Is import/ export actions broken?

[mtbuck24]

Hey animators,

Does anyone use the import/ export actions function that was introduced in Moho Pro 12? It seems to be broken since Moho 13.5 - last I used it was Moho 12.5 before the 13.5 release and it worked great. If you also find it to be broken but have a work around, that would be very much appreciated.

As it stands - when I go to export and import an action only part of the function works. This includes exporting an action and importing into the exact rig on the same or different project. I saw somewhere that to get an action working you close and open Moho and that gets the imported action working again, but I have not found that to be the case.

A temporary solution is because export/ import actions only export bone animation - near as I can tell, you can paste keyframes from one project (action) to another project and then save that as an action. But personally, I would love to be able to store a library of actions that I could import into the same character rig at anytime, as I believe this was the intended use for the feature.

Thank you for any response I get regarding this

Best regards,
McCoy

[Daxel]

Yes, it is broken. But if my notes are right, it is broken also on 12.5:

"I tested it and exporting an action from the character's root layer (its bone layer) saves the bones animation and the vector layer's animation, but importing it to the same character again, the vector layer's animation is lost and only the bone animation remains. To be precise, the vector layer's animation that is activated by a smartbone is not lost, but the vector layer's animation that is independent from any smartbone is lost. That shoudn't happen but it happens in Moho 13.5.1 and, to my surprise, in 12.5 too."

And yeah, it would be very useful to have it working correctly. I also would love to use it like you described. Let's hope Moho 14 fixes this and many other of these already existing but limited or broken amazing features.

[mtbuck24]

Thank you Daxel for checking this out! Were those your personal notes or was that from a different thread talking about this same issue with import/export actions?

[synthsin75]

I believe the feature was only ever meant to import/export bone actions. This way the actions could be applied to different, but similar, rigs. I don't think it was intended to import everything to the exact same rig.

[mtbuck24]

Thanks Synthsin! Yeah I only need it to work with bones, I try to keep all my animation on a bone level when I can

[Daxel]

Thank you Daxel for checking this out! Were those your personal notes or was that from a different thread talking about this same issue with import/export actions?

My personal notes that I wrote for this thread (the discussion was overshadowed by the attitude of the poster): https://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34255

If you only need the export/import to work with bone animation, then the issue I mentioned shouldn't be a problem for you.

I didn't have any problem with bone animation when I ran those tests. Do you have the problem in one file or in every file?

[Daxel]

I believe the feature was only ever meant to import/export bone actions. This way the actions could be applied to different, but similar, rigs. I don't think it was intended to import everything to the exact same rig.

Maybe but I don't think so, because you can actually export and import actions from vector layers and they work perfectly, so Moho is capable of exporting and importing any kind of animation from any kind of layer. The only problem is that Moho is not taking the animation from the children layers, which sounds like the feature is missing a few lines of code.

Actions have always been created for the selected layer and its children, they work like that. So I think naming the feature "export action" and "import action" would be a confusing name for a feature that just doesn't do that.