Multiple Scenes without additional video cut

[Marbelous]

Hello,

I'm starting a project with different scenes/views. Like
#1 "living room couch front",
#2 "shoulder view looking from behind the couch onto the tv",
#3 "scene outside the house".
And the characters will - not always - but sometimes, appear in different views INSIDE these scenes, for example scene#2 character would mainly sit in back view in front of the tv but in scene#1 could stand in front and side view in front of the couch
I have Moho Pro, can I work with different scenes in ONE file or do I need to make a moho-file for each scene and later put them together in a video editing software?

How do you do that?

Should I make folders for each scene and switch through them? But then the character exists multiple times in my file, once in scene 1, once in scene 2??
Or should this be done with switching the backgrounds? (But this sounds like it would become messy. My video would be around 1 minute and consists of 5 different scenes)

[slowtiger]

The usual way is to have separate projects for each scene, it makes navigating and handling much easier, and in case of "shit happens" (file corruption) you don't lose all your work.

Studios keep their characters in "master files" and import from them to the scene files.

[Marbelous]

Thank you very much for your reply.
So I would create all my character views in ONE moho-file, and import then import it as "moho object" to my 5 different scene-files.
Does my imported character file work like a reference? Changes made to the character rig there would change automatically in all other files?

[slowtiger]

There's no one true way to do this. But a common solution would be:
- create all characters in 1 file - this makes sure they've got all the relative sizes right
- eventually break this up into 1 file per character - because you may want to include different views/variations
- import from this to your scenes.
No, Moho doesn't reference to separate files (unfortunately). Changes in the character file don't update any scene file.

Be aware that I wrote from a studio point of view. For a smaller project some steps of this might be unnecessary.

[hayasidist]

Changes in the character file don't update any scene file.

If you import by reference (was that introduced in AS11?) that should propagate changes from the master source to the individual scenes. Obviously, you'll need to manage any scene-specific tweaks to a character that you may have made and render again. A little more on that here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=29106

[Marbelous]

Ok, I imported one of my files as reference, and it seems to work and update correctly.
Do you use it often? I hope it doesnt bring any bugs later on...

[hayasidist]

Do you use it often? ...

All the time that I need the same thing in multiple scenes - not just restricted to characters but props, scenery ...

But, as noted above, be very careful if you customise the referenced copy. That might mean, e.g., interleaving layers such as adding a prop that a character will pick up ...

[Marbelous]

I'm actually planning to sometimes have an object INSIDE the character (like picking up something its behind the hands but in front of body).
I will try this and see what happens...

[hayasidist]

I'm actually planning to sometimes have an object INSIDE the character (like picking up something its behind the hands but in front of body).

yes - that's what I mean about interleaving -- it works fine as long as you take care when updating a reference -- I think the "remove layers that aren't in the original" is the default action -- turn that off to preserve your "extra" layer(s) [or consider adding them to the master and setting them to "don't render / invisible" in reference copies where they're not needed..]

[mrc]

I found that referencing Moho files worked really well but you might have to rethink how you save and name file versions. The referenced file must keep its name, so when you, say, improve your character rig, add props to it etc. you cannot save it as v2, because the reference you still be to the old version.

Marc

[hayasidist]

...you might have to rethink how you save and name file versions...

what I do is always have the current file as (e.g.) CharacterX.moho then load into moho to update; rename the file as in the directory to (e.g.) CharacterX_<revision number>.moho whilst moho is running; then update and save in moho - which creates the new version of CharacterX.moho

[mrc]

what I do is always have the current file as (e.g.) CharacterX.moho then load into moho to update; rename the file as in the directory to (e.g.) CharacterX_<revision number>.moho whilst moho is running; then update and save in moho - which creates the new version of CharacterX.moho

Yes, that is how I do it, too, in cases like this. Otherwise I like to keep the version in my current file name wherever possible.

Marc