yes the inconsistent keying probably caused this. But I'm unsure as to the rules this follows. What keyframes does stepped decided to show? And is it essentially useless if you have bones keyed on differnt frames?

Also is this in-between integer mode a setting for rendering the skeleton in game aswell?

Where can I uncheck inherit rotation/scale?

Sometimes bones are not parents or children of one another, but must be moved together. It is hard to get the exact change needed by moving one bone at a time.

It is very uncommon that one would want to select multiple bones, then put them all in one spot, or have an identical local scale, or an identical angle.

It is very common however, to want to push an entire set of bones a certain amount of pixels, or decrease/increase their scale by a certain amount, or have them all rotate a certain amount of degrees.

Perhaps rotate, translate, and scale should be strictly tools? They could have a value next to them to specify the change; as the alternate to moving around the visual representation. Then the currently used value fields could be renamed angle, position, and size. These would be the current values for the last selected bone, and if you wanted to you could ctrl+click on a bone again to bring up its values. This would mostly only be to get your orientation correct, for when you use the tools to alter the values.

Now users can easily add and subtract values to as many bones as they want, for whatever is needed.

Furthering this idea, when multiple bones are selected, there could be a button or checkbox called "Universal Value" (Global could work too, but to avoid confusion.). This way, it would appear to translate all bones/images from a certain point, as though they were one piece or Image. So you could rotate them as a whole, move them all in orientation to one point, or squash and stretch bones to make the whole skeleton/bones you have selected become bigger or smaller, useful say for one trying to use higher resolution images, or reuse a skeleton but larger, like a boss. Even more importantly, given a negative scale value in universal, would completely flip or mirror then skeleton around to a certain value. This removes the need to flip, rotate, and scale selection tools. Tho these could be plausible too, in a selection window, or drop down.

I noticed when going into each bone to delete keys and redo them, that with no keyframes, certain bones are still moved in later frames, because their parent bone is changing their position in the animation.

Of course, you can change a bone's posture without moving its child bones, by enabling bone compensation. You can then create keyframes for this.

Would it be possible then to edit a keyframe and change it from no compensate to compensate?

That way, I could simply edit a keyframe that moves other bones with it, and make it not do that anymore, instead of having to delete the keyframe, then re-posture the bone with compensation on, and make new keys for it. Just so its child bones are no longer effected by its movement.

Can someone please explain to me in better detail how this works?

I was attempting to refine my animation by editing the key poses, in stepped mode.

I then noticed that when i uncheck stepped, and/or click interpolated, the frames change position and appearance. (on the key poses) Even the color changes (perhaps because the color is animated, and the differnce in color comes after that frame...)

This seems to have something to do with what bones are keyed, and which are not. It would seem that it ignores certain keyed frames when there is interpolation going on? or tries to accomodate for it? I'm so lost it would seem I'm better off starting the animation from scratch. I'm not even sure now how my key poses effect the animation anymore; and i would have to look at previous versions of the animation to begin comparing. I have many extra keys now; i think because of editing keys while interpolated, then editing them more while stepped.

Though I can still just barely grasp what is going on, it still is mind boggling ; and should have documentation to avoid this confusion, and better understand how the animation works based on its keys. I know I could go in and look at every which key has interpolation going on, but at this point it is too confusing. Some explanation as to whats going on and/or how to avoid this in the future would be greatly appreciated.

Also if it helps, I didn't modify any curves for this animation.

This issue started off even earlier, when I had to place extra keyframes for scale. This explains the name of the file. I ended up deleting the scale keyframes and starting them over, for it to work. (this was for flipping around the thumb, palm, and index finger)

These examples work horribly as screenshots, but trust me, there is a differnce for every frame, and it makes a big difference for the overall animation, especially for trying to animate it.

Key Frame 6:
Interpolated:

Stepped:

/\ The differnce is the placement of the right hand fingers in stepped is rotated more to the point where you get blank pixels, the lower back components are shifted in interpolated(most notably on the right side), and the position of the left hand/arm in general is a certain amount of pixels off in stepped.

Key Frame 3:
Interpolated:

Stepped:

/\ The differnce is the right bicept is lower in stepped, and the right hand is rotated more to the left in stepped. Theres some other hard to notice differnces as a screenshot.

Key Frame 13:
Interpolated:

Stepped:

/\ Note the left side is not yet animated for that one.(probably part of what cursed me) The differnce is the color of the upper hand's palm is more red in stepped, and the piece of back sticking out on the bottom left side in stepped, which is actually a part of the back from the right side.

I already fixed and saved the best example of this problem, when i first noticed it, where there was a hand pose that was COMPLETLY skipped over in interpolate. I had to highlight the whole hand and create keys for it by pressing ctrl+L. Adding to the whole confusion of this animation.

Very nice i will look forward to seeing this!

& The reason for select color is because it is hard to keep track of what fingers are selected. When All Fingers are selected, it is still clear what finger is what. (would be) Cyan could be a default setting? Changed by the bone and/or enabled in the settings window? Just sayin this would make sense too; if given the option, the designer is responsible for his own actions. Also when show bones is toggled on, it is still clear what bone you have selected against all the other bones

And selection transparency would prevent the selection from blocking out whats behind it

I have constantly overlapping bones in a condensed area that are very hard to tell apart and select. (low resolution fingers)

I noticed that you can change the visual representation of the bone with colors. This would be very convenient, except I usually work with show bones toggled off. This is to see what I am working on without the other bones getting in the way. When hovering over bones to find them in this mode, their color renders useless.

Furthermore, it is still hard to see what bone i have hovered over when show bones is toggled on. And when it is selected, the teal color doesn't help much either.

Here is an example of the mess I am dealing with:
view bones toggled on:

view bones toggled off:

and just so you know what your looking at:

If either A: the bones highlighted in their respected color when view bones is toggled off or B: You can set a bone's highlight color, and select color, or C: in Settings, you can enable Colored Bone selection, and perhaps extra variables like highlight brightness/transparency when hovered over or selected. This would aid greatly in trying to differentiate different colored bones easily. And setting the transparency would allow you to see through your bone while editing it; which is incredibly important in low resolution.

Edit: I am aware I can turn down the editor scale. But I'm just noticing now that the latest update reset my settings.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cf0z530zghvx3 ... .55.03.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/h3o8d0tucvqqd ... .50.18.png Reguardless I am stuck with the same inconvenience.

1.8.05 Essential. And I'm sorry but I was partially wrong; it only does this when i use the save as command. Even when I give the file the same name, with save as, it removes the current bone pose.

I save different versions constantly though and this is bound to happen again when I am doing drastic new changes and want to save a new version.

I cant count how many times ive lost work already from not pressing K before i hit save. Save should not remove the current bone poses. Or at the least ctrl + z should bring it back like it does when you lose the bone placement by scrubbing the timeline.

Thinking at first my hopes were in the dust, today I noticed the Settings options was actually there, and that

Disabling Linear Filtering will remove the anti-aliasing. :whew:

:wait: But beware, your images can have coordinates in-between pixels, so it will look different until you actually render it :bang:

Boy, A snap to pixel grid, or view in actual pixels option sure would be nice :think:

That way people working on hands with fingers in that are 5x2 resolution could preview how they look when rendered. :clap:

A sigh of relief either way, for now, and this fix is greatly appreciated, whenever it was done. Thank you Nathan. :beer:
(Thanks not to posting about it :smoke: )

Now get on the actual pixels view toggle! :sun: :handshake: :sun: ... :wonder: