Target bones not working past frame 0

[Mick]

I'm using MOHO 12 and have come upon a problem I've not quite been able to figure out involving target bones. I can create and use target bones on frame 0 and they work great... however when I move to frame 1 the target bones no longer work. The connection is broken when moving away from frame 0 and the target bones no longer effect the bones they are targeted to... any suggestions as to what is causing this. I'm using what I consider to be a fairly complicated rig, with a lot of smart bones. If it is a smart bone causing the issue... is there a way to figure out which smart bone is doing it? ... or ... maybe it's not a "smart bone" issue, but something else. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

[Maestral]

Smart bones are the Usual suspects but I'm not sure if anybody could tell more without some depictions or peeking into the file

[Greenlaw]

I agree with Maestral: check your Smart Bone Actions and make sure there aren't unwanted keyframes there. Check all the bones that and also check the Smart Bone Bones/Dials themselves; there's a possibility you keyframed everything bone by accident, which can lock up a rig and prevent features from working properly.

This can happen if you accidentally use Freeze while working inside a Smart Bone Action or if you have Auto-Freeze Keys enabled. If it's the latter, you should disable it. I never have this option enabled unless I'm sure it's going to be helpful for what I'm currently doing, and then I'm sure to turn it off again. I think Auto-Keyframe is meant to be a 'beginner' feature, but IMO, it promotes bad keyframing habits and can really mess up your SBAs if you're not paying close attention to what it's doing. If you really need to freeze everything in a keyframe, it's better to use Ctrl-F only when you need it. (This, I do use a lot.)

If that's not it, can you post an example project? You don't need to post the whole thing, just the project with the relevant bones setup should be fine.

Hope this helps.

[Mick]

Thank you for your reply. I was able to identify the individual smart bone causing the issue, by deleting them one at a time until it fixed the problem. Now I just need to redo that one particular smart bone.

[Greenlaw]

Just a note for the future: once you find a problematic Smart Bone, you probably only need to delete certain keys in the Smart Bone Action, not the entire bone/action.

But I'm glad you found it and I hope recreating the Smart Bone won't be difficult.