Moho Animation Forum

Hi there. I have a bitmap rig, with a smart action for a head rotation. There is a set of eyes (half closed, closed up/down etc.) for each view (side, 3/4, front). In the smart action I set the switch on/off to show the correct eyes that match the current head view. Now in mainline when I use the smart action to pose the head, it won't let me switch eyes because they already have keyframes set in the action. This is also an issue for the mouth shapes. I can't change them because there is a keyframe on the switch layer inside the head rotation action. After googling it, it seems this is Moho's correct/expected behavior.

Sure I can go in my smart action and delete any keyframes on the eyes and mouth switches and now I can turn them off fine, but then it means I have to manually set the correct eyes and mouth each time I use my head rotation smart action to change the head view. It's not time-effective and defeats the purpose of having a head rotation smart action in the first place. In Toonboom Harmony, you can change the image of the eyes at any time, even when using a master controller (Harmony's version of a smart action). It seems very inconvenient that you can't overrule layer switches in smart actions while on mainline.

Is there a workaround for this? Or am I doing this the wrong way?

You have to decide what you want. A smart action (with a controlling smart bone) takes over, no matter what. You'll only have keyframes in the main timeline channel of the controlling smart bone, these you can set freely.

But you don't have to make every action "smart" (that is, link a controlling bone to it). Eye blinks are a perfect example for that: it's only 1 channel/layer, and whenever you need it you use the buttons in the Actions panel to insert a copy of that action. In teh remaining timeline you can set keyframes freely as usual.

The eye blinks, or mouth shapes, are not controlled by a bone, they're only controlled by a switch layer that turns the images on/off. But that switch layer is controlled by a smart bone.

If I can't use a switch layer in a smart bone no matter what, then is manually changing the eyes or mouth shapes to fit the view of the head the only thing I can do? I'm not sure what you mean by make a copy of the action. The copy will still be unable to use image substitution.

- Smart bone layer
- - angle switch layer
- - - blink switch layer
- - - lip sync switch layer

As long as you have no switch keyframes on the blink or lip sync switches in your angle smart bone action, you should be able to manually animate those switches.