dragged around the screen. i.e. the coordinates of the bone change, but not the rotation. Try as I might I cannot rotate the parent.

This is odd because the manual states "To manipulate a skeleton, just click and drag the various bones that make it up. If points or other layers have been bound to the bones, they will move as well. The way the skeleton and the bound points move with this tool is exactly the same whether at frame 0 or a later frame."

So has anyone any idea why it behaves like this and if there is a workaround? Is it designed to work like this?

I need to be able to do this so I can rotate an entire skeleton by rotating the "root" bone (the parent, or grandparent, or great-grandparent etc. of all bones in the skeleton).

I am using Anime Studio Pro 10, version 10.1.1.

Any help appreciated.

Oops. Look like I posted twice by mistake. I clicked "submit" and nothing happened, so I did it again.

Anyway, I just realised that I can rotate the "root" bone at some non-zero frame by holding down Alt whilst I manipulate the bone. Still don't know why this is different from frame 0 though. Any thoughts?

Difference between frames 0 and 1 (and following):
Any manipulation done to a bone in frame 0 affects its relative position to the artwork (vectors and images).
Manipulation done after frame 1 move the artwork with the bone.

If you can't rotate the root bone in animation there must be a mistake. Did you by accident set any constraints? Enabled physics?

Thanks for the help.

No I haven't set any constraints or enabled physics. In fact I started a test project from scratch just to test out what was happening. I don't think it can be a constraint problem because the root bone will rotate, but you either need to press Alt when rotating it, or move a child bone so that it drags it around. If you just try and drag the bone around its pivot point it simply gets dragged around the screen but does not rotate, which is not the way it behaves on frame 0. In any case I would have thought constraints would apply to frame 0 as well, so I'm a little bit stumped.

Are you using the Manipulate Bones tool and not the Rotate Bones tool?

Definitely the manipulate bones tool:

http://tinypic.com/r/2yulisz/8

http://tinypic.com/r/voooj6/8

(Not sure if the above images are going to display correctly).

Richard Ellingworth wrote:Anyway, I just realised that I can rotate the "root" bone at some non-zero frame by holding down Alt whilst I manipulate the bone. Still don't know why this is different from frame 0 though. Any thoughts?

The root bone is more typically translated during animation, so it works different while animating so you don't have to change tools so much. Just use the modifier (like you've found) or the the transform bone tool if you need to rotate the root bone.

Thanks synthsin75. That makes sense. Glad to know it was designed that way and it's not just me losing my marbles.

I have the same problem.
And I am really not new to AS, I am used to work with bones.
But here, in AS11, when I draw a bone, I can't rotate it. Neither in frame zero, nor farther in the timeline. The manipulate bone toole will do nothing but move the whole layer. I am pretty helpless here Has anything changed in AS 11, A thing I might consider?


Thanks for the help

Diana Kennedy wrote:But here, in AS11, when I draw a bone, I can't rotate it. Neither in frame zero, nor farther in the timeline. The manipulate bone toole will do nothing but move the whole layer. I am pretty helpless here Has anything changed in AS 11, A thing I might consider?

That behavior changed in version 11 to make the Manipulate bones smarter when using target bones.
Anyway, if you press Alt in the keyboard, you will be able to rotate that bone. All that information can be read in the status bar, so if you have any doubt with any other tool, start looking at that bar

Thank you a lot Victor ! That did the job.
Okay, I really should go trough the entire learning programm of AS11

Hm..? still got an isssue. The above hint works when there are TWO bones. It is not by any means possible to move a bone if it happens to be the only one. This would be needed, for example to move a wheel. But no way.

Holding alt with the manipulate bone tool rotates a single bone on frames other than zero here. Holding alt with the transform bone tool will always translate.

Ok, will try out! Thank you very much!