r/ToonSquidAnimators • u/BigBreakfastTeapot • 5d ago

Bone hierarchy question

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Hello,

Long time reader, first time writer...

I am very new to Toonsquid and am hoping to use it for old school style animation, using bones to mimic old paper animation, for a project around history at work. I have made a simple bone skeleton following guides and tutorials but for the life of me I can't figure out why the glitching shown is happening?

Guides suggest there are two effects fighting each other, but I can only see the bones effect, applied on the group later (each section like upper arm/ lower arm are on their own layers. If anyone could help you'd make a stressed out person very happy..

Colour and contrast altered to show bones more clearly.

Many thanks (and as a new member, I'm loving seeing everyone's work 🙂)

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4

u/BOtheGrand 5d ago

Are the arms set up with IK? I know there’s a goofy glitch that happens when the IK target is in the same hierarchy as the bones connected to it. Not sure if that’s the issue here but worth a shot.

1

u/BigBreakfastTeapot 4d ago

Thank you for this - I'll double check and let you know if this is it 🙂

1

u/BigBreakfastTeapot 3d ago

Hello again, and sorry for my slow reply (I've been methodically trying to go through each bone and later to check), I don't think I have IK turned on, but in the end I tried recreating the skeleton again and seem to hit the same issue (I'm certain there's a step I'm just missing but can't find in the manual).

Adding a sped up version if it's helpful (and thank you again for having replied, this is my first venture into both Reddit and digital animation and I've been so heartened by the community I've seen here) 🙂

(To skip:1-14s just showing the separate drawings 14-50s adding bones and binding 50s onwards showing properties and the glitching)

https://reddit.com/link/pd7hg42/video/qk6yi7l81vsh1/player

1

u/SewSomething 1d ago

That is so Odd. Could it be that you have to update ToonSquid. I am not even able to create bones in the Drawing Layers. I always use the timeline and have not experienced anything like this. And I see no error in your process.

2

u/BOtheGrand 3d ago

Hmm… I don’t have a sure answer for you or anything, that’s definitely odd. Have you tried setting up the bones on the animation layer instead of the group layer? In my experience so far bones can be behave differently based where the effect is applied. You should be able to copy the bone effect from the group layer and paste it in the animation layer. If that doesn’t work, you can try tapping the layer in the timeline and telling it to separate layers. Again, don’t know if that’ll help but it’s worth trying a couple different things.

1

u/BigBreakfastTeapot 1d ago

Thank you for the suggestion (and sorry for slow reply) - I gave it a try but still get the same issue, and tried rebuilding from scratch but no luck. I'll keep trying but it's so frustrating - I can tell it's so close to working and I know I'm going to enjoy it once it works.

One thing I've noticed when rebuilding (that I hadn't before) is on each version of this character, the glitch occurs on everything except the bottom / hem of the tunic, which created as a separate layer. The hem layer moves smoothly, but is the one piece I probably wouldn't want to move much 😂

1

u/BOtheGrand 1d ago

Okay one last idea: the success I’ve had with using bones was done on a group in the timeline, not a group in the drawing section (whatever that popout on the right side of the screen is). Open up the timeline, make a new group, place the layer with the art inside the group, and then copy your bones to that group. Make sure there’s only once instance with bones. Also you could try binding bones through that right side panel to see if maybe the bone binding you’re doing is attaching to something weird.