Arm in foreground

[Noisefever]

Hi!

I have a problem, I could solve that with much work involving masks or reorganising layers, but I hope there is a better way.
My character is sitting behind a table. But his arm have to be ON the table to touch something, so the arm have to be in front of the table. The problem: the table is a group, the character is a group. No way without breaking the character apart, to get the arm in front of the table. How do you solve this? Is there a easier way?

Regards, Daniel

[synthsin75]

Make a reference of the character, hide everything in the reference except what needs to be over the table, and place that reference above the table.

[Greenlaw]

Do what Synthsin75 suggests. I use this technique all the time when I don't want to complicate my groups or break my rig.

If you haven't used reference layers before, I would add that, if you change the animation, be sure to do this in the original, not the reference. Changes made to the original will be automatically applied to the reference, but if you animate the reference, the change will exist only in the reference. This could unnecessarily complicate animating the character if you're still working on it.

If you animate the reference by mistake, it's possible to fix this, but better to just avoid the situation. To keep me from animating the reference, I like to append the layer name with '-REF', and sometimes I'll give the layer a bright color like red to alert me. (It would be nice if we could just 'lock' the layer like in After Effects. BTW, Synthsin75 wrote a script to do just that, but this really should be a native feature.)

[uncle808us]

Could you use layer order in the group?

[Noisefever]

Thank you guys!
But if I make a referencer layer this is somehow broken if I move the bones. It seems that the bone in the reference does not affect all points in the arm. Strange. I testet another character, and there it works.
Do you know this problem?

@uncle808us: no, that would be great if that would work recursifly over groups, but sadly it doesn't.

[Noisefever]

Ok, I tested a little bit. It seems I have not bound all points in the original, but it works regardless. But not in the reference. Maybe a bug. If I bind all points, the reference works. Is there a way to show all the bound points? I could swear the bind points tool showed this, but it does not.

[Greenlaw]

Strange, the bindings should carry over inside the Reference layers...I don't think I've ever had a problem with that.

Which binding methods are you using? Which version of Moho?

Edit: I just did a simple test with Flexi-bind, Selective Flexi-bind, and Point Binding, and the bindings were the same in the Reference. This is in version 12.5.

[synthsin75]

You need to reference the ENTIRE character group, bones and all. Then just hide everything but the arms in the one you place above the table. Do not just reference the arm layers.

[Greenlaw]

Oh, duh...yeah, what he said.

I was responding only to the previous post, and lost sight the original issue. Sorry.

[Noisefever]

I have referenced the entire group!
The character with the problems has Region Binding, but the layers using all points for flexi binding (what you described as "Selective Flexi-bind" I think?). Thats the reason the binding tool doesnt show any bound points, I have figured out now.
I can't reproduce that with new simple bone tests, you are right. It just works. It works with newer charakters too. This is my oldest character and it was made it Anime Studio 10. I use now 12.5.
I have no idea whats wrong, I just gues it was a bug when I created the character or I did something really wrong back then. Now, if I bind the points "directly" it works. If I release the points and then use the bones for flexi binding and then select the points for flexi binding, it is broken again.

For the scene I am working on I can just go with this solution. For the future I will try to fix the character.

Thank you for your help!

While trying to understand the problem I have learned a lot about bones, what I never really understood before. I am just a hobbyiest, not a professional e.g.: that region and flexi binding are 2 complete different technical ways for binding to bones. Until now I thought it was more like different methods to bind points with the same underlying technic. If that is understandable