moving an "eye mover" joystick bone with the rest of the rig

[dondo]

So the technique described in this video for moving eyes seems really useful (in summary, use two bones to handle the horizontal and vertical translation, and then introduce a third pin-bone as target to move those two, making basically a "joystick" for moving the eyes):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Ay6hfVxas

This is really useful until my characters need to move; I can't figure out how to have the pinbone move with the rig. If I parent the joystick to the main target bone (like the rest of the controllers), I can't move it at all. If I don't, it gets left behind when the character moves.

Is there any way to do this? Or should I abandon the joystick and go back to more traditional L/R and U/D controllers?

[synthsin75]

If you post a link to a file, we can see what's wrong with the setup.

[dondo]

I'm... uh, wow, I just realized I'm honestly nervous about you guys seeing my work! I feel a little like I'm a high-schooler going into a professional conference.

The bone I'm specifically asking about is the "pupil-mover" (up by the head). But like I mentioned, I've only been at this (part time) since a couple days after Christmas, so if you see stuff I'm doing that is silly or has an obviously better approach, would love feedback.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1k0JwK ... DPss9EaDfT

(Let me know if you have trouble accessing the file - I don't commonly share things publicly.)

[synthsin75]

If I parent the joystick to the main target bone (like the rest of the controllers), I can't move it at all.

I'm not seeing this problem, but you should be able to just parent the pupil target and both smart bones to the root bone, like the rest of your smart bone dials.

[dondo]

I typically move the controller bones with "Manipulate bones." When I parent the pupil-mover to the root bone, I can no longer "manipulate" it (well, I can - but I can only rotate it, I can't move it). I just accidentally noticed that if I use "transpose," it basically works. Is that what you're suggesting?

[synthsin75]

Sorry, I forgot I had modded the manipulate bone tool for this. Here you go: http://www.filedropper.com/lmmanipulatebones

[dondo]

What? Even the gods themselves are fallible? I wonder, does the blind, slavering gratitude of the masses of your worshippers ever become dull?

...but, uh, I don't have a "filedropper" account. Any chance you can toss it someplace I don't have to create a new account (and give them money, albeit a pittance)?

[synthsin75]

You don't need an account for filedropper. Just hit the "Download This File" button, enter the captcha characters, and hit "Download Now".

[dondo]

Heh. The site obscures the button with all the solicitations, I overlooked it. Sorry about that.

And... Thanks! This appears to be exactly what I wanted. However, I think I'm doing the installation wrong. I dropped it into the scripts/tool folder, and put the two .png assets into the scripts/Script Resources menu; it works, but doesn't appear to have found the updated icon. I can't find clear documentation about how to do this sort of installation... any idea what I'm misunderstanding about how to install scripts?

[synthsin75]

You need to put everything in the scripts/tool folder, including the pngs.

[dondo]

Fan-freakin'-tastic. Thank you, thank you.

[dondo]

Ok, another related problem - this is more an annoyance, but there must be something I'm doing wrong,

So here's the process I'm using for adding the smart bone dials:
1. Add the bone, name it, make sure it's parented to the root.
2. Select "smart bone dial" from the bone menu, fill it in (no positive in this case, so only one action)
3. Select the timeline, and hit the right arrow to get started defining the action

...and poof! The bone leaps to some arbitrary place (and orientation) on my rig. It's easy but annoying to fix: double-click mainline, Transform Bone, drag and rotate it back to where it should be, and then go back to my action.

Can I prevent these additional steps?

[synthsin75]

If your smart bone dial's parent bone is pointing right, it will work as expected. If you've already rigged it otherwise, you can either add a bone between the root and the SBD (which many people to anyway, so they can move their SBD controls around as needed) or manually create your SBD constraints and action.

[dondo]

Thanks. I hadn't thought of introducing a root just for the SBDs - I'll definitely start doing that. In the meantime, I had already fallen back to creating the dials manually, it's easy enough.

Just to make sure I understand, though, when you say "if the ... parent bone is pointing right" - do you mean "to the right" or "correct"? As you can see in the rig you looked at yesterday, the bone is horizontal and pointing left - but that's what I've seen in all the tutorials.

[synthsin75]

Yeah, point "to the right". That's the zero angle of an unparented bone (bone in the layer coordinate system instead of possibly rotated parent bone coordinates).