Moho Forum

jonbo wrote:Glad to hear you got it working Jason. Yes, the script can cause slow downs on a system, you can use the bake keyframes option and then uncheck the real time morph option in the morph options menu to see your animation in realtime. Then check the option again when you want to make more morphs. I don't know if you have seen them, but forum member funksmaname has some nice tutorials on morph dials. I'll leave mine up for a little while longer in case you need it. Here's a link to funk's tutorials.

http://bit.ly/bOArDw

Hey Jonbo, yes I just saw Funk's tutorials yesterday, which is actually what made me start looking into Rudiger's script. So I'm very excited to be able to actually start doing those over the weekend, now that I've gotten the script to work! Thanks again for all the help and Happy Holidays

Glad to hear you got it working, Matsuemon.

Thanks for providing all that technical support, jonbo.

By the way, has anyone else noticed a massive speed up of this script in 8.1?

It seemed to work around 10 times faster for me, but that was on the still unreleased Beta version.

Yeah Rudiger, I noticed the speed up. I thought maybe with the addition of relative blending that something in the change helped with the functionality of the script. Whatever it was, it works like in warpspeed now.

Yeah, I think you're right. They must have optimized some of the scripting functions to make the built-in relative blending work faster and it has hugely sped up my scripted version as a side effect.

This is great as it means I may not even have to use the built-in blend morphs script function at all, so I can continue to control exactly how the actions get blended and allow for weights that might be greater than 1 or negative, and I'm not sure if the built-in function can do that.

OMG - i've not tried it yet but the sheer prospect is making me salivate... will report back later!

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real time MDs on the test head seem super responsive!!! *dances around the rooom*

I've gotten morphdials installed and am using ASP 8.1 I made a quick test of a basic shape with a couple of Action morphs and control bones. Cool.

But I'm unclear on how to set up a more complex rig where I have, say, multiple groups, with many layers under each group. Are you able to set up multiple instances of morphdials on various levels? None of the tutorials I've found online showing complex face rigs ever show the Layers palette or explain this. Any tips on how this is done or is there a tutorial out there that shows a quick peek at the layers palette?

for your own sanity, try to keep as many shapes on a single layer - it means you only need to put one instance of the embed script.

every layer will need to have the script added manually, other than that - there's no difference between using 1 layer or 100 (except for possibly speed implications? dunno)

Hey Bella, the morphdials bone layer would need to be inside the same group layer as the layers it will control. So if you have multiple groups, you will need a morphdial layer for each group.

jonbo, i'm not certain this is true... i might be wrong, but I think it just needs to be at the highest level - it's more important to make sure every vector layer has an instance of the embed script in place... i think... ?

Yeah you're wrong Funk, the morphdial layer has to be in the group it is controlling. If you pull it out it won't do anything. Try it and see. I just did with this simple example and it stopped working when I pulled it out. Are you using a beta version that works outside groups?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53649091/mdexample.zip

Okay, sounds like it might be the prudent course of action to use Layers as "organizational" tools in this case, if needed, rather than Groups. Making sure to embed the script on all layers as mentioned. I'm gonna forge ahead and try a face this way, and if it works, maybe try for a two-group version just to see what happens.

IMO, the best reason for using groups is the ability to have masking. I haven't used really complex groups, but the ones I've made have worked fine.

jonbo, we're both right - if I take the bone layer out of the group it doesnt work, but if I put the layers nested in another group (so they are children of the parent layer the MD layer is in) it works...

...with the test head for some reason I can't work out right now the fills become invisible - but if you set each layers 'paths' to be visible in the drop down arrow in the layer palette you can see that they are indeed being effected by MD control bones.

Well shut my mouth, you're right Funk. It seems to me that I tried that before and it didn't work, but just tried it again and it does. That's what I get for stopping experimenting with the script.

Bella, since the morphdials script controls actions, you can take a whole face (or body rig for that matter) with several layers, put them in a group, put different poses of that group in actions and control those actions using morphdials. For the realtime feedback you could make a mock face in a single vector layer as a representation of what the effect on your group will be when you bake the effect. Just be sure both the group and the mock face have the script embeded.

I like splitting a face up in layers. It creates flexibility allows for more versatile and subtle animation. But it can be a pain, especially if you want to retime your animation for all those layers.