Deep Frames Question

[Yosemite Sam]

Has anyone here had any luck with the copy/paste Deep Frames feature? I can't get it to work at all no matter what I try. Even if its literally the same exact rig.

Is this feature broken currently or is there some step, or important detail, I'm missing?

Thanks!

[Greenlaw]

It should work (it's working here anyway) and it should be pretty straightforward to use.

1. Move to the frame on the timeline you wish to copy. There does not have to be a keyframe on this frame for this to work but the frame should be animated.
2. Select Animation > Copy Deep Frame. This tells Moho to copy the animation of everything under the current selection. So if you have an animated bone layer selected and there are child layers with point animation or other animations, Moho will internally 'bake' some keys and place them in the clipboard.
3. Now you can paste these keys elsewhere in the timeline using Paste Deep Frame.

These command are a quick way to copy and paste keyframes in a rig without using Freeze and then opening every layer and copying the keys.

A way to test how this works is to go to a frame in the timeline where there is 'deep' animation but no actual keyframes present, and then select Copy Deep Frame, followed by Paste Deep Frame. When you Paste with this command there will now be a keyframe present, and if you look at an animated child layer (maybe with point animation.) you will see a new keyframe has been created there too. Exception: If a child layer has no keyframed animation before you use these commands, there will be no new keyframe created...since there is no animation in this layer no new keyframes should be created.

These commands work with a range of frames too. Just select a range between two existing keyframes and select Copy Deep Frame Range, then select Paste Deep Frame Range. Yu will now find the range of frames has keyframes 'baked' between the two keyframes, and any child layers with animation will also have a 'baked' range.

Hope this helps.

[Yosemite Sam]

It should work (it's working here anyway) and it should be pretty straightforward to use.

1. Move to the frame on the timeline you wish to copy. There does not have to be a keyframe on this frame for this to work but the frame should be animated.
2. Select Animation > Copy Deep Frame. This tells Moho to copy the animation of everything under the current selection. So if you have an animated bone layer selected and there are child layers with point animation or other animations, Moho will internally 'bake' some keys and place them in the clipboard.
3. Now you can paste these keys elsewhere in the timeline using Paste Deep Frame.

These command are a quick way to copy and paste keyframes in a rig without using Freeze and then opening every layer and copying the keys.

A way to test how this works is to go to a frame in the timeline where there is 'deep' animation but no actual keyframes present, and then select Copy Deep Frame, followed by Paste Deep Frame. When you Paste with this command there will now be a keyframe present, and if you look at an animated child layer (maybe with point animation.) you will see a new keyframe has been created there too. Exception: If a child layer has no keyframed animation before you use these commands, there will be no new keyframe created...since there is no animation in this layer no new keyframes should be created.

These commands work with a range of frames too. Just select a range between two existing keyframes and select Copy Deep Frame Range, then select Paste Deep Frame Range. Yu will now find the range of frames has keyframes 'baked' between the two keyframes, and any child layers with animation will also have a 'baked' range.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Greenlaw. I am literally looking to take animation from one rig, and paste it to another duplicate rig and maintain all layer/point animation and switches. Simply duplicating the original won't suffice, as I've changed the stroke width on every vector layer on second duplicate rig. When I do this (on frame one for both) nothing is pasted to the second 'empty' rig.

[Greenlaw]

Ah, ok...let me test that here. That should work if you use the Range version but be aware that it will bake every frame in the animation.

[Greenlaw]

Regarding stroke: would it make more sense to use a custom Style for the line weight? Then you can change the line weight for every shape in the rig using that style at anytime. You can make a custom Style that affects only Stroke so you can still have different fills for shapes that use that style. This is the technique I use in my rigs when I need to change the weight of the lines to suit different scale sizes of the character.

Additional tip: If you have a second character that uses the same custom Stroke Style, you can make it different for the second character by importing that rig and enabling Unlink Shared Styles. This breaks the Style ID for the second character so you effectively have two identical custom styles in your project that you can change independently for each character.

[Yosemite Sam]

Regarding stroke: would it make more sense to use a custom Style for the line weight? Then you can change the line weight for every shape in the rig using that style at anytime. You can make a custom Style that affects only Stroke so you can still have different fills for shapes that use that style. This is the technique I use in my rigs when I need to change the weight of the lines to suit different scale sizes of the character.

Additional tip: If you have a second character that uses the same custom Stroke Style, you can make it different for the second character by importing that rig and enabling Unlink Shared Styles. This breaks the Style ID for the second character so you effectively have two identical custom styles in your project that you can change independently for each character.

I think that is a better solution for my issue. In a nutshell, I have about 20 individual shots where I need to change the stroke width on all characters. There's about 12 rigs used repeatedly through the shots. I looked into styles further, but that seems to only work if every shape is on the same layer. Is there a script specific for this? I found one from Mynd, but that script removes any tapering that was put in place from the line widths tool, so not very beneficial. Would love to hear your thoughts Greenlaw.

[Víctor Paredes]

One of the technical limitations of Copy deep frames is it only works with characters that are in the same file. Maybe the issue is related to that?
If your character is in a different file, try copying the entire character layer to the other file and then do the copy/paste deep frames.
I hope this helps.

[Yosemite Sam]

One of the technical limitations of Copy deep frames is it only works with characters that are in the same file. Maybe the issue is related to that?
If your character is in a different file, try copying the entire character layer to the other file and then do the copy/paste deep frames.
I hope this helps.

Hi Victor, yes the characters were in the same file. I was having mixed results. I may upload a video and share with you my experience. A big problem is there are no tutorials available I could find on the topic, other than you briefly demonstrating how to use it in a webinar from many months ago. Nothing was even present in either manual.

[Yosemite Sam]

This may just work for my situation:

https://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30071

[Greenlaw]

I think that is a better solution for my issue. In a nutshell, I have about 20 individual shots where I need to change the stroke width on all characters. There's about 12 rigs used repeatedly through the shots. I looked into styles further, but that seems to only work if every shape is on the same layer.

Custom Styles work throughout the project they're in, not only in specific layers. So if you have a custom Stroke width style applied to all the shapes and layers within a character, changing the width in that style will change the the width throughout the entire character, as well as in any other characters or items in the project that use the same custom stroke width style.

There are situations when you don't want it to do that for every character inside a project, which is where the Import trick I mentioned comes in. This breaks the connection for the imported character so that its custom style becomes unique to it. That is, the style will still work globally but only specifically for that character.

Hope this helps.

[Yosemite Sam]

I think that is a better solution for my issue. In a nutshell, I have about 20 individual shots where I need to change the stroke width on all characters. There's about 12 rigs used repeatedly through the shots. I looked into styles further, but that seems to only work if every shape is on the same layer.

Custom Styles work throughout the project they're in, not only in specific layers. So if you have a custom Stroke width style applied to all the shapes and layers within a character, changing the width in that style will change the the width throughout the entire character, as well as in any other characters or items in the project that use the same custom stroke width style.

There are situations when you don't want it to do that for every character inside a project, which is where the Import trick I mentioned comes in. This breaks the connection for the imported character so that its custom style becomes unique to it. That is, the style will still work globally but only specifically for that character.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the follow up response, Greenlaw. I will look into that. Also, as mentioned in a comment above, I think that script may just work for my issue.