Bone tool 'chokes' shapes at IK junctures

[joshuah5213462]

Hi, I know the bone tool in Animate is very rudimentary and hasn't undergone any substancial improvement since (I think) Flash CS4. Still, I was hoping to maybe use it for some really basic tasks, like moving the tail of a character. But I find the IK structure squeezes the shape at the bone junctures, making even such a simple animation impossible -  and as far as I've searched there doesn't seem to be any strenght control or other features to avoid this. Hoping for some ideas here 🙂

[n. tilcheff]

Hi mate,

It would probably be much better if you make the tail a custom Paint Brush stroke and shape tween the stroke nested within a graphic symbol container. There are some really good controls of tapering and so on. You will only be dealing with a centerline.

Bones are useless.

There is also the Asset Warp which will produce mixed results. May work in some situations well and be quite unreliable in others. Probably worth exploring though...

[joshuah5213462]

Hi Nick, yes, I actually have been avoiding Animate's IK since its introduction. Hand drawing or tweaking shapes and strokes (for simple tasks) is the way, I agree.

Asset warps are also a nice tool, though, as you rightly note, they too can be tricky.  I've noticed that some warps dissappear for a frame or two during tweening (adjusting the mesh on the starting keyframe will usually eliminate the flicker, but it goes to show it's not a 100% reliable method).

In the last few days I (quite counterintuitively) wondered "why not give IK a try again...", but it has confirmed itself again to be a no-go.

[n. tilcheff]

Hi again, Josh,

Yeah, I've done the same a couple of times - convincing myself that maybe my memory of the previous attempt wasn't correct. Conceptually the implementation of the bones system is very flawed. Even if it worked, the problem of a single armature layer where you can't have different easing for the different elements of the rig shows total lack of understanding how animation is made. Not to mention that you can't switch the current frame of a stopped symbol... It's useless.

Unrelated to deformers, but somehow related to rigs: Have you looked into Smart Magnet Rigs? We have been developing this system since 2012 and it is quite mature and popular at present.