Making a dial for switch layers

[Hans Rickheit]

I''m still learning the program....

Could somebody tell me which tutorial video gave instructions on how to make a "Dial" Bone for use with Switch Layers? I just need to learn the necessary steps to make it work.

[Hans Rickheit]

Or better yet, could somebody provide me instructions or point me to where I can learn how to do this?

I'm trying to animate mouth movements made from scanned drawings I made . No speech involved in this piece of animation - just grimacing and gnashing of teeth...

[hayasidist]

do you _need_ a smart bone for this?? from what you've written you just want switching between image layers!? in which case why go through the overhead of a SB - just use the switch tool to select the active child!

But if you want switching plus some other action linked to the SB that's a different question with a different solution from that for using a SB _just_ to select an active child.

[Hans Rickheit]

I understand a smart bone is not NEEDED for this. Yes, I could just switch between the image layers during animation, and most likely WILL do that....

I had (perhaps) the misapprehension that you could use a smart bone in order to use the switch layers. I just wanted to know the steps to do this, if possible.

[hayasidist]

yes you CAN do this... so, for switch layer only:

create the switch layer with its children.
in the SWITCH layer: add a bone
keep that bone selected and in bone the menu: "Make smart bone dial". I'm assuming that you've got around 10-12 drawings rather than 100 so ...
in the popup that appears: minimum angle 0; maximum angle 180; duration 100
pick a convenient interval - say 6 frames - so that you can fit all the child layers into the 180 degrees / 100 frames and then...
in the Action window that will be open, make sure the Bone action is active ...
on frame 0 select the top (or bottom) child in the switch layer ...
and step along the action timeline in your chosen interval selecting successive child layers AND adding a keyframe at each switch point as you go

then, in the (red) bone rotation channel, select all of the keys and set interp mode to "step".


now go to mainline

rotating the SB by "the correct angle" will activate the relevant child layer.

Note, however, that if you rotate from 0 to 180 over "several" frames each child will be selected in turn.

So select "step" interpolation in the active bone channel in mainline.

It is possible to draw an actual dial around the smartbone and annotate it with info about the child layer being selected... See: http://www.kelleytown.com/forum/animato ... IC_ID=1640

====
or you could just use the child select tool.....

[Hans Rickheit]

Thank you very much.

This is very helpful. I know it was covered in one of the Video Tutorials, but was having a dickens of a time locating it... Perhaps Anime Studio could create a short video just for that topic?