I've been thinking about this all morning before I saw these latest posts. Stream of consciousness: START "I wonder if Vern ever got that script for Styles running?" "Maybe I should ask." "But I don't want to be pushy. It's like begging for a handout." "But maybe, ...

I have an H2 I've hardly ever used. I'd be glad to see it go to a good animator home if anyone wants to make me an offer.

For an audience to engage with a character requires three things: Desire, Effort, and Result. What does the character want? Give your character a specific desire the instant we meet him. Doesn't need to be to save the world -- simply something that makes the audience wonder if he will get it. Effort...

More Ideas coming at ya! - Add the ability to create custom shape patch layers. In other words, Animators should be able to draw a shape and then convert that specific shape into a patch layer. You can create a custom shape on a vector layer that acts like a patch, but I'm not sure what other speci...

On the rig, for me, the jury is still out on mouth shape bones. I don't know how they affect .DAT files, but I believe they cause you to lose the ability to animate on the timeline. And there's no intuitive relationship to me between the angle of a bone and a mouth shape. Plus, now that you can chan...

Got it. Thanks.

Hammerjammer, I just looked at your character. I'll offer you a couple of comments, with the caveat that what I'm telling you could easily be worthless. On the mouth shapes, the upper teeth should always be in the same position. You can move your lower teeth, but you can't move your upper teeth rela...

Do you have any examples of your work to show off? I might need an extra set of hands some day.

HeyVern, I can't help you write this script, but I'd be glad to help you test it.

You're saying "lazy" like it's a bad thing.

Where I find this useful is, I import a complicated mouth switch layer into new characters and bind it to the head. This lets me control the children of that switch layer from TopBone which is awesome.

...i think... I believe you are correct. So I have written myself a general rule, and rather than say what can't be done, I have expressed it in terms of how it must be done: If the TopBone layer contains a Sub-Bone/Switch layer which is bound, in order to control the children of Sub-Bone/Switch fr...

funksmaname wrote:Bound layers break the access to lower nested layers.

Are you sure about that? I thought you were the one who convinced me otherwise.

selgin wrote:Nested layer control doesn't work over bound layers, either Smart bones.

I'm not quite sure what that means, but tried to use an SB to control vector layers in a bound switch layer and it didn't work ... while I was in frame 0. As soon as I moved to frame 1, it worked fine.

I think Heyvern had written a script to control switch layers with a bone, and I had to abandon it for that same reason. I have lessened desire to control a switch layer with an SB since you can now Ctrl-Alt-rightclick on a switch in the main window and set a key from there ... however, I have now e...

3deeguy wrote:Is there a way to use a switch layer with a smartbone?

First, it's interesting to know a Switch layer IS a bone layer. You can add bones directly to it. Second, a feature of 9.5 is the ability of smartbones to control switch layers (pg 79 of the 9.5 Manual).