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How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 3:18 am
by justoshow
Hey y'all! So here's my situation.

File 1: Hand Templates
Styles: hand_skin & hand_line

File 2: Character Template
Styles: Character_Skin, Character_Line, etc...

I use a template file for my hands that all of my characters use. When I import the hands the style comes too obviously. I would like to know, is there a way I can replace the hand_skin that was imported with character_skin style without having to manually go through the many layers of hands and change them?

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:23 am
by synthsin75
Off hand, I think the fastest way is to edit the file format, but someone else should chime in who can verify whether that's the case.

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 8:24 am
by chucky
Change the hands style to match your new character in a separate hand file then import the whole hand , with a renamed hand colour style '(name)hand' , Then import the hand with the new style, be sure to check 'unlink shared styles' this will create a new id for the hand style and stop it reverting or anything weird.

This method is far from perfect as ALL the shared styles get new IDs, it would be better to be selective, alas that is not available (yet).
I'm sure it would have been but there's been a 'slight hickup' in development. :wink:
Which all could come good of course, in due course... fingers crossed. :D

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 5:37 pm
by justoshow
chucky wrote:Change the hands style to match your new character in a separate hand file then import the whole hand , with a renamed hand colour style '(name)hand' , Then import the hand with the new style, be sure to check 'unlink shared styles' this will create a new id for the hand style and stop it reverting or anything weird.

This method is far from perfect as ALL the shared styles get new IDs, it would be better to be selective, alas that is not available (yet).
I'm sure it would have been but there's been a 'slight hickup' in development. :wink:
Which all could come good of course, in due course... fingers crossed. :D
This makes sense. I'll definitely give this a try when I get home today. Thanks for the advice!

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 8:26 pm
by Greenlaw
Chucky beat me to it but, yeah, exactly what he said. I ran into the same issues about a year and a half ago when I mistakenly thought changing the style name would do the trick. Forcing the ID change during rig import solved the problem for me, and it's what I still do today.

That said, Moho needs to allow the user more control over which style IDs get changed. What would be very helpful is if there was a field in the style panel to edit the IDs manually. (I think I made a request for this a while ago...better check.)

Somewhat related: It might be useful if we could edit layer IDs too. For example, when Photoshop layer IDs get confused or broken. Maybe?

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 8:31 pm
by justoshow
Greenlaw wrote:Chucky beat me to it but, yeah, exactly what he said. I ran into the same issues about a year and a half ago when I mistakenly thought changing the style name would do the trick. Forcing the ID change during rig import solved the problem for me, and it's what I still do today.
Glad to know it works!
Greenlaw wrote:That said, Moho needs to allow the user more control over which style IDs get changed. What would be very helpful is if there was a field in the style panel to edit the IDs manually. (I think I made a request for this a while ago...better check.))
That would definitely be a great idea.

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 2:07 am
by justoshow
So I tried the above advice. It does however work but it's not for my situation. I guess I should clarify more.

Situation

File 1: Hand Templates
Styles: hand_skin & hand_line

File 2: Character Template
Styles: Character_Skin, Character_Line, etc...

The Character is already built and rigged. I'm looking to import my hand template into my already rigged and styled character, and merge my hand styles into my character styles. I'm thinking it may not be doable right now (hopefully someday). I may just have to go and set all my character skin layers to the hand skin style. Shouldn't be too much since my limbs uses references.

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 2:35 am
by Greenlaw
Ok, I see what you mean. (Been in that situation too.)

If your hands already have a style applied, you'll have to change the style to match the character. Assuming the style is applied to all the hands in the switch, this should be easy to do. It will still be a separate style but it will at least be consistent with the character.

The other option is as Wes described: Open the scene in a text editor and change the ID for the hands to same as the character's. I experimented with that a while back. If you open the .moho file directly, you'll get a screen full of gibberish. What you need to do first is 'unpack' the file using something like 7-zip. Then you can edit the resulting JSON file in a text editor. (Warning: it will probably be a huge file.) Just search for the name of your style and you'll see the ID; it should look something like "uuid":"987c9209-6373-4178-a9a7-fc2dbbdee2a0".

FYI, in my case, I decided not to bother and just did my first suggestion and kept two separate styles for skin.

Hope this helps.

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 2:38 am
by Greenlaw
If it turns out you have to work through all the hands individually, remember you can copy a style using the Copy button in the Styles window. Then, it's a matter of just selecting and pasting with the Paste button. I've had to do that too. It's tedious but by 'caching' the style for pasting, it's not as bad as it could be.

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 2:56 am
by chucky
There's also the alt shift function

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 3:30 am
by justoshow
Wow that's some great advice. I'll experiment with all of them and see which works best for me. Thanks Chucky and Greenlaw!

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 4:36 pm
by Greenlaw
Actually, having a separate style for hands is...um...handy when you have a lot of characters that can use those hands. Here's my workflow:

First, I make a set of hands that, except for the skin color, would work for multiple characters. Then, to make sure the Style ID would be unique for a new character, I make a copy of the hands project and import the project into itself...this gave me access to the Unlink Shared Styles option. Note: the option doesn't appear when you import to an empty project, it only appears when Moho thinks there's a potential conflict with existing artwork. Personally, I think this option should always be available so I don't have to keep tricking the program to change the Style IDs. Anyway, I enable Unlink Shared Styles, and delete the original set of hands in the project. Now, I import or copy the group for this set of hands to the character project I'm currently working on. Finally, I copy the Style properties (using the Style panel's Copy button) for the character's Skin Style to the character's Hand Skin Style so all the hand drawings will instantly adopt the current character's skin color.

I hope that doesn't sound too complicated. it's actually easy once you've done it.

Optional: To make it clear to the user who this new hand style belongs to, you might want to append the style name with the character's name. (For conciseness, I like to use the first three letters of the character's name. Long names might get clipped, which isn't very helpful.)

Re: How Can I Merge Styles From Templates

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 5:20 pm
by chucky
Dennis has nailed it, that's exactly right and the naming is crucial.