Animation is smooth while working on bone dial but not on mainline

[Ju111]

Hi, would someone know why, when I'm working directly on the action of my smart bone dial, when I test the animation it's smooth, but when I test in on the mainline, it looks like I'm in 12 fps or even 6?

[Greenlaw]

Based on your provided info, my guess is that you don't have enough frames for the animation in your Smart Bone Action. If the range is too short, it can look 'steppy'. This is because Moho won't interpolate subframes through a Smart Bone on the Mainline. To make it look smoother on the Mainline, add more whole frames to the Smart Bone Action.

For example: if your Smart Bone Action covers a range of six frames, you will only see those six whole frames when you animate them on the mainline. Increase the range to 24, and you've quadrupled the number of frames that can appear on the mainline when you animate the Smart Bone.

Before you ask, there is no 'ideal' range. Just set it high enough to cover what will be practical or desirable for your animation. I tend to use ranges that fall on multiples of 12, typically 48 or 96, because these numbers fall neatly on the timeline (assuming a frame rate of 24 fps.) I've used ranges as short as two and as long as 720 frames.

[Greenlaw]

Tip: when you need to stretch an animation (for example, to increase the frame range of your Smart Bone Animation,) select the frames, then Alt+drag the last frame to the desired length. Moho will scale the range using the frame at the other end of the selection as an anchor.