Reusability

[Jkoseattle]

I'm hoping to be able to put together animations very quickly. My idea is to use Moho in place of Vyond for instructional design courses, to have the opportunity for more variety than Vyond offers, and distinguish myself a bit from my competition. The biggest hurdle is development time, which is typically much more for Moho of course.

I'm thinking I can cut down that development time by employing techniques that streamline things. Here are my ideas:

1. Rig up a few characters in advance that are all built with the same layer structure.
2. Then create a set of "poses" as Actions. Each Action's frame 1 would be the same neutral pose, and so would involve the character moving from neutral into the pose, and then back out. Depending on how long I want the pose held, I could just drag keyframes around in the actual projects. I would only use the actions by copying, not by reference, so that I could tweak things as needed later on. Poses would be things like "point in the air", "fist of triumph", "palms out in despair", "hands behind back", etc. I could have some poses only move arms and hands, others for facial expressions.
3. When I'm creating a new animation, I import the character I want, the move them around primarily by employing these pose actions. I would inevitably be coming up with poses I hadn't created yet, in which case I would add them to the source, thereby building up a library of poses over time. (This is how Vyond already does it, actually)
4. Mouth movements would be very simple and I would use an audio sync source on a switch for the mouth.

Is this going to work??? Is it even a good idea???

[hayasidist]

take a look a the Character Wizard. You've just presented its high-level design.

so now "all you have to do" is build your assets in a similar fashion. (Manual, at the end of Ch 15, explains how to do that)

the factory stuff is in (windows default) C:\Program Files\Moho\Resources\Support\Common\Character Wizard
your custom stuff goes in <your custom folder>\Character Wizard

you can see it in Moho in: Window > Character wizard

(or, ofc, re-invent it! Which most people would think would be a good idea, but ...)

[Maestral]

Beg your pardon... / I completely misinterpreted your writing.

[chucky]

DO not attempt putting assets in the character wizard.
The concept is fine, many have had the same idea including myself.
In actual practice, putting assets in the wizard is an exhausting and thankless task, you will bore of it before you get to the first nose.
You will start bushy tailed and bright eyed, but that will not last as the process will squish that enthusiasm as surely as the sun rises.

Unless there exists a script that will save and name layers as new files to the correct folders as an automation, that will save you time and sanity.

[Greenlaw]

Yeah, don't bother with updating Character Wizard...I think that's going to be a huge time-suck.

If you just want a simple rig that's easily customizable, I'd focus on building a rig template that is specifically designed for easy modification. You can keep it basic by standardizing a rig with placeholder art layers, and just replace the artwork as needed. A lot of body parts (hands, mouth shapes, etc.) can just use Switch layers, and if used the Switch Selection Window to animate them, updating the switches should be pretty straightforward.

If you want to keeps it really plug-and-play, make a layer PSD file that has all the placeholder art layers already linked to Moho. Then just update the art in your paint program for each new character. (Well, it's actually a little more involved than that but that's the gist of it. Will elaborate when I have time.)

Building a reusable rig template is still a lot of work (nobody said animation was easy) but if you're need a lot of characters rigged and you don't have a lot of time, I think this is a pretty good way to go. I did something like this back when I was doing development work for a TV show several years ago, and this was the only way I could think of to get about a dozen characters rigged and ready for animation in a few days. They weren't the most fun rigs to animate but they worked well enough for our task and timetable.

Also look into Mult Rush's Transform Rig tool. It adds capabilities for easily modifying the proportions of a rig without breaking it. (I wish I had this a long time ago!)

[hayasidist]

yeah -- sorry -- can see how my original was not interpreted as intended... CW has got no facilities for adding new torso / clothing / rig... and adding stuff is arcane to say the least. It IS a good idea to re-invent.

as an aside, I've been looking at makehuman > blender > export as the basis for reusable body parts / pose references ... moho can import .obj (which can be rotated then exported as pngs or simply used to draw over...) It's not as useful as I'd hoped for re-usable body parts; but does provide a fair digital version of an artist's mannequin.