Channels "not referenced" and "referenced"?

Wondering how to accomplish a certain animation task? Ask here.

Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger

Post Reply
Cramp_Chump
Posts: 19
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 12:52 pm

Channels "not referenced" and "referenced"?

Post by Cramp_Chump »

How should I understand "not referenced" and "referenced" in channels panel within my referenced rig? And what does it mean when I syncing channel to original? Thanks!
User avatar
Greenlaw
Posts: 9192
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: Channels "not referenced" and "referenced"?

Post by Greenlaw »

Coincidentally, I was asking the same questions last week. I think 'not referenced' means that channel has a keyframe that doesn't exist in the original.

That's generally normal except I think there's a bug in Moho that can create unwanted keyframes because sometimes when I import a rig with reference, I'll suddenly see keyframes in multiple channels that don't have keyframes in the original rig scene. Some bones, for example, may have the Motor channel enabled even if I'm not using Bone Physics in either the original or reference.

I'm not sure there's anything you can currently do to fully avoid this but Syntsin75 gave me a few pointers about how to correct it.

To get rid of the 'not referenced' state, right-click on the channel and select Sync With Original. This will do exactly that. Naturally, you want to do this before you start animating the rig, but if it's a channel you're not using anyway (like 'Motor' in my case,) then it won't matter. That's bad enough but the super annoying thing is that you may have to repeat this for many elements throughout the rig. TBH, at work, we're just kinda ignoring this problem for now--it may generate a lot of unneeded screen clutter but it doesn't appear to harm the scene either.

I hope the developers can give this feature another pass in a future release because Rig References have otherwise become incredibly useful at my workplace.
User avatar
Greenlaw
Posts: 9192
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: Channels "not referenced" and "referenced"?

Post by Greenlaw »

I'm noticing those 'not referenced' channels today even with Reference Layers (as opposed to Reference Rigs, where I first noticed them.) It's probably always happened but I was just too busy to pay attention to it before now.

I synced the channels to make them go away but, yeah, this shouldn't be happening at all. I haven't tested for it yet but I think this is a random occurence.
Cramp_Chump
Posts: 19
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 12:52 pm

Re: Channels "not referenced" and "referenced"?

Post by Cramp_Chump »

Thanks for the tips, Greenlaw! Yea, I also noticed about strange keys that may appear in referenced rig and may not. Also my working practice with referencing from server master rig shows that sometimes (that moment may happen or may not) reference rig brake down and don't want to work like master file. I have no idea what dependence in this strange accidents. :|
User avatar
Greenlaw
Posts: 9192
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: Channels "not referenced" and "referenced"?

Post by Greenlaw »

Yeah, it's pretty random. I was experimenting with this late Friday. When it happens, I immediately un-did the layer reference and tried again. Then, it might not happen, and sometimes it may happen again but with different 'not referenced' channels appearing.
User avatar
Greenlaw
Posts: 9192
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: Channels "not referenced" and "referenced"?

Post by Greenlaw »

Quick followup. This is somewhat related:

Today we had a character that had changes made in the point animation for a set of foot actions that would not update in the target scenes. After a lot of fiddling, I finally just went through all the foot vector layers and made sure to copy the frame 0 keys to to frame 1 for every foot action. After that, the target scenes all received the new foot animation actions as intended.

So it appears that keyframing frame 1 is critical for Actions to update in referenced rigs.

Not saying this is a bug or anything, just stating something to be aware of when using reference rigs.
Post Reply