Weird Problem with Actions/Smart bones

[michaelramstead]

Hey,

So I am completely new to Moho/ Anime Studio.

I was working on rigging a character in Moho Pro 12. The character I'm trying to rig is made from different images as opposed to vector art created in Moho. Some parts of the images are being warped by Smart Warp meshes. The character has all his bones, and the bones are bound to different parts of the Smart Meshes on the images that make him up. All of this has gone pretty smoothly.

I'm now trying to add Actions to fix up the distortion created in the images from bending bones certain ways. I've had some success doing this on the legs in a previous file, but I've run into something buggy and weird and I'm not sure where I'm going wrong. Basically, when I click on the forearm bone for instance, then click to make a new action, everything immediately gets all jumbled up. The bones are all in random places, some of them are distorting parts of the image. When I go further into the timeline. they are even more messed up, as if animation keyframes were added automatically.

The file I'm working on had some Actions in it, but I deleted them just by clicking on the action, then the trashcan. I wanted to start fresh, so this forearm bone Action I'm talking about would be the first action in this file. (I say this just in case these previous actions could still be affecting things. Like i said, I'm all new)

Before making the action, I tested the bones by going into the timeline, everything seems to be bound correctly. Hope you can help me out and let me know what I'm missing. I can send you the file if need be. Thanks so much!

[michaelramstead]

Update: After messing around with it some more I've noticed that the entire bone structure flips upside down when trying to make the new Action.
The distortion I'm seeing in the image might be a result of target bones on the characters feet.

I double checked and the parenting and the rig all work fine.

[michaelramstead]

UPDATE: Images of the problem. (Sorry I don't know how to format/ scale them. please click "open image in new tab" for full view.)

Forearm Bone selected:

Making New Action:

Problem:

Moving down the new Action's timeline:


Skeleton Before making a new action:


Skeleton After making a new action:

[synthsin75]

Your targets look weird, like there are also pin bones there. I'd have to see a file with just the bone layer to troubleshoot it.

[michaelramstead]

Link to file https://drive.google.com/file/d/19btX5w ... sp=sharing

[synthsin75]

No idea how it may have happened, but here's how to fix it:
1. In the play controls (below the workspace), go to frame 999999 (six 9s).
2. With the top layer selected, use the menu command Animation>Set Layer Start Time
3. In the play controls, hit the Previous Keyframe button to get to keyframes on frame 23 (these were hiding in the negative timeline).
4. Delete these frame 23 keyframes.
5. Go to frame 1 and use Animation>Set Layer Start Time

You can now edit and make actions without the problem you were having.
Since those bone channels were showing but the Next Keyframe button didn't show anything on the positive timeline, I knew there was probably something hiding in the negative timeline. Just a matter of finding out how far into the negative timeline it was.

[michaelramstead]

This did it! Thanks so much!

[synthsin75]

Glad I could help. That was something the average user would have never solved.