Action Shortcut Key?

[kenchtahm]

Hi everyone!

I'm still getting used to Moho (20 years of Flash/Animate and After Effects experience), and one thing that keeps catching my eye while I'm setting up actions is the "Shortcut Key" box when you're naming an action. What does that do? Seems like sometimes it shows the key to the right of the action's name, sometimes it doesn't, and I haven't been able to see any result of pushing whatever key I have assigned to the action no matter what part of the application I have active. Is this a legacy thing, or am I missing something?

I'm specifically looking into it because I want to use morph actions for lip sync, and not having to go up to hit insert action, then back down to move a few frames, back up to insert, etc (I know there's the blend actions window too, doesn't seem any faster). If there's a way to stay down in the timeline and just hit shortcut keys to make it know I want specific mouth shapes, it would shave a heck of a lot of time off of my workflow!

Thanks for any help you guys might have!

[Greenlaw]

Hi, and welcome to the Lost Marble forums!

According to the manual, you can add a shortcut to an Action to insert keyframes associated with that Action. The example cited is that you can use this to insert keys while playing back an animation in the Timeline. I've never gotten the custom shortcuts for Actions to work that way, and I just use the insert button. (If anyone here has gotten it to work, please post how you did it.)

To be honest, I rarely use the Actions panel to insert keyframes in the timeline for a morphing animation. To repeat animated morphs, I prefer using Smart Bone Actions or the Switch Selection window with Interpolate Sub-Layers enabled.

Using Smart Bones is good when you want full control over the timing for the transition (by animating the Smart Bone,) but you're limited to two linear morphing sequences.

The Switch Selection method is easier to set up and allows unlimited non-linear morphing sequences, but you give up some control over the timing (in the Switch layer, you have Smooth and Linear but no Bezier.)

Either method can be very useful depending on what you need.

Hope this helps.

[synthsin75]

As far as I know, the action shortcuts ONLY work while playing the timeline. And the motion and keyframes don't show up until you stop playback.

[Greenlaw]

Thanks, Wes.

Not sure when I would ever need to do that but will give it another try when I get home tonight.

[kenchtahm]

Thanks for the replies!

Greenlaw - The effect I'm looking for is a way to get the smoothness of a morph blend with the accuracy of a switch selection. I had a setup working with switches driven by smart bones and you're right - it works fantastically, but it was too similar to what I've done in After Effects. I'm hoping to find things that this program can do that After Effects can't (part of a pitch to shift my team at work to this program for some projects).

Synthsin - You're right, that worked! As long as I have my keyframes on frame 2 or 3 of my action, the instancing looks great. I only have it working with 2 mouth shapes so far, but it's an improvement. Probably not ideal for lip syncing since it goes by so fast, but does some of the job. I'll keep tinkering!

I really appreciate your help, both of you!

[Greenlaw]

Hi kenchtahm,

I'm hoping to find things that this program can do that After Effects can't (part of a pitch to shift my team at work to this program for some projects).

Oh, there's definitely stuff Moho can do that Ae can't. Throughout the Dawn Of The Croods series, we ran the gamut of puppet animation systems, from DuIK in Ae, to Harmony, and then we finally settled on Moho.

But I rarely work in Moho alone. Most of the time, Ae's is still the best way to finalize shots. Our typical workflow is to use Moho for the character animation and certain FX animations, and then use Moho's Layer Comps and Moho Exporter to break out layer passes. The layers are imported to Ae for final compositing, where lighting and additional FX work may be added. To me, the two programs are practically made for each other. If you check out my 2017 and 2020 DW reels, most of the 2D clips included were animated this way.

There were a couple of episodes towards the end of the first Croods series where it got a little crazy, though, because I had to include characters from earlier in the series that had been rigged in DuIK and Harmony. It didn't make sense to re-rig everything in Moho for a few scenes, so I wound up animating these scenes using all three puppet animation systems. (Final compositing was all in Ae.)

Anyway, best wishes for convincing the crew. You shouldn't have any trouble with that!

[kenchtahm]

Ha, small world! I work with Peacock Kids, we do a lot of promo stuff for you guys. (We used to be confusingly named Dreamworks TV, despite being YouTube based)

The workflow for the last few episodes sounds absolutely nuts, that kind of puzzle is always exciting. Characters in Moho and compositing in AE is the direction I was leaning as well, especially since a lot of our work leans a little more toward Motion Graphics out of necessity (our timelines are blisteringly short)

The first show I pitched Moho on was Ultimate Fighting Words, which was already kind of using an Actions type system for some stock animations the characters could do while talking. We ended up keeping it in After Effects because, even though the actions in Moho looked a little better, we lost a little in automation (wiggles driven by the waveform). We have a few shows coming up that are a little more straightforward and don't rely on script driven animation as much, so my fingers are crossed!

[alanthebox]

We ended up keeping it in After Effects because, even though the actions in Moho looked a little better, we lost a little in automation (wiggles driven by the waveform).

Just dropping a link here to a video giving some tips on how to extract some animation from a waveform in Moho: https://youtu.be/6dcZXYlLK4A

(not sure if this is exactly the same concept you're referring to in AE)

[kenchtahm]

Thanks for that, alanthebox! I actually used that exact video to learn how to drive the mouth movement in my pitch (the show uses nutcracker jaws) and some head and body rotation to add a little more passive life to the scene. The issue we ran into was because the character setup was relatively simple, it felt a little too repetitive in movement (same volume always opened the mouth the same amount, made the head rotate back the same amount, etc). I didn't have a chance to get into some of the master bone overrides, but at that point it would have meant adding time to our workflow for a slightly less effective result.

[Greenlaw]

Ha, small world! I work with Peacock Kids, we do a lot of promo stuff for you guys...

Well, howdy, neighbor!

[kenchtahm]

Happy to report a successful weekend!



I used some of my normal phonemes as anchors for actions. I ended up having far too many to juggle keyboard shortcuts in the end, and I didn't do any work to make the movements more "snappy", but as a basic test (and one of the first things I've played with in the program), I'm feeling good about things! This program has a bit of a difficulty curve, but I was able to wrap my head around it pretty quickly -- I already have a character all set up with some test animations. Not too shabby!

[teienkawi]

Hi, and welcome to the Lost Marble forums!

According to the manual, you can add a shortcut to an Action to insert keyframes associated with that Action. The example cited is that you can use this to insert keys while playing back an animation in the Timeline. I've never gotten the custom shortcuts for Actions to work that way, and I just use the insert button. (If anyone here has gotten it to work, please post how you did it.)

To be honest, I rarely use the Actions panel to insert keyframes in the timeline for a morphing animation. To repeat animated morphs, I prefer using Smart Bone Actions or the Switch Selection window with Interpolate Sub-Layers enabled.

Using Smart Bones is good when you want full control over the timing for the transition (by animating the Smart Bone,) but you're limited to two linear morphing sequences.

The Switch Selection method is easier to set up and allows unlimited non-linear morphing sequences, but you give up some control over the timing (in the Switch layer, you have Smooth and Linear but no Bezier.)

Either method can be very useful depending on what you need.

Hope this helps.

hey i was just getting into looking about action shortcuts and read this and holy conoli i just noticed something you said i never noticed in the manual. its funky how it works but it does it really has to be playing i dont see a immediate response but once i stop it the keys are there where the play head was at at the time of pressing the key(i also just used a single key. 0