Smart actions for bone scale

[erikk]

Watching the Armchair Moho work I saw they were using a smart bone dial for head squash. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to apply a smart action to the scaling of a bone? No? I’d use the heck out of it, who needs yet another dial sitting around distracting you?

[Greenlaw]

Watching the Armchair Moho work I saw they were using a smart bone dial for head squash...who needs yet another dial sitting around distracting you?

Hi erikk,

IMO, it's kinda pointless to create a Smart Bone Action for the simplest things you can animate in Moho. In my experience, creating too many Smart Bones can make a rig less flexible (i.e., harder to make unique poses with) and more prone to breaking or becoming slow to work with, so I don't bother with unnecessary ones.

For example, when I need to animate a head squash, I just squash the head bone...no Smart Bone Action needed for that. When I need to squash everything related to the head, then I transform the head group layer with the origin set to the top or base of the neck. Again, no Smart Bone required for that.

I try to keep Smart Bone Actions to things that are actually complicated or tedious to animate over and over again. This keeps the number of controls I need lower and easier to manage.

That said, if would be cool if an Action could be directly linked to the scale of a bone rather than only the two rotation directions. Currently you can do this by linking the height of a bone to a target bone, and then using that to control the rotation of a hidden (Shy Bone) Smart Bone bone...that work well but, yeah, it's takes a bit more work to set up.

[erikk]

“ That said, if would be cool if an Action could be directly linked to the scale of a bone rather than only the two rotation directions.”

Exactly my point, though. If I wasn’t clear, the action directly lined to the scale of a bone is just what I’m talking about. I think over-using smart actions in Moho is a real sin, some people seem to just decide every single thing should be a smart action. I try to limit to a handful, and do a lot of bone squashing and stretching. That said, I’d love to have more control of what happens when I perform said squashing and stretching sometimes. Better spacing, more control over how things squash and stretch, that sort of thing.

[Greenlaw]

Got it, thanks for clarifying!

Some additional thoughts...

What I would really like to see in a future Moho release is a Smart Bone UI tool kit, that adds more types of controls besides 'dials', like sliders and buttons. To me, squashing and stretching a bone is basically how a slider works, and selection buttons can be for how I currently use Synthsin75's Layer Shortcuts but without the import issue. I can see using a radial button for enabling/disabling keyframeable options. And of course they should look like actual dials, sliders and buttons.

simplsam has a neat Virtual Bones script that essentially gives you custom 'skins' for bones but it doesn't add new Smart Bone capabilities.

[synthsin75]

This is how you'd make bone scaling affect a rotating smart bone:

[Greenlaw]

Thanks for showing that Wes!

I meant to bring up that technique but decided it would take too long to explain. You did it in one GIF!

Hmm...if I had a ton of time to spend, I suppose I could add images to those bones to make it look like a slider UI. If only...

[DK]

I LOVE these bone mechanisms. It would be great to have a library of them for reference.
Cheers
D.K

[erikk]

This is how you'd make bone scaling affect a rotating smart bone:

See, it’s a nice workaround but you can already just directly scale the bone and if I wanted more control over the appearance of what the scale affects, I’d rather have it controlled by the scale. Seems a lot less complex.

[erikk]

Got it, thanks for clarifying!

Some additional thoughts...

What I would really like to see in a future Moho release is a Smart Bone UI tool kit, that adds more types of controls besides 'dials', like sliders and buttons. To me, squashing and stretching a bone is basically how a slider works, and selection buttons can be for how I currently use Synthsin75's Layer Shortcuts but without the import issue. I can see using a radial button for enabling/disabling keyframeable options. And of course they should look like actual dials, sliders and buttons.

simplsam has a neat Virtual Bones script that essentially gives you custom 'skins' for bones but it doesn't add new Smart Bone capabilities.

in part what you’re describing makes me think of the sadly unusable and never-given-any-love Morph panel. I’d posted before, I’d would LOVE to see the Morph panel get some love.

[Greenlaw]

The Blend Morphs window actually works alright, you just need to be create a lot of morph targets in the Actions window to use it effectively. It can be time consuming to break down all the parts of the face for different expressions, and then you're still limited to a particular view unless you make even more targets.

Practically speaking, when Smart Bones Actions were introduced in ASP 9.5, it's simply been easier and faster to use Smart Bone Actions to mix facial expressions for animation...which is probably why Blend Morphs fell out of fashion for many Moho users. (Personally, I haven't touched Blend Morphs since 9.5.)

For some users, Blend Morphs may still be useful for creating additional morph targets for the Actions window. I haven't used it that way (IMO, it's faster to use the Magnet tool) but it can be a valid technique for certain types of animation projects.

[Greenlaw]

See, it’s a nice workaround but you can already just directly scale the bone and if I wanted more control over the appearance of what the scale affects, I’d rather have it controlled by the scale. Seems a lot less complex.

Wes' setup shows how to control a Smart Bone Action via bone scaling. Normally, everything off to the right would be hidden. It's a neat trick because Moho doesn't directly support Bone Scale as an option for controlling Actions. For now, this is probably the best way to do it.

IMO, it's really not that complex but, yeah, it would be nice to have a third control option built-in for Smart Bone Actions. It's been asked for before so maybe we'll get that in a future version.