Moho Forum

If I use the bone lock in more than one section of the timeline (temparary hold while walking), the bottom bones can start to spin repeatedly. I didn't apply any rotation limitations because I was not applying any dynamics. Is that the fix, are there other issues I don't see, or is this a bug?

Yes, I have the same problem with locked bones. I actually stopped working with locked bones. It's not working for me.

Also I think it's too bad that if a bone is locked, it will still be moved if you animate a higher level layer. The uper layer animates the child layer, including it's locked bones. I'd rather have locked bones that stay put no matter what happens...

I use onion-skinning to keep my feet stuck on the ground since I have had spinning feet before too. You have to adjust your bones frame by frame this way though.

Also I think it's too bad that if a bone is locked, it will still be moved if you animate a higher level layer. The uper layer animates the child layer, including it's locked bones. I'd rather have locked bones that stay put no matter what happens...

It is supposed to work this way I believe since bones only operate in a bone layer. If a bone layer is the child, the entire layer should follow the parent.

I encounter some of the problems mentioned but I have successfully used bone locking in cases where this is the best way for me to get the job done.

Don't be afraid to break up a scene into "chunks" to get the job done!

If it takes twice as much time to do frame by frame tweaks without locking bones... compared to just breaking it into two separate animations... one with locked bones one with out... I choose that option.

You don't HAVE to unlock the bones and deal with spinning feet in the same animation if you don't want to. There is nothing to say you can't combine different versions of the same character.

I had a situation involving a character holding a dress on a wire hanger with both hands. She needed to bring this up and hand it to someone.

I found that a version of the file using bone locking was the perfect easy way to animate solution.

I created a bone setup with the shoulders at the "bottom" and they were locked. The hands and dress were at the "top" of the chain. This whole bone layer was a child of the top spine of a parent bone layer...

I tell you it was a breeze to animate. After bringing up the dress and handing it off... I cut away to the other character and back to a DIFFERENT version of the lady with the dress that is set up "the other way".

-Vern

You can get around the spinning bone issue by keying the bone at the frame after the bone is unlocked and rotate the bone 360° so it is positioned as it should.
Enable graph mode and you'll see if the bone will go kaboing or not.

i had the same problem, but i just limited the bone movement angle (in bone constrain), and this never happened again.

Yes selgin, limiting angles worked for me,too.
Anyway, it is a bug and should be fixed. The funny thing is, that the values are changing just while you scroll in the timeline! Turn on graph mode, scroll back and forth and look at the keys.
In a way, AS is doing some animation by itself.