Animated Parenting of Bones

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RyanSurrey
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Joined: Sun Apr 30, 2017 1:33 pm

Animated Parenting of Bones

Post by RyanSurrey »

I made a rig like this :

Hand => Lower Arm => Upper Arm => Shoulder => Chest to make it look natural

But when i am trying to make a 360 body turn, after halfway, I have to parent L hand to R Shoulder and R hand to L shoulder for Back perspective.

when i try this, The parenting is changing permanently instead of for a certain time like animated layer ordering.

Is there a way to reparent it just for a certain period or any other way to complete body turn?
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Greenlaw
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Re: Animated Parenting of Bones

Post by Greenlaw »

Normally, re-parenting bones should be fully keyframeable in the Mainline. The only thing I can think of that might prevent this is if you've also used re-parenting within a Smart Bone Action. Re-parenting in an Action might cause conflict with manual re-parenting you wish to do, and the Action's keyframes will probably override it.

FWIW, I don't usually re-parent arm bones in a turn. I just slide the upper arm bones L/R and change the stacking order of the arms artwork layers (or keyframe visibility of 'near' and 'far' copies of the limbs,) when moving past the profile view. IMO, this is easier to manage, especially if I'm not certain about all the poses that may be called for during animation. This setup might mean additional manual keyframing during animation but it's better than having to re-engineer the rig every time a special situation comes up (which is inevitable in an on-going series.)

Regarding animated stacking order inside Actions: opinions vary about this but I tend to avoid it for the same reasons mentioned above. Lately, I've been using reference layers for near/far copies of arms and legs, and keyframing visibility in an Action. I feel I'm less likely to run into a conflict this way, and I'm completely free to use manual Animated Layer Order on the Mainline when I need it.

Hope this helps.
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