Cycle and 2nd action

[franktdigiart]

I have an animation cycle, and I would like to add other second actions on the timeline without the main one being interrupted. For example, my character is walking for about 30 seconds and I would like to raise his arm during this time, but every time I add this second action, he stops walking, but I want him to continue. Is it possible to keep these two actions separate, so keeping one main in cycle format and others in keyframe using smart bones recorded actions.

[slowtiger]

Yes, it's possible to have these 2 movements separate.
- One bone layer for complete character: in this rig you must carefully not include any arm bones into the cycle, and not select any walk bones when creating the arm movement. I found that always a bit fickly, so I do it like this:
- One bone rig for legs (and hips), and another one for arms. This way the walk cycle goes untouched, and I can do whatever with the arms without risking to select a leg bone and break the cycle.

[franktdigiart]

I am a newbie, let me explain my situation.
I imported a psd file with all the character's PNGs separated. Next, I created the bones and associated them with the corresponding image, to some of them I also associated a swarp layer 2d mesh triangulation, so I can have more control. This time I created different actions with the intelligent bones such as closed eyes, open mouth and some arm movements.
Then again with the smart bones I created the main action, a simple walk and put it in cycle format so it lasts the whole time. But to diversify this cycle I would like to put these second actions, and since it's a long animation of 4 minutes I would like to add these other actions but every time I put the keyframe of the other smart bones, the walk stops and I don't want that.
I would like to have only the keyframes of the intelligent bones with their actions on the timeline, easier to edit in the actions window. So I would like to keep the main action and add others together, and make like a mix with more actions together.

[slowtiger]

The bit about only select the bones you need for the walk cycle, nothing else is also true for working within actions.

[franktdigiart]

Sorry, but I don't understand...
I mean for example my character walks, to do this I move many bones together, for this reason I want to put only the keyframes of the smart bones in the timeline with the recorded actions.
Next, I create a loop to have this animation for the whole timeline.
But I only put this action in the timeline, but if I wanted to make him close his eyes every 5 seconds I can't do that because it goes to interrupt his walk. I don't know if I'm doing a wrong thing on Moho, but I want to create different separate actions each with its own smart bones but later put them on the timeline. I've been trying for a few hours, but if I put a main action on the cycle I can't put other keyframes, otherwise the main action goes off. Maybe I am doing something wrong, sorry a lot for the trouble, it is already a lot that you are helping me. Thanks again.

[Hoptoad]

This problem is a little tricky. And every rig presents unique challenges. But this should work.

Let the character walk in the walk cycle until you need him to raise his arm or do something different. As soon as you need him do something different, let's say on frame 200, select/copy all the keyframes from the walk cycle (frames 1-24 or whatever) and paste them at frame 200. Adjust where you paste the keys if necessary so the walk cycle doesn't stutter.

Change the final keyframes from the pasted cycle's interpolation to "smooth". Then copy those new keyframes and paste them again at the first empty frame (frame 225, for example), then paste them again at the next empty frame (frame 250, for example). Now you have the keyframes for approx. 3 seconds of walking that you can alter however you want.

If you want the character to raise his left arm, select the bones of his left arm. Then go to the RED SELECTED BONE channel in the timeline and delete all 3 channels of keyframes: rotation, translation, scale. But not all the way back to frame 1! Only the new keyframes.

Now his arm isn't moving after frame 200, even though he's walking. You can animate the arm however you want. If you run out of keyframes, paste more keyframes from his walk cycle.

If you want him to walk for a long time with his arm raised, you should select all the keyframes from his new "Arm raised" walk cycle (25 keyframes or whatever) and add cycle interpolation. Note that for the cycle to work this time, you don't want to choose Absolute, you want to choose Relative and input 24 or something like that.

Eventually, if you want him to resume his normal walk cycle, copy and paste it in the timeline, and use cycle interpolation and Relative cycle 24 or whatever. You may need to spend a little while adjusting the characters arm and so forth so they transition seamlessly back into the walk cycle.

I'm sure there are better ways to solve this problem, but they likely require learning new things, and lately I often use the simplest, fastest solutions so I can hurry-up and resume animating.

Good luck!

[Hoptoad]

. . .but if I wanted to make him close his eyes every 5 seconds I can't do that because it goes to interrupt his walk. . .

Hmm. You should be able to add a blink without messing up a walk cycle.

Check your smart bones and make sure each one is not trying to control more things than they should be controlling. To do this, go into the smart bone action and then select another bone and see if there are keyframes. If there are, delete them. Check all the bones. Then check every layer. If a layer should not be controlled by the smart bone, go to that layer, and if you see keyframes for point animation, delete them.

When learning how to use smart bones, it's easy to have the smart bone accidentally controlling a lot more than you intended.

This is all very tricky, imo. When I figured-out how to delete the unwanted keyframes a smart bone had added to my rig (always my fault), everything got much easier.

[franktdigiart]

Thanks, I understood what you wrote, I'll try.
Since this character has to do a lot of movements I would like to simplify the work a little. I saw that I can't do many circle animations, because I have so many parts that I need to control. I'm now trying to put the actions one by one on the timeline with the smart bones, and then when necessary create different actions to diversify the loop. I don't know how I can explain it to you, first of all I don't know moho very well, I got it a few months ago and already reading and understanding tutorials is a bit problematic for me, because English is not my first language but I will try to do that that you wrote to me.
Now I'm putting the actions on the timeline one by one, I saw that if I don't create a cycle, Moho allows me to add more bones on the same time point. I saw that when I click on a bone, a red line appears on the timeline and if I need to change something, I only change the one in red.
But it's probably easier for me to create actions with smart bones and then put the keyframes of these bones and create a type of loop for the actions that must be repeated, it's a bit slow because I have to do it for every second but like this it allows me to add second and third actions in the same second for example.
I can't share it online, but it's a little hard to explain.

[Hoptoad]

It sounds like you have already learned a lot.

My advice is to animate your character as much as possible. If you can make it move like you want, you are doing great. As time goes by, you will learn new techniques. Every time you run into a problem, that's an opportunity to increase your knowledge a little bit. Eventually, every time you want to animate something new, you will think of 3 or 4 ways to do it. Moho excels at giving its users a lot of ways to accomplish things.

What matters in the end isn't the process used to animate a character, what matters is how cool the cartoon looks after it's finally exported and you click PLAY and watch the character come to life.

Good luck!