Mixing and overlapping actions

[Kululu17]

I've tried to follow the tutorial on using actions but with my own models. My actions work fine on their own, and will work sequentially on the main line, but when I try to overlap, they end up overwriting, not overlapping (the second action completely overwrites the first one starting at the point on the timeline at which it first appears). Both actions that I am mixing have the same types of motion (manipulating bones + some moving of nodes), but they are being applied to different parts of my rig (one is upper body, one is lower body). The tutorial had the rig already set up - is there something special you need to do when creating actions to allow them to be used together? Anything else you need to do to combine actions?

Thanks!

[Greenlaw]

You need to be more specific and show some examples. For example, do you mean Smart Bone Actions, Morph Actions or Regular Actions? How are you 'mixing' the Actions? What tutorial video are you watching? At what point in the video are you having difficulty? Etc.,

I'll assume you're asking about mixing Smart Bone Actions, but you'll need to show some examples. Mixing Smart Bone Actions is mostly straightforward so long as the actions don't conflict. For example, if you have a Smart Bone Dial that moves points along X and and another for Y, there is no conflict and all is fine, but if each SBD is moving points using both axis, some weirdness may occur when the Actions 'fight' for control over the points. I typically see this when I have an SBD for seamless head turning and another one for head nodding.

I can usually work around this by animating layer or bone transforms with one SBD and point transforms with another.

But sometimes I really need to have two SBDs animate points in potentially conflicting animations. That's when I turn to Mult Rush's excellent technique demonstrated in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im56Oxq1oNQ

He even has a very useful (and free!) script that automates part of the setup shown here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0RJEjA21f8

Hope this helps. If this isn't what you're talking about, you'll need to post more info.

[synthsin75]

If the smart bone actions are effecting different parts, you just need to make sure that only those parts/points/bones are animated in the action.

[Kululu17]

Hi - sorry for lack of specificity.

The tutorial I was referring to was just the one in the manual, page 204.

And it was just regular actions.

Basically I have an action that effect the lower body, like walking as an action, and one action the effects the upper body - some breathing, head nodding and hair fluttering. Both actions are fine on their own, and work fine on the mainline in sequence, but if I overlap them, the first action is cut-off.

I have a rigged character with a bone layer, and under it, a bunch of layers with torso, arms, head, etc. I am using layer binding for just about everything. The rig seems to work fine, when I manipulate bones, and the individual action work fine too (they are a combination of bone manipulations, with a few point manipulations of layers (like the fluttering hair)

PS - 11.2 pro if that makes a difference

[Greenlaw]

Ok, that's totally different then.

Regular Actions are basically keyframe presets. When you Insert a Regular Action, it applies whatever keyframes you have in the Action to the same items on the Mainline.

Just a guess but is it possible that you've keyframed more bones in your rig for each Action than intended? You should only keyframe the bones that are animated for each action. For example, Regular Actions for the arm (like waving,) should only have keyframes for the arm; Regular Actions for the legs (like walking or squatting,) should only have keyframes for the legs.

If you have keyframes on other bones in those action, they will also get applied, and you may wind up over-writing existing keys on those bones.

Tip 1: Sometimes it's easier to insert a Regular Action later in time than you want, and then move the keys to where you want them. This may make it easier to see the new keyframes apart from previously existing ones.

Tip 2: If you're just starting out with Moho, be sure to save your scene before inserting keys. If you're not sure what you're doing, it can be really easy to mess up your animation. If you save, it will be easier to reload from just before you messed up.

[Kululu17]

OK, thanks, I'll look at that. One of the tutorials said something about using "freeze pose" at every keyframe - does that affect all the bones? Otherwise, I seem to recall a pop-up when I inserted certain keyframes that said something about sublayers.

... hehe, and I learned after about 10 minutes with AS that you keep saving, and change the save name after every major operation

[Greenlaw]

Freeze pose will keyframe every bone in your rig. It's a quick way to lock the key pose of your rig but it does potentially create a lot of unnecessary keyframes. I use it when I'm in a hurry and not too concerned about having a lot of extra keyframes in my scene.

Obviously, this is not what you want to use inside an Action if you intended to keyframe only part of your rig. If this is what you've been doing, that's probably why inserting a Regular Action isn't working the way you expect. Normally you would select the bones you wish to keyframe and then use the Freeze Selected Bones command instead. (Use the hotkey, it's faster than selecting the menu command.)

Hope this helps.

[Kululu17]

Awesome, thanks! The tutorial seemed helpful, but said you needed to freeze keyframes "to avoid problems" and wasn't more specific. Now that I know what it actually does, I know when and when not to employ it.

[Greenlaw]

Yeah, the user manual and tutorials can be a little vague about certain features. Some recent features aren't even mentioned, and some of the instructions are arguably dated considering there are now better ways to do certain things in Moho. For example, the character setup described in the user tutorial using Offset Bone tool: while this is still a valid technique, I don't think anybody actually rigs this way in Moho anymore because newer features make it unnecessary to 'break apart' a character. The publisher should probably overhaul the training material in upcoming releases.

That said, it's definitely worth going through that all the material just so you know where everything is when you need it. Just be aware that there are many different ways to do things with Moho, and some of what's in the tutorials was written for older versions of the program.

I believe the official online video tutorials are probably more recent, so be sure to check them out.

Good luck and remember to have fun!