Moho 12

[synthsin75]

Smart Warp requires the mesh and the art to be in the same group...

It doesn't have to be in the same group, but sometimes it seems the UI doesn't immediately update to find new smart mesh layers.

[Greenlaw]

Hmm, that opens up a lot of interesting possibilities then.

For some reason, I couldn't access mesh layers that existed outside a switch group and had assumed this was a limitation. Will take another look at this later today and see if I can make it show up for switch layer bitmaps.

[Psmith]

Need to enlarge the visual representation of your Pin Bones? This is relatively easy.

Need simple and convenient handles to control the motion and shape of "Soft Bodied" characters? This next video is for you:



Learn and Enjoy, simultaneously.


Greg Smith

[synthsin75]

Need to enlarge the visual representation of your Pin Bones? This is relatively easy.

Need simple and convenient handles to control the motion and shape of "Soft Bodied" characters? This next video is for you:

Nice demo, Greg. Remember, you can do an additive cycle to continue one cycle all the way across the screen.

[Psmith]

Wes:

I haven't forgotten. In fact I tried it - yielding very strange results, indeed.

Doesn't seem to work with this Pin Bone example.


Greg Smith

[synthsin75]

Wes:

I haven't forgotten. In fact I tried it - yielding very strange results, indeed.

Doesn't seem to work with this Pin Bone example.


Greg Smith

Huh...works here. With additive cycles, it's very important that the first and last frame only differ in the direction you want the cycle to travel. So any little bit of difference on the y-axis will make the bones creep upwards. Easiest to copy the first frame and shift-translate on the x-axis, if traveling horizontally.

[Psmith]

Wes:

When using Pin Bones to animate this example, every bone is moving up, down and sideways. I don't think that kind of bone movement can be "Additive" without bizarre results - as the video below will demonstrate:



What do you see going on here?


Greg Smith

[synthsin75]

When using Pin Bones to animate this example, every bone is moving up, down and sideways. I don't think that kind of bone movement can be "Additive" without bizarre results - as the video below will demonstrate:

What do you see going on here?

Only the last keyframes in the cycle should be cycled. Let me know if that helps your results.

[Psmith]

Wes:

No, didn't really help, though the result was a little more orderly. The one bone that ended up lowest on the Y axis kept journeying lower - as if it were the only offending bone.


Greg Smith

[synthsin75]

Probably means that bone travels farther on the y-axis than the x-axis, from the first to last frame of the cycle. That's the only way Moho knows in which direction to make the cycle additive. Could probably be tweaked to ensure x-axis travel is greater than y-axis travel.

[synthsin75]

If you would have created the worm flat, that one bone wouldn't need to move so much in the y-axis. Watching your video again, you have to move it really far down to create a flat start for the cycle.

[Welsh Jester]

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.

Really all i will want to do is to cut out a head, import it into Moho and then animate it on top of a body vector/image the easiest way while keeping smooth movement. Using bones to lip sync sounds like it might be tedious, i guess I'll have to see how the smart warp works for myself when i upgrade.

[Greenlaw]

I see. The tedious part of lip-syncing is really just repetitious keyframing of the same mouth shapes. Using a Switch layers is a good one for switching between multiple images, vector or bitmap or groups, but Morph actions and Smart Bone Actions are probably more appropriate for animating bone positions and mesh warping. (Unless you can use a warp outside of the Switch Layer for the images inside it...I guess that should be possible but I haven't been able to access the mesh yet from there yet.) Anyway, these are all just different ways to do the same thing: a quick way to access preset mouth poses over and over again.

In some cases, you can use a hybrid of methods too. The 'easiest' method depends on the style and complexity of the animation your going, so you'll to experiment for yourself and see what works best for you. If you run into a problem with your setup, just post in these forums and somebody is bound to offer help.

[Greenlaw]

Ah! Wes it right!

For some reason, I couldn't get it to work with a scene I was using yesterday (it was a fairly complex scene and, as Wes suggested, maybe Moho was having trouble updating it immediately.) But I just started a clean/simple scene a minute ago and it works. I'll post an example in a minute.

[Greenlaw]

Nevermind...it sort of works but it's not reliable.

Basically, here was my setup:

1. I placed a character face bitmap image in a Switch layer and made a reference copy, and called them ImageA and ImageB.
2. I created a vector layer, traced out the face and placed guides where I wanted the warping to occur. Then I converted this into a mesh.
3. I made a reference of the mesh layer, and renamed the layers MeshA and MeshB.
4. For each of the Switch Layer images, I selected the corresponding meshes for Smart Warp.
5. I set the Switch Layer for Image B and and then edited Mesh B for my second pose.

This seemed to work at first but after a while, the Smart Warp stopped deforming the second image. It would still mask the image, just no deformation.

I probably should report this but...IMO, this is a somewhat convoluted way to setup adn animate mouth shapes. There are easier and more direct ways to do this in Moho and get better results. For example, All this gives you is the ability to use a Switch Layer--you may be able to switch between different warp results, but you're still just switching between static images. For efficiency and reliability, you may as well just render out the warp results as static Switch Layer images. Or, alternatively, just use a static image with a single Smart Warp mesh, make a Smart Bone Action that can switch to different mouth poses--no Switch Layer needed. Just remember to set it to Step Mode with Use Previous Interpolation enabled.

Now, if you do want the warping effect to be animated, you''re probably better off using a static image with a Smart Warp applied, again without the Switch Layer, and creating a set of mouth poses as Morph Actions (phonemes or expressions). If you label the Actions clearly, you can just click through the different poses for your lip-sync, and Moho will interpolate between the different Smart Warp positions.

I can probably come up with a few more variations for quickly animating mouth shapes using Smart Warp and any of these make more sense to me than forcing them into a Switch Layer. Not that it's wrong to try to use a Switch Layer here--it's just that in this case I don't think it's a very an effective use for it.