Moho Forum

With Moho 12, sometime if you go to the Bone Menu, and try make a smart bone dial from there, it translates the bone somewhere else.

I'm not seeing this. Do you have a file we can see? Where we can make the dial and see what happens?

Is the bone parented to another bone when you do this?

I used to run into this problem because I typically have all my 'dial' bones parented to a 'mover' bone but this setup doesn't work with the Make Smart Bone Dial command--it tends to throw the bone to some other location. I think it can get even messier if the 'mover' bone is also parented to the character (it's been awhile since I had this problem so I should check to confirm that.)

Anyway, to work around this problem, I just un-parent the bone before running the command, and then re-parent the bone when it's done. Make SBD should work fine then.

More often, I set up my SBD bones manually and avoid the problem altogether. (Actually, I have other reasons for setting up SBD bones manually but this is one of them.)

Thanks both of you. Green, thanks for clearing that up. That dial was a child to another bone that moves the rest of the controlled bones.

I did the latter option of making the smart dial myself. You've mentioned that you set up SBDs manually for reasons. Mind if I ask for some other ones?

I had to make a SBD using the 'Make' command right now to remind myself why I don't normally use it.

I guess the reasons are pretty minor and it depends on you're preferred workflow. When you use the command, by default it sets things up for -90/90, but I often like to use the default angles from the Bone Constraints panel or -70/70. I usually like the -70/70 setup because it makes it easier to move the bones closer together without overlapping them. So, for that alone, it's just quicker because I don't have to take the time to type in different values.

(That's just me though, and there are definitely times when I feel -90/90 makes more UI sense for certain setups. Or -180/180 or -360/0 for that matter. Hmm...I do wish I could turn these into presets. Or that the tool at least remembered my previously used settings.)

But it's mostly because normally when create a bone for a dial, I select the mover bone first and then create a child bone so it's already parented and positioned where I want it. If fact, I typically lay out all of my SBD bones and have them parented to a handle or mover bone before I start turning them into Smart Bone Dials. At this stage, if I use the 'Make' command, I end up fiddling with unparenting/reparenting and/or repositioning the bones, which is a hassle.

For me, it's easy enough to select the bone, click on the New Action button and move on. The button will grab the name from the selected bone and add the numeric identifier if necessary anyway, so no big time savings there. Also, I often wind up changing the 'Make' command's settings to something other than its default settings, so the Make Smart Bone Dial command isn't really saving me a lot of time there either.

I think the 'Make' command is generally a good idea and it's perfectly fine for some users (especially if they're not 100% certain about how to create a SBD) but, for me personally, it seems designed for a specific situation and workflow. If the tool allowed for custom presets or if it at least remembered the previously used settings (or even better, do both,) then I might use it more often.

Agreeing with Greenlaw, IMO it would make a lot of sense to have "Make SBD" use bone constraints, if set, as the default limits in the dialogue box.

I also tend to create SB dials manually - and I rarely split + and - actions. I like the bone for "smooth" actions to be
action frame 0 = design frame 0
action frame 1 = extreme (usually minimum) position
action frame 51 = mid / neutral position (= design frame 0) -- and I expressly key this even though with linear interp this is not strictly necessary
action frame 101 = other extreme (usually maximum) position

I don't like the 1-100 setup because 50 is not actually the midpoint -- and I'd be more comfortable with a different nomenclature for the action "timeline" because it's not, as such, a TIMEline: rather than "frame 1" I'd prefer to see "bone at (say) -70" and instead of frame 101 it would be "bone at +70" with a "bone at 0" in the middle!

and ... it's just occurred to me that an "action-wide" timeline marker would be useful!?