Bone Manipulation on Boy created with Character Wizard

[jercook]

I'm taking a course from UDEMY on Anime Studio Pro 11, using MOHO. In the course they create boy on character wizard and show manipulate bones working on frame 0. But in MOhO when I try it Bone manipulation doesn't work unless I move to frame 1. Is this normal in MOHO or am I doing something wrong?

[dueyftw]

Frame 0 is setup, draw. 1 and beyond is for animation. The control 'manipulate bone' lets you test bones in frame zero.

Dale

[jercook]

That's exactly what I thought and my question. Since the manipulate bone should work on frame 0, My question is why isn't it working when I create the Boy with the character wizard? To repeat my question, what might be keeping the bone manipulation from working on frame 0 on the Boy created with Character Wizard?

[hayasidist]

There are two main bone tools
> transform bone (default shortcut T)
> manipulate bones (default shortcut Z)

on frame zero:
> transform bone moves the selected bone(s) - not the bound items - so you can adjust the skeleton without messing up your artwork
> manipulate bones uses inverse kinematics (IK) to move bone chains and the bound items so you can see what the results are. the bones snap back to resting position when you select a different tool

in the timeline:
> transform bone moves the selected bones and the bound items - keyframes are generated
> manipulate bones uses inverse kinematics to move bone chains and the bound items - keyframes are generated


sometimes you'll have bone constraints and other bone chain issues that will mean that bones can't move where you expect them to go (e.g. there's not a good IK solution)


If that still doesn't help, can you be more specific about exactly what's not working for you -- is it all bones? just one? how many bones are selected? ...

[jercook]

for some reason, When on frame 0 the bone manipulation tool just doesn't seem to have any effect on the bones (for the Boy created in the character wizard). but moving to frame 1 it doesn't. This is using MOHO Pro 12. As I thought and the comments, the manipulate bones should work on frame 0. But thanks for the comments. Might be something compromised my installation or something. When I bring in a character from the library, the manipulate bone tool seems to work as suspected so I guess and consider a re-install if more confusing situations like this show up.

[hayasidist]

did you export all views? if yes - check that you're moving bones on the active switch layer. If not -- er ... dunno! works fine here - both tools - frame 0 and in the timeline.

[Greenlaw]

The easiest way to check that the Manipulate tool is working properly is to create a new project, make a two-bone chain and test the tool. At frame zero, the tool will let you test the IK; at frame 1 and higher, it's used for animation. If it works, the problem is elsewhere.

I've seen the Manipulate tool get 'stuck' sometimes at frame 0. Usually, closing the tool palette and re-opening it corrects the problem. When that doesn't work, I close the program and re-launch it. That should work. This error happens very rarely though.

If the Manipulate tool still doesn't work (at frame 0 or other,) something might be blocking the tool. Just wondering, are you using constraints on the bone or do you have a Smart Bone Action associated with it?

If it's the former, make sure the constraint settings isn't preventing IK from working properly. This could be an invalid range or Independent Angle or even Ignore IK.

If it's the latter, maybe you have bad or corrupted keys set in the Smart Bone Action. In the Action, try deleting the keys and resetting them.

Hope this helps.

Tip: If you get this to work, animating with Manipulate is more useful if you also use the Alt Key. This combo lets you quickly switch between IK and FK modes using the same tool. The Manipulate tool is also used to translate Target bones and Root bones.

[jercook]

My problem seems to appear only when I load a character from the Character Wizard. One from the library works as expected. From the comments, which I appreciate, I get the sense the problem is from my own installation and not particularly normal. I'm in a learning phase so I think I'll move on from this until I have problems in the other parts of the software, other than the Character Wizard. Thanks for the positive suggestions and responses.

[Greenlaw]

I don't use the Character Wizard but Manipulate seems to be working with the generated rigs here (tested in ASP 11 and Moho 12.) Is there any particular setting you're using or does it happen all the time? Any particular bone chain where Manipulate fails or is it with all bone chains?

This is just my opinion but, unless you intend to depend on Character Wizard for your characters and your otherwise satisfied with the rigs it generates, I wouldn't worry about this too much. The Wizard generates only one type of rig but it's somewhat limited in what it can do. CW is kind of a fun toy but you'll learn more by creating your own rigs and coming up with ways to get exactly the performance you need from them.

The bigger concern would be if Manipulate fails with your own rigs. I don't understand why Manipulate isn't working with your CW rigs but you're saying it works fine with other setups? Can you post the rig your having trouble with?

[jercook]

Thanks for your comments. I think I will follow your advice and not worry about it for now, since it seems to work fine except for the Character Wizard. But to answer the question, the rig is simply the boy produced by CW. thanks for the suggestion. For now I won't worry about this particular problem. If more weird problems reveal themselves, I will do a re-install incase something crashed in my installation.

[Greenlaw]

Just wondering, maybe the issue is with only that particular instance of the CW rig? Does it do this when you create another similar character with CW?

[jercook]

That was a good point. I tried the other characters and had the same results. Thanks for the suggestion. I don't need the character wizard so far so won't worry about it since creating bone layers seems to work ok so far.