Moho 12

[Glen Crowell]

Hi every body,

I've read some posts claiming that Moho 12 Smart Warp doesn't work with bones. This is incorrect. It works great with bones! Select the warp layer and move points like any vector layer animation, then select the bone layer and animate your bones as normal. Smooth as silk.

[ruscular3d]

Greenlaw & Wes:

Silly me. There is an obvious way to get small Pin Bone Symbols, starting from frame Zero - after all:



This video demonstrates that process as well as giving a general introduction to the Powers of the Pin Bone.


Greg Smith

With that pin bone setup, is it possible to give the pin bone physics dynamics so that if you did a ball bounce that it would respond to squash and stretch like a real ball if you drop it on the ground?

There was one other question that the programmer couldn't answer is can you warp depth with pin bone make one part of the mesh come forward or behind another mesh?

[Psmith]

Ruscular:

Your first question about Bone Dynamics is a good one. Can Bones behave, in Moho, in a manner commonly called "Soft Body" dynamics? The short answer is no.

Moho Bones with "Physics" applied behave like "Hard Bodies" and can ricochet off other objects based on the settings you give them. Bone "Squash & Stretch" has to be produced manually. This can be done by applying Squash & Stretch properties to ordinary Bones - or, in the case of the Pin Bone setup I've demonstrated, be simulated through a series of frames involving the movement and subsequent distortion of the Shape they are influencing. The quality of this illusion is entirely based on your "good eye" for imagining such things.

Regarding "Depth Sorting", (which is what you seem to be describing), of regions of Smart Meshes - this is actually not done through the influence of Bones - but, rather, through designating selections of Smart Mesh Polygons (by means of the "Select Shape" tool) as being "In Front of or In Back of" other Smart Mesh Regions. This is potentially a deep subject and simply can't be explained very well using words, alone.

(I'll have to make a video explaining this better).


Greg Smith

[ruscular3d]

I have been able to setup a bouncing tail with the walk cycle, which basically give you the bounce thru a rotation of the bone. I use 2 bone to setup a bounce from both "X" and "Y" axis, in a "L" shape link, and hoping that with pin bone setup the bounce from 360 degree from the center of the pin bone.

[synthsin75]

With that pin bone setup, is it possible to give the pin bone physics dynamics so that if you did a ball bounce that it would respond to squash and stretch like a real ball if you drop it on the ground?

Yes, you can make any dynamic bone a smart bone that controls the scale of a pin bone. While a regular bone, with "Squash and stretch scaling" enabled will work best in most cases, two overlapping pin bones (influencing a smart mesh) with their scale controlled by a smart dynamic bone could be used to automate above view squash and stretch (like a dynamic controlled fisheye lens effect).

[-RR-]

Is Sketch Bones still there in Moho 12?
Other question...best place for new feature requests? The "Feature Requests" forum section looks kind of old and needless to say so does the "Future Of Anime Studio" thread.

[synthsin75]

Is Sketch Bones still there in Moho 12?
Other question...best place for new feature requests? The "Feature Requests" forum section looks kind of old and needless to say so does the "Future Of Anime Studio" thread.

Yeah, sketch bones is still around. For now, just keep posting requests to the existing topic. Maybe a moderator will eventually rename it or create a new one for Moho.

[Greenlaw]

Is Sketch Bones still there in Moho 12?

Oh, yes! It's one of the best features ever so why take it out?

[Welsh Jester]

So just curious but how does it work for lip sync and facial movements with smart warp? Would switches work well with that or not? Guessing not because it would mess with different facial expressions?

[Greenlaw]

It depends on your setup and how you intend to use it.

When it comes to facial animation, I would probably use Smart Warp to additively enhance an existing animated expression--for example, make a painted smile image bigger or smaller than what you see in the originally painted. Or, if you're using static images as expressions, you can add subtle motion to the images.

This would be done on top of the lip-synced animation, so if you change the lipsync, naturally you will have to change the mesh warp animation. Because of this, you probably don't want to apply the mesh warp till after you're satisfied with the lip-sync animation. This is the sort of thing I use Liquify and Puppet for in AE, but being able to do this on the original rig in Moho is cleaner and more convenient.

That's just one way to use it.

You could also set up Actions and Smart Bone Actions to use mesh warping for lipsync and facial expressions. Just make your pose and copy the keys to your phoneme or expression action and apply directly it from the Actions panel.

I'm sure there are many other ways to use these new tools for lip-sync, facial animation and other cool stuff. It's up to you to experiment with them and discover what works best for your project. And when you do, please share your discoveries!

[Greenlaw]

Would switches work well with (Smart Warp) or not? Guessing not because it would mess with different facial expressions?

I haven't tested for that specifically but I imagine you could create a general grid mesh and apply that as a mesh for each switch layer art as a Smart Warp. That might be a little tedious but it should work. I discussed a similar situation with a couple of Moho artists a few weeks ago and they had some good results with it.

To get around the tedium of applying Smart Warp to every layer you wish to affect, I was told that you can select all the layers and apply the mesh selection at once. I think there are a few 'gotchas' to be aware of but I can't recall what they are off the top of my head.

Ideally, it would be cool if Group layers could be deformed directly with a Smart Warp, kinda like how you can apply Liquify or Puppet to a PreComp layer in AE. I'm sure that's a lot more complicated for the programmers to pull off but I'd love to have that capability for Groups in a future release of Moho.

[synthsin75]

So just curious but how does it work for lip sync and facial movements with smart warp? Would switches work well with that or not? Guessing not because it would mess with different facial expressions?

Yes, Funksmaname did a great demo of using smart warp for lip sync expression...somewhere.

[Welsh Jester]

Probably should have worded my post better, sorry.

So using Smart Warp, if i just make different mouth shapes and put them into switches would this work without affecting the rest of the face like the eyes?

Example: I cropped a head, imported it into Moho and used Smart Warp to make different mouth shapes and put them into switch layers, created separate blinking switches etc or other facial movements, and wanted a blink along with a change in mouth shape at the same time.

That example wouldn't work right? The straight face in all the other switches would prevent the blink happening. At least i think.

Not sure why i had so much difficulty with this question

[synthsin75]

Probably should have worded my post better, sorry.

So using Smart Warp, if i just make different mouth shapes and put them into switches would this work without affecting the rest of the face like the eyes?

Yes, you assign the smart warp by layer, so you assign it to all the mouth switch layers.

Example: I cropped a head, imported it into Moho and used Smart Warp to make different mouth shapes and put them into switch layers, created separate blinking switches etc or other facial movements, and wanted a blink along with a change in mouth shape at the same time.

That example wouldn't work right? The straight face in all the other switches would prevent the blink happening. At least i think.

Not sure why i had so much difficulty with this question

Uh...are you saying to whole head is in every switch layer? If so, you'd want a head without eyes, mouth, etc. (or at least holes in its smart mesh) and then use duplicates of the image for separate eye and mouth smart meshes that crop them.

[Greenlaw]

Okay, I think I see what you're trying to do now. You want to use Smart Warp only on the mouth shapes in the Switch Layer. I'm assuming you want to use Smart Warp on bitmap images in the Switch Layer?

If it's for bitmaps, it would kinda work but probably not in the way you want. Smart Warp requires the mesh and the art to be in the same group, so you would have to make multiple groups in the Switch Layer, each with a reference of the image and a copy of the mesh. You can deform the mesh in each group to create all your shapes. Once you have that set up, you can switch between each deformed shape. However, note that because they're in separate groups, interpolation will not work. However, you do hat the option to tweak any of the meshes in the groups to animate the individual images.

TBH, that's very convoluted and I don't think using a Switch Layer here is very practical. You might be better off using a single image and a single Smart Warp mesh, and then link the different positions to a Smart Bone or, if you want non-linear transitions to any 'shape', like a set of phonemes, make a bunch of Morph Actions for the different mesh positions.

If the artwork is vectors and not bitmap images, you would just animate the shapes and use Interpolate Sub-Layers instead of using Mesh Warp. You can use the Magnet and other deformation tools instead to get similar effects.

You may have notice that you're getting a wide variety of solutions. That's because without knowing anything about the character setup or how you intend to animate it, this whole discussion is really just academic.

In my experience, almost every production I've been involved with called for it's own unique technical solutions. I would trying out a few different methods yourself and decide what works best for your project. Good luck!