Animated Shape Order Not Working

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gdub
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Animated Shape Order Not Working

Post by gdub »

I've got this character raking leaves on one side, then, he turns to the other side, so his hand should be over the rake. I select the color fill, and bring his hand to the front, which it does, and shows on the timeline. But when I run the animation, his hand goes back under the rake. I do have animated shape order checked in the vector settings.
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gdub
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Re: Animated Shape Order Not Working

Post by gdub »

Think I may have found a clue. I'm using an animated shape order in a smart bone dial as well. This seems to be affecting any other shape orders I use in the animation.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Animated Shape Order Not Working

Post by Greenlaw »

With shape and layer order, if you animate it in a Smart Bone Action, that will always over-ride manual keyframing on the Mainline. It's because of this, I usually don't use layer order animations inside a Smart Bone Action...it can lock you into certain behaviors and actually make the rig less flexible to animate.

If you really need to do this, in some situations, there are ways to work around the issue. My favorite technique is to use multiple Reference layers, and use the Smart Bone to control visibility between these layers. This Smart Bone setup essentially produces the same effect as using animated layer order, and you preserve the option to manually key frame animated layer order on the Mainline when you need it.

BTW, I'm not sure how you've set up your rig but normally I would use animated layer order to move a prop (the rake) in front/behind a hand. An explicit prop layer/group is usually a lot easier to rig and animate than working with 'prop' shapes and 'hand' shapes inside the same hand layer. If the prop is in its own layer, it can have its own origin, animation, switch layer, visibility state, layer order, bone-binding, etc., separate from the hand layer/group.

Tip: Some times (most of the time actually,) I find creating more layers/groups, logically organized, can be easier, and more efficient to work with even, than limiting yourself to as few layers as possible. Unless your computer is really tight on RAM or has a slow processor, don't be afraid to use more layers/groups in your character.

Hope this helps.
Last edited by Greenlaw on Mon Nov 12, 2018 9:56 pm, edited 8 times in total.
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gdub
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Re: Animated Shape Order Not Working

Post by gdub »

Thanks for that valuable information and tips. Yeah, as a rule I try to keep my characters as simple as possible. In this case, the character and rake (prop) are all on the same vector layer. This is just a simple cartoon, I may even decide to just do point animation, and not use bone rigging at all. Thanks again!
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