Can't edit smart bone actions at random times?

[jase]

Hello Moho Gurus!

So, I'm somewhat new to Moho and I am either experiencing rookie confusion, or a bit of odd behavior. Was wondering if anyone might know what I'm doing wrong?

Here's the scenario:

In Moho 13.5 Pro on Mac, I have a happy little fully rigged character. It's all pretty vanilla ordinary stuff. No funky scripts. 75% the way through my job I suddenly can't edit smart bone actions for no apparent reason...to me, at least.

The behavior I see:

• I create a new bone.

• I use Bone/Make Smart Bone Dial to create 2 separate actions (one for negative range. One for positive)

• I double click into one of these 2 new actions

• Timeline turns blue. Perfect.

• I select any layer in the layers pallet to begin keyframing the action

• This instantly ejects me from the blue timeline and I'm dumped back on the main timeline view.

• From this point forward, if I enter any smart action timeline, then attempt to select any layer.......I'm dumped back to the main timeline.

Usually, I'm able to create six or seven smart actions, always using the same method, then suddenly one seems to glitch out. This has happened on 3 completely different projects with totally different rigs and I can't seem to crack the riddle. When I create a brand new file and recreate the same action with the same layers copy-pasted into a new file, I do not have the problem. In the new test file, I'm able to double click into the smart actions and keyframe as expected.

Am I doing something hilarious? Is there a magic spell or pagan ritual I should learn?

Thanks in advance for any clues!
j

[synthsin75]

I select any layer in the layers pallet to begin keyframing the action

There's your problem right there.

Actions only work within a single group hierarchy. So any layer that isn't nested within the group (in the case of smart bone actions, the bone layer) will eject you from the action, since it can't reach/influence that layer.

To select "any layer," you'd need a group layer for the whole project, and create all your actions there.

[jase]

Wes! That cracked the riddle! Thanks so much.

I do actually have a group containing the entire rig, and am creating smart actions on that group. However, most of my art is contained in sub-groups inside that main group. Like, my head group contains nose, snoot, eyes, etc.

I guess I'm confused about the workflow then. How do folks stay organized?

To me, it seemed natural to group the face components, group the leg-foot-chain, group the torso.....but that's doesn't seem to work for twelve reasons. HA! For a complex char rig with lots of parts, do people just dump a hundred layers into a single stack and group them in a single bone group with 60 bones?

I felt like it made a lot of sense to, for example, have a complex arm bone rig with all its own actions in a bone group, and then have that group housed in a parent bone group "Skelton". For example: a robot arm with multiple switches for all kinds of robot arm accessories, and smart actions for correcting paths for the varying sizes and shapes of the accessories. However crazy it might get in that arm rig, ultimately it's the shoulder pin that binds it to the larger skeleton. So, I went ahead and used layer binding to link the child group to the shoulder pin in the parent skeleton.

Perfect. Unless you want to use smart actions on the main skeleton to alter art that lives inside any of the child bone groups?

Do people end up doing psycho smart bone dials that control multiple other smart bone dials?!

Cheers & Thanks again.

[SuperSGL]

You can have separate groups (sub groups) for bones as long as they are in the main group. Check out Poptoogi character in your Library it comes with Moho. You can see how it's put together.

[Greenlaw]

Do people end up doing psycho smart bone dials that control multiple other smart bone dials?!

It's not uncommon to have a few Smart Bone Dials (SBD) that do that. Here's a basic example: I often have an SBD to close one eye (winkL) and and another one to close the other eye (winkR), and a third SBD that controls the first two simultaneously (blink). Then there may be a variant on top of all three dials so that turning any of them in the opposite direction closes the eyes in a 'sleepy-eye' pose vs the usual 'smiley-eye' pose.

When using Smart Bone Dials to control Smart Bones Dials nested in another bone layers, there are a few technical issues to consider. This was discussed in a recent thread (probably the one with the Nachos example I posted.) For the most part, I avoid nesting bone layers but I'll do this 'remote control' setup if it means I can keep all my animation keys in the primary bone layer.