Layer effects in Action

[Borchc]

Good afternoon colleagues, can you tell me if there is any way to bake layer effects from the shadow tab in the action?
The keys break through and work out inside the action, but not when exiting the action. Do you have any ideas, or maybe it is planned as a revision in future versions?
It just caused a slight misunderstanding with the fact that in the General tab, the parameters are animated using an action, but not in the shadows.

[Borchc]

I'm asking because Harmony has the ability to do dynamic lighting and shadow management, which seems to me much more intuitive (albeit through nodes).
And if you try to edit postprocessing in Moho, you need to climb into each layer, so it's interesting that you plan to do something in this direction or do you have some secret knowledge to work with effects

[Greenlaw]

Moho's lighting effects are basically offset alphas processed to simulate light and shadow. It looks pretty good if you don't need complex interior shading, but it's limited.

You can animate the effects using a Smart Bone at the Styles level, but this setup can get complicated.

You should be able to do the same at the layer level. Is the Shading part not working for you in a Smart Bone? I'll test it here later today if I have time.

FWIW, I prefer to render out mattes for any interior shading using Layer Comps with Moho Exporter, and then using a composting program like After Effects to manipulate the matte layers and character alpha for shading and lighting effects. I have much more control this way for editing and animating the effect. The Kung Fu Panda footage on my 2020 demo reel is a good example (i.e., interior shadows for the body and highlight for arms in front of the body.)

[Borchc]

You should be able to do the same at the layer level. Is the Shading part not working for you in a Smart Bone? I'll test it here later today if I have time.

Yes, thanks, I couldn't get it in smartbones.

[SuperSGL]

I tried a quick an easy one; it worked in the actions panel but not in the main timeline. I just changed the shading to a different color nothing else.

[Greenlaw]

Oh, shoot...you're right. I just played with it. I can keyframe the color and the external widget transforms for the shader effects, but not internal controls like Light Angle.

If I ran into this before, it's likely that I used conventional methods (offset layers and masks) in the Smart Bone to do something similar.

More typically, I prefer to set up my lighting effects in compositing. I find this approach is easier and more controllable. But I still use Moho to generate the animated mattes for these lighting effects.

[Greenlaw]

BTW, lately, I've been using Liquid Shapes to shade vector drawings. Combined with Rai's Shapes Window, I can set up locks of hair with fairly detailed highlights, and because it's all vectors, the setup can be easily animated with bones, point animation, Curver, and/or Smart Bones. (Magnet tool is my friend for editing this setup.)

Just another approach to check out in Moho 14.

[Daxel]

I ran into a similar problem. I made a smartbone that disabled the shadow of a layer, and the keyframe appeared and worked on the smartaction but didn't have effect on the main timeline, so I had to animate it directly in the timeline for it to work. In theory, if you can animate something (create a keyframe) you should be able to make it work in an action, so it looks like a bug.

[Borchc]

BTW, lately, I've been using Liquid Shapes to shade vector drawings. Combined with Rai's Shapes Window, I can set up locks of hair with fairly detailed highlights, and because it's all vectors, the setup can be easily animated with bones, point animation, Curver, and/or Smart Bones. (Magnet tool is my friend for editing this setup.)

Just another approach to check out in Moho 14.

There are too many problems with Liquid Shapes for me to embed it in the pipeline on projects, alas, I ran into serious problems when working with this tool, I have already made a ticket.

[Borchc]

I ran into a similar problem. I made a smartbone that disabled the shadow of a layer, and the keyframe appeared and worked on the smartaction but didn't have effect on the main timeline, so I had to animate it directly in the timeline for it to work. In theory, if you can animate something (create a keyframe) you should be able to make it work in an action, so it looks like a bug.

Yes, I can do it, but I need the ability to automate it all.