A few questions on pro 9

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gso125
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Location: Princeton, MA USA

A few questions on pro 9

Post by gso125 »

View My Video I bought the pro 9 ver on cd for mac so support sent me a 30 day trial ver of 9.2 while I wait for my ser # info and then ill register it. Im watching and going along with a bunch of tutorials on my new macbook pro. I have been testing it out doing the "Step by Step" tutorial on here http://anime.smithmicro.com/anime-studi ... rials.html and animating the green monster. When I made the bones part with the arms and then go to actions and named the action b4 an b4 2 and so on when I move them they act weird the arms will circle around twist very hard to control them. I added the constraints and that stopped them from moving to much. Is there an issue with a track pad on macs? The other issue I found was when I added the gradient background no matter how I do it it only plays what ever fill color that was set in background? I Made the gradient per the tutorial in frame 0. Is this a possible bug in the demo a restiction of some sort I cant export in the trial so I cant see the final animation. Most likely I have something not set right so Any help would be great thanks Gerry
gso125
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Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by gso125 »

I added a quick screen shot video above showing what that Gradient is doing Thanks Gerry
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heyvern
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Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by heyvern »

The issue regarding the gradient fill effect display during playback is basically how Anime Studio works when using the preview playback. When you play the animation in the preview it will not display "all" shape effects.

You can get around this by selecting the layer with the shape effect and select the shape selection tool. This "forces" the display of the shape effects for just that layer during playback. If you have shape effects on other layers, they won't display during preview playback.

Another option would be to hold down the right arrow for playback. The right arrow key will "scrub" the timeline forward and display ALL shape effects for all layers (shape effects needs to be checked in display quality settings). The playback of course will be slower and not time accurate. The normal playback with "allow frame skipping" turned on tries to force the realtime preview playback to match the actual speed of the animation as close as possible.

Not sure about the bone and actions issue and the hard to control bones. It does sound like if you are using a trackpad, that the bones could be getting spun around way more than intended. I don't have experience with the track pad as much. Also, if you rotate a bone too close to the "base" or the bottom pivot, you can get extreme rotations. It's better to try and click and drag closer to the tip of the bone. You could also use the numerical angle input for the bone angle to avoid that behavior.

Can you tell us if the smart bone action works properly otherwise? The problem is simply spinning the bone too much when trying to rotate with a trackpad is that correct?
gso125
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:20 pm
Location: Princeton, MA USA

Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by gso125 »

View My Video I uploaded a shot of whats its doing I also noticed now the inner bones on the arms stop letting me move them after a few clicks. Im going to re do the whole tutorial and see if im missing something. I tried the default guy and he moves perfect.
gso125
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:20 pm
Location: Princeton, MA USA

Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by gso125 »

I have my full Version now and its not in demo any more. I Have redone the step by step tutorial and up to adding the actions to the bones to fix the bends on the arms and this is where the weird movements start to act up as I move the arms. Im staying at this point to see where out what I may be doing wrong
Mayfly
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Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by Mayfly »

did you ever fix the bone problem, because i'm having the same problem.
gso125
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Location: Princeton, MA USA

Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by gso125 »

No, I never fixed it with the monster tutorial but I did do some more tutorials and I know it has to do with how i'm binding the two bones in the arms. I going to go back to that one and fix it. I will do bind points and not the bind layers for the arms and see if that fixes the issues.
gso125
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Joined: Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:20 pm
Location: Princeton, MA USA

Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by gso125 »

I worked on it for a while today. I can bind and rig my monster character and all bones will work smoothly. I figured out when I add smart bone actions on the arm bone to correct the deformation when you bend the arm at the elbow. b2 and b2 2 for example. This is the cause for all my wacky uncontrollable movements of the arms. Anyone have any Ideas what I may be doing wrong or not doing thanks. Gerry
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heyvern
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Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by heyvern »

It's very hard to say what you are doing wrong without seeing the actual file. There are too many variables involved. If you could upload the file I could tell very easily what the problem is.
Mayfly
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Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by Mayfly »

gso that's exactly when i started having the problem. right after i used smart bones.

i hope vern has a solution, he usually does.
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heyvern
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Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by heyvern »

Smart bones would be considered an "Advanced" feature.
Most of us who wanted this feature were already very familiar with other rigging techniques. Rigging in ASP can be quite tricky. There are a lot of options, point binding, flexible binding, etc etc.

There are some issues with smart bones to be aware of when using it. Multiple smart bones can cause "overlapping" of the point movements. Smart bone actions are "additive" to the point motion. For example if you have 2 smart bones moving a single point and they both rotate then the point will move the distance set by BOTH SMART BONES which combines the point motion. This could cause points to move in unexpected ways. When you edit one smart bone you don't see what the other smart bones are doing. Then when you animate both bones you see the additive results.

To use smart bones effectively keep this in mind. You don't want to over do it when starting out. Try to move only the points you need to if possible.

Remember that smart bone actions are ADDITIVE. All movements are added together.

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I am currently working on a very fat, chubby sort of blobby character.Because the whole character outline, head, body, arms and legs, is one single closed vector with smooth curves, I need to use a LOT of smart bones. The whole character is animated with a small number of bones and all movement is controlled by smart bones. When the arm goes up, all points on that side of the entire character move to keep the shape correct. I also have a smart bone for a full body turn that moves all the points as well. So the arm movement and the body turns all combine. I have to do a lot of "testing" to make sure that these smart bones work together.

Setting this up and rigging it correctly is causing similar problems with "overlapping" smart bone actions causing points to move unpredictably, I am able to fix these problems by eliminating and adjusting some overlapping movement to minimize the effect. As I said, smart bones is a relatively new feature and I would consider it to be an advanced feature and it may take a bit of time to get the hang of it.

If you use it in very simple situations, it should work with out too much trouble. I would recommend that you learn the basics of points and bones before jumping into smart bones right away. It's important to know those basics.
gso125
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Location: Princeton, MA USA

Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by gso125 »

Hi Heyvern here they are. The weird actions start in the one with the bone actions once I start trying to animate in frame one. Thanks for the help. Gerry

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w1s1x7143w37k ... tions.anme

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t7nq4111sek45 ... tions.anme

I also made a very very basic arm and it does the same stuff when I go to animate it in the time line.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/40mtoyjfo7s6uhz/LeftArm.anme


I dont use drop box much so I dont know if I set them up to be downloaded correctly if not let me know how you guys save them and up load the files to share and maybe another way of doing it thanks Gerry


When I download them it adds a .txt extension at the end I just removed it from the name and they all opened up for me.
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heyvern
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Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by heyvern »

You have bone keys in the smart bone actions that shouldn't be there.

For example action B10 should ONLY have bone rotation for bone B10 not any other bone. This is what I think is causing the bone control issue.

In those actions select the proper bone, then select the "inverse" (command+ "i") and delete all of the "selected bone rotation" keys. Make sure there are NO keys for ANY other bones in the smart bone action.
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heyvern
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Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by heyvern »

One more thing that has nothing to do with smart bones, is using the "Manipulate Bones Tool". This is merely my opinion and by no means a rule to follow. It's just what I do. It does seem that it is this tool that has been causing you specific problems. I never use the manipulate bones tool. Don't know why exactly, I just never liked it. Not enough control. I like to rotate EACH bone individually exactly where I want it. I don't even use that tool for "testing" rigging on frame 0. Mainly because of the bone strength covering everything. I actually prefer going to another frame and testing bone rigging with the rotate bone tool on one bone at a time. It also puts keys on ALL the bones it moves. I may not want all of those keys or may want them in different places... so... I use the rotate bone tool only for most of my work.

Now I can see what you mean by "uncontrollable bones" but it is not limited to smart bones, even without any smart bones the Manipulate Bones tool does have a bit of a hard to control behavior. This might be another reason I don't like using it.

(On the other hand, I would not have noticed the extra bone keys in your smart bone actions if I hadn't used the manipulate bone tool. those keys didn't create any issues when simply using the rotate bone tool. It was only when rotating all the bones together with the manipulate bone tool that the actions "combined" to over rotate bone causing some control issues.)
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Another tip about using smart bones is where to put the keys in the actions. You can of course put a single key on frame 1 as you did, this will work fine, but it's better to move the keys much further out in the action time line. This would allow for additional point motion at different angles of the smart bone. The further out in the time line the smart bone action keys are "spread" the smoother the motion when animating.

For example, open the B10 action. Select the key for the bone on frame 1 and drag it to frame 120.
Go to the Arm Left vector layer and move the point keys on frame 1 to frame 120.

By doing it this way you can go back in to the B10 action and put more point motion between frame 0 and frame 120 where the bone is at different rotations. This is a way to refine the smart bone movement.
gso125
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Joined: Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:20 pm
Location: Princeton, MA USA

Re: A few questions on pro 9

Post by gso125 »

Thank you heyvern. I will look for and remove those extra keys. I will also try the bone rotate tool instead of the manipulate tool. Thanks so much for looking and finding some of my issues. Gerry
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