Resizing my character

[Jkoseattle]

I created a character and rigged it some, and it looks ok. But now it's too big. I am trying to resize the entire character. Here's what I'm doing:

1. Go to Frame 0
2. Highlight the top (bone) layer for the character
3. Select the Transform Layer tool. The whole character gets selected
4. Try to smallify the character by dragging the selection from the red corner handle. Nothing appears to happen. However, keyframes appear on the timeline, at frame 0 and at frame 36, which is where the first animation event I created takes place.
5. Play back. Now the character starts at the small size I actually did set, though couldn't see, and the character grows to its original size by frame 36.

If I create a new project and create a quick bone layer with several vector layers in it, I don't have this problem. What's going on?

[synthsin75]

Sounds like you've moved the layer on the sequencer.

[Greenlaw]

Put the rig in a group layer and resize the group. (If you're using Debut, put it in another Bone Group and resize that.)

I prefer to resize the group so the scale of everything inside stays relatively unchanged. This makes it easier to add and replace artwork since the scale of the items inside the group remain at 100%. To be clear, it's possible to scale the bone group with the bones, I just don't recommend it.

Having the parent group also allows you to do some secondary squash and stretch and other special transofrmations on the character, very useful if you re-position the origin for that group appropriately.

[Jkoseattle]

Oh, simple as that, that works. So, to understand, if a layer has bones in it, I can't (or shouldn't?) transform that layer, so I should put it in an uber layer for the sake of transforming it? Weird.

[Greenlaw]

Just read Wes' post. Oh, yeah, there's that.

Which reminds me, I wish it was possible to see the keyframes before zero--there are a number of times when I wanted to offset reference layers to a frame before zero but I can't tell by how many frames I'm off-setting because that part of the timeline is always hidden from the user. Or if I want to pre-roll dynamics or particles. I understand that it's hidden because this is supposed to somehow help beginners but this feature has always been frustrating to me.

Guess I should put in a request for that.

[Jkoseattle]

I think my confusion came from the fact that in Debut bone layers do double duty as group layers. It would be more immediately logical to me if I could have group layers. Group layers don't seem nearly "advanced" enough to not give them to Debut users. It means if I do a bunch of work in Debut then upgrade at some point, all by bone-layers-that-are-really-group-layers still appear as bone layers. Grrr...

[Greenlaw]

Oh, simple as that, that works. So, to understand, if a layer has bones in it, I can't (or shouldn't?) transform that layer, so I should put it in an uber layer for the sake of transforming it? Weird.

It's no weirder than parenting a rig to a null or locator and transforming/animating that in a 3D program. Depending on how you set up your hierarchy, this can make it easier to animate and edit certain types of motions and deformations. Moho doesn't really have an equivalent for a null but you can use groups this way. (You might think you could do that by scaling a root bone but it doesn't work that way with bones.)

Anyway, these are just little things I do to keep rigs easier to manage and animate. Depending on what you're animating, it may or may not be appropriate for your workflow. Feel free to experiment.

[Greenlaw]

BTW, using a secondary bone layer as a pseudo-group layer is functionally the same thing.

If it's confusing, try naming the bone layer as a 'group'. (i.e., 'Rabbit Group', 'Baby Group', etc..) I do this in even in Pro with actual group layers to help me identify the groups and distinguish them form bone layers more quickly. Color coding may help too.