Moho Forum

I Have been trying to make this work for days, my problem is that when i create a set of bones into an arm and move the bones, the arm stays still and doesn't move, but the bones do.

Anyone knows what is going wrong?


Thanks Very much for your replies in advance!!!

my first confusion learning bones was not starting out
in frame 0, which is the set up frame.

otherwise, you will need to give more info for an
intelligent answer from this sagacious society!

Enlighten me, What more do you want me to elaborate on?
And yes i am doing the bone setup when its at frame zero.

Did you put the arm (vector) layer into the bones layer? If not: grab the vector layer of the arm, place it over the bone layer so it gets red, then release it. Now flexible binding should be in effect, at least.

Did you use any of the binding tools to tell the program which bone should control which part of the arm?

slowtiger wrote:Did you put the arm (vector) layer into the bones layer? If not: grab the vector layer of the arm, place it over the bone layer so it gets red, then release it. Now flexible binding should be in effect, at least.

Did you use any of the binding tools to tell the program which bone should control which part of the arm?

Yes I have placed the arm layer into the bones layer before creating any bone.
Can you please explain to me what do you mean by binding tools?
Hope that the problem is with the binding thing.

You should seriously work through part 3.1 of the tutorial.

The weirdest thing happened to me, and just
confused me to no end.
I rigged up a couple skeletons that worked quite
well and today for some reason I was rigging a
new character and I had the same problem Xiztance
is having. I know that with the trial version I had to
restart the program a couple of times and the problem
corrected itself but I tried that today and it didn't help.

I have reread all the pertinent information in the manual
a good many times and have done all the tutorials until
I could do them by myself but I still have a few problems
understanding the timeline and apparently rigging as well.

I have been reading this forum all day and have learned a
lot but I still wish there were more tutorials we could do.
I find that the people here are very helpful for the most
part but telling us "newbs" to keep going to the manual
for help sometimes isn't enough(although I have seen
on numerous occasions that it was very necessary).

I think my biggest problem is that I have used Flash for so
many years I keep expecting the timeline to act the same!

I do have a question now that I have rambled on and on...
on frame 0, where all my rigging and drawing takes place, should
I be "breaking apart" my character, putting the arm, legs etc at
a safe distance from each other so that when I put in the bones
they do not interfere with each other? and...is it ok to have vector
groups "folders" inside the bone"folders"? or should I only have
individual vectors inside the bone groups? Gosh I hope I am
making sens! This is the first time I have ever used a forum so
I hope I haven't said or done anything inappropriate.

Hi giselle!

Your questions are totally adequate. Don't worry.

...should I be "breaking apart" my character, putting the arm, legs etc at
a safe distance from each other so that when I put in the bones
they do not interfere with each other?

Yes and not. The default behaviour of bone system (the skeleton of a bone layer) is the "flexible binding" You can see it checked in the bone layer properties window in the Bone tab. Using flexible binding all the points of the child vector layers are affected by all the bones of the skeleton at the same time, depending on its strengh. Using this option you should do what you said, to avoid one bone to have influence over other points than the desired ones.
But on the other hand, with the region binding option, the points are affected only(*) by the bones that cover the point with its region influence (strength). If a point is under more than one bone region of influence then the points respond to the movement of all the bones that overlap on it and proportional to the distance to the centre of the region of influence. Even you can attach a point to a bone although its region of influence doesn't cover the point. You do it with the Bind Points tool. This technique virtually allow you control exactly what bone have influence over every point.

Last, but not least, points have three states. a) rigidly bound to a bone (only a bone have influence over it). use Bind Points tool. b) Flexible bound to all the bones at the same time (what ever it were the flexible or region option you set in the skeleton). Use Menu->Bone->Flexi-bind Points. c) and finally a point can be free (not bound to any bone). Use Menu->Bone->Release Points. Remember, those menu actions work over the points selection.

Have a look here for some examples:
viewtopic.php?t=7337

Also look into my signature and at my scripts post; there is an small set of utilities to know what points are free, flexi-bind or bound to a bone. Search for this section:
TOGGLE SELECTION OF POINTS BASED ON ITS BINDING VALUES

(*) If region binding option is set, then orphan points (not under any bone region of influence) are attached to the closest bone.

is it ok to have vector groups "folders" inside the bone"folders"? or should I only have individual vectors inside the bone groups?

You can put what ever you want into a Bone layer. Only remember that the skeleton will only affect to the first child level vector layers. Remember also that layers (of any kind) that are inside a bone layer can be bound to a bone (use Bind Layer tool and Flexi-bind layer and Release layer menu entries) as an entire solid object. In this way you can have a bone layer inside another bone layer and can be move by a single bone as a rigged solid.

I hope I have explained my self properly.
-G

Thank you so much Genete! I finally got around another hurdle thanks to you. I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around that (I blame Flash for brainwashing me ) It isn't that it is hard it's just a different way of using these tools.

thank goodness for this forum...I have been "living" in this forum these past few days, absorbing all the information I can. Such quick responses too, you're awesome guys