Hi tifacloud7!
By default, the Custom Styles in the Reference will always refer to the Custom Styles used in the original, so you can't edit them directly. You must break the connection with the Custom Style, so that the one used in the Reference will become unique.
Here's an example from my experience: Back when I was working on Boss Baby, I needed to make many dozens of cats. (Clips from the episode can be seen in
one of my demo reels.) To do this, I made a single cat character, and then saved seven copies of the scene (to make 8 unique cats,) and changed the Custom Styles of each by simply renaming them and making the Style changes. Like you, I found this
appeared to work at first, but when I imported all of the cats to the same project file as the original, the Styles regressed to the original style.
That's when I learned about Style IDs. I mistakenly thought changing the
names of the Custom Styles would make them unique, but as it turns out, Moho recognizes only the Style ID, not the name. Changing the Style IDs will allow each copy or reference to have a unique custom styles that work independently from other copies/references.
Fortunately, changing the Style IDs is easy to do.
First,
don't do what I did, which was to open each copy in a text editor, search for the Style ID, and change it manually in each copy. This made sense to me at the time, and it did work, but it's also not necessary.
Instead, use Moho's Import command to bring a copy or a Reference into a new project. This can be a copy or a Reference of itself if you desire. A window will pop up with two options in the bottom right corner.
The first option is
Import By Reference, which will create a link to the original, similar to what happens when you make the Reference inside the Layer Window. If you want a Reference, check this option.
The second option is
Unlink Shared Styles, and
this is one is critical. What Unlink Shared Styles does is it changes the Style ID for any Custom Styles it finds in the imported items. It's normally checked on by default, but if it isn't, be sure to check it on now. Continue with the import.
If you checked Import By Reference, you should see a Reference copy in your project; otherwise, it will be a duplicate copy.
But the important thing is that the second copy now has its own Custom Styles that you can change. Trust me, this procedure is MUCH easier than opening each file in a text editor and changing the values manually, especially if you're using many Custom Styles.
Tip: If you import the reference to its own project, it's easier to change the Custom Style names to have unique names, and then import the Reference. Otherwise, you will see the Custom Styles appear multiple times in the project with identical names. Note that you can change the names of the copies without this step, but it can be a little confusing to identify which Style belongs to which item if you have many copies.
Changing the Style IDs for Duplicates and References takes a little planning, but it's not hard to do when you understand how it works. I'll think about making a tutorial on this topic since it may not be fully clear in the text-only explanation above. But, until then, if you have questions, feel free to ask.
I hope this helps.
Is there a way to keep the reference layer's path synced, but have its style stay different from the original — without breaking the reference?
