Layers in animation – unable to extract from base layer, or move in new layer

[edwardsc3]

I have a character that uses Mixamo animations and the HumanIK controller. I want to divide different portions of an arm movement into separate layers. So, I want to transfer the shoulder movement to one layer, the elbow movement to another, and wrist movement to a third. My overall plan is to reduce the movement range of the arm, and then create variations on the movement. So as an example if the animation is of a person petting a dog, I’ll modify it so that the person is petting a smaller dog, then perhaps petting a dog that is to the side of the first dog, etc. I suspect that separating the joints to layers like this will make it easier for me to scale and modify the animations – I’ll find out if I’m right once I reach that stage.

But, it doesn’t seem possible to extract an animation from the default BaseAnimation to another layer. If I select an IK Effector and tell the animation layer to “Extract Selected Objects”, it instead extracts ALL the effectors into a new layer – without giving any warning or notice that Maya is taking a very different action from what I told it to do. No matter how Maya works in the background, the button shouldn’t do something so different from what it says it will do. The layer’s right click->Select Objects option confirms that all have been put into this new layer.

As a separate issue, if I create a new empty layer, then select and move an IK Effector object, I get an error when I try to set the keyframe "Current manipulator and active objects have no keyable attributes". After a lot of fiddling and testing, I discovered that I must first – as a completely separate action – right-click the layer and tell it to Add Selected Objects. After I’ve done that, then I can save manipulations to those objects. But this makes no sense at all – if I can’t manipulate that object when in that layer, then the display shouldn’t let me manipulate that object! It should have the same kind of response as when the object is locked (as in, not move when I try to drag or rotate it). Or, even better, it should understand that the object should be included in this layer, and automatically incorporate it for me when I tell it to set the frame with the adjustment – it’s obvious what I want to do.

Do I just have a poor understanding of the animation workflow and am doing something wrong? Or am I doing it right, but the layering just has these needless extra steps that are unintuitive and which it doesn’t warn the user about?