Tips for edit of existing character

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Kululu17
Posts: 14
Joined: Thu Oct 18, 2018 9:09 pm

Tips for edit of existing character

Post by Kululu17 »

Hi All,

I have a rigged character with a number of animations that I'm reasonably happy with, but want to make a few tweaks - basically I'm try to edit without goofing up what I have already - and I'm looking for some advice on what to do and not to do (but of course if any of what I'm doing is in general, not the right workflow, please let me know that as well).

I am animating a character for a game, and exporting to the game in SWF format. I have been using "actions" to define certain animations, like a walk cycle, a jump cycle, land, etc.

My character uses vector layers for all images
One section of the character uses flexi-binding (for a tail)
The rest is layer binding for things like limbs and whatnot
There are a few switch layers for things like mouth position, and clothing variations
There are a couple places where I use "transform points" in the animation, for things like subtle hair movement - didn't want to rig every strand of hair

My intended edits include:
Adding extra details and slightly editing the shape of some of the vector artwork
Adding extra states to the switch layers (things like new mouth positions)
Changing a couple of layers to switch layers (like adding eye positions)

My first attempts (on a copy of the original) came up with some strange results, for example when adding a state to the switch layer, I now show two switch layers active at once, and the new mouth positions do show under the keyframes in the timeline, but they don't visually show up in the animation. Additionally, some of the "actions" have disappeared.

It's not the end of the world if I somehow corrupted this file, since it is a copy, but would like to know best practices for this sort of thing.

Thanks in advance!
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synthsin75
Posts: 9934
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:20 pm
Location: Oklahoma
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Re: Tips for edit of existing character

Post by synthsin75 »

If switch sublayers have the same name, Moho doesn't know which one you want.

If you've add layers, they will not have an action (unless they are duplicates of layers with actions) until you edited them in the action.
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