Pivots are buggy?

Hi there! Pivots in Animate and Animate Pro have always annoyed me, because they often “paste special” in wierd places i didnt expect them to. They almost seem buggy sometimes… though its most likely just me thats inexperienced with the software.

But I hope to get a little help understanding what the problem in the following example is: Im trying to “Paste special” a pivotpoint location onto another drawing layer, but the pasted pivot gets slightly skewed for some reason. Here are some screenshots:

This is the pivot I want copied:
http://kaldmigtue.dk/crap/pivot1.jpg

This is where the “Paste special” places the pivot (in the camera view atleast)
http://kaldmigtue.dk/crap/pivot2.jpg

If I switch to the “Drawing View” the placement is correct for some reason
http://kaldmigtue.dk/crap/pivot3.jpg

http://kaldmigtue.dk/crap/pivot4.jpg

(The reason I dont use “real Pegs” is because I dont understand the advantages of them and think that they make the network-view look even more confusing and clustered.)

Hope you can help me, thanks! :slight_smile:

I can’t pinpoint the excact problem.

But I think the solution you use with Paste Special are for adding the pivots position to other drawings on the same layer.

For promote pivot when attaching drawing to a peg:
If you instead try to select the actual drawing layer and right click -Layer Properties and go to the Drawing tab. There to the right of Use Embedded Pivots chose Apply Embedded Pivot On Parent Peg.

For promote pivot when attaching drawing to another drawing as a child or using a drawing as a peg.:
With the pivot tool active select the actual drawing frame ,make drawing window active, copy the pivot (cmd+C on mac), Select the Drawing as a peg-drawing actual frame, make the window active and paste(cmd+V on mac)

I hope this is what you are looking for.

Best regards
-Ivar

Here are some videos where Lilly talks about pivot points.:

This is actually nr. 3. But I put it on top because it directly answers many of your questions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dox_GGJrW5Y

Here comes the series :

Toon Boom Tip Of The Week - Pivot Points in Animate, Animate Pro and Harmony(Part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tD6F1AcHqY

Toon Boom Tip Of The Week - Pivot Points in Animate, Animate Pro and Harmony (Part 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEEjRLneR5s

Toon Boom Tip Of The Week - Pivot Points Continued (Part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dox_GGJrW5Y

Toon Boom Tip Of The Week - Pivot Points Continued (Part 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYJlEw72uT0

Thanks for the responds. I already tried the “Apply Embedded Pivot On Parent Peg” methode but it didn’t to do anything. However It did seem to work when I replaced the “drawing layer-peg” with a real Peg… so I guess that will have to do. (If you are doing the same as me, remember to only set one of the forearm-layers to “Apply Embedded Pivot On Parent Peg”) :slight_smile:

Still pivots do seem a bit “unpredictable” at times, so If anyone has more info on what was going on in the example above, let me know please :slight_smile:

I thought that the video “Pivot Points in Animate, Animate Pro and Harmony (Part 2)” at around 6.52 was on to something with the whole “reset it to zero”, but that didnt seem to be the case this time.

To start, the best advantage to using pegs is you can keep your drawing substitutions and your animation seperate. If you want to slide your keys on your timeline without moving your drawings, you have that option.

It looks like you’ve animated the arm- then tried to paste special and update the pivot. This only works reliably if there is 0 animation on your break.
reset everything to 0, then try again. See if that fixes the problem.

Meanwhile…

If you are not using pegs (I don’t recomend it.) You have to set your drawings to “apply imbedded piviot on drawing layer.”

But if you wanted two drawings to animate together, only one needs to be the ‘peg’ . Set up the arm’s pivot, then use it as a peg for your patch.
Set the patch to “Don’t use imbedded pivot” and turn off “animate using animation tools” in the advanced tab. That way it cannot move away from the arm controling it.

With a peg, you can plug the peg into both - set the arm to “use embedded pivot on parrent peg” and set that patch to "don’t use embedded pivot.

Thanks for the reply. Will try to keep it in mind. :slight_smile:

Pivots move because the drawing (on the timeline) is moved, whether slightly rotated or moved along x, y, or z axes. I was having these problems before, then I found out that this was the reason.

Regardless, I’m with you on that other comment.
I think this software is maaaad buggy.

I’ve been “applying pivot on parent peg” and I’m having these crazy problems, even after closely following the tutorials.

I’ll just wait til I get Animate Pro 3. TBAP2 has too many issues already. Still feels like a beta software. It doesn’t even have an autosave feature.
Pardon my rant.