[noob]Importing objects & misc questions 2

[bupaje]

First, you may consider starting a Beginner forum if my noob questions don't belong in the 'how do I' forum but if I don't ask the embarassingly simply questions I'll never get to where I want to go. I have some weird memory problems so I may be off to a slow start and ask some obvious questions until it 'clicks' -sorry for that.

1. I created a basic fish shape and wanted to import several to make a school of fish but the new objects seem to be 'connected' to the animation line for the first fish?



2. How do I 'wrap' the layer this so that the fish swim off to the left and then reappear on the right? I guess I can start off screen right but was wondering if there was another way?

3. Without explaining every detail can someone give me the a 'big picture' on what subjects or samples I need to research to create a basic fish object with several differnt fin and body animations that I can use to then animate a varied school of fish?

4. Has anyone done a somewhat 'realistic' fish swimming animation and want to share it? I'm plating with scale and traslate layer/point options and not quite sure of the best way to get a decent side to side tail motion or when I build it what parts should be seperate -in other words should I put each fin, tail, mouth body as seperate layers?

5. Bones ... I created a Fish group which has the eye, body and trianle. I created a new bones layer and named it FishBones; I dragged the Fish group into it, made sure it was selected and then added bones. When I play my animation the fish swims off leaving his bones so apparently it is not bound. I tried to mannually bind the bones but no luck. :/

[bupaje]

Forget number 3, one of those mental slips I'm prone to. The bones should help with the fins and I'm off to try now.

[Lost Marble]

#1: When you import an object from another Moho file, it imports exactly as it was in that file. So, when you import the fish multiple times, each one wants to move in the exact same way. When you say that they seem "connected" to the same animation path, that's because they each have the exact same animation - they're the same object with all the same properties. Your screenshot looks like you moved one of the keyframes, but all the other keys are still the same as the original.

Try this: after importing one of the fish, place it inside a Group layer, and then move the group layer around. The fish will still swim to the left, but the Group layer can be used to offset the fish from one another.

#2: There is no special wrapping function like what you describe. When a fish moves offscreen (outside of the blue rectangle), you could add a new keyframe to make it "jump" all the way back to the right side, and start moving from there again.

#5: When you added the bones as you describe, the fish was probably bound correctly. However, it seems that you already had some layer movement applied to the fish layer, causing it to swim away from the bones. Although this is possible, it isn't something you would normally want to do. The layer movement should probably be applied to the bone layer, so that both the bones and the fish move together.

When you move a group or bone layer, the layers inside it will move too, but when you move one of the sub-layers of a group, it will not cause the group to move.

[bupaje]

Thanks so much for your quick response, exactly what I needed.

[7feet]

And (I'm surprised LM didn't mention it) you could import several differnet versions, or even the one version, of the fish into a particle layer and then use the particle properties to make a whole school of fish. If you set the particle emitter offscreen, and set the "Source depth" to more than zero, you should be able to make swarms of fish that can swim betwen layers of seaweed (as long as you place the "seaweed" layers in different 3d (z depth) places.

--Brian

[bupaje]

Thanks for the tip. I actually was thinking particles might be a cool way to have small groups of 'bait fish' shoot around. Right now I was just trying for something basic to get a handle on using Moho but I hope to do much more so all suggestions are appreciated.

[bupaje]

Not sure what I am not getting right. When I do the Frank tutorial the bones work as advertised I tried doing the same to my fish and when I move teh child bones in the tail they seem to be 'disconnected.'



Not sure what I might be doing wrong? Not sure if it just the way I set up the bones, the bone parameters or my layers?

Here is a shot of the Tool Options



I also tried cuting and pasting the 3 seperate layers on one but it still doesn't do what I epect so not sure if is my expectations that are wrong or my setup .... I thought I should be able to grab the child bones in the tail fins and animate the tail but this is where they seem to pivot off of the body?

I'll keep posting all my noob questions about this first animation project in this thread rather than clutter the entire forum.

Thanks.

[Lost Marble]

If you can post the Moho file itself, we may be able to tell something about how the bones are set up.

However, the first problem is that the vector layers (Body, Eye, and Stripe) should be directly inside the bone layer. Bones can only control the points of vector layers that are directly inside them. Because the vector shapes are first wrapped in a group layer, the bones will not be able to move them - they can only move the entire group as a whole.

[bupaje]

Thanks. Here is a link to the file ...

http://stormvisions.com/moho/myfish1.moho

I actually added the group folder later I think after trying other things but at this point I've resorted to guess work so I appreciate your offer.

[bupaje]

Rats, sorry just realized I didn't save the boned version. :/


[Edit: Just tried what you said by removing the group folder and it does work better. Something is starting to click in my head (got to see a doctor about that clicking ), going to experiment a bit more -thanks.

[bupaje]

Just wanted to send you all a quick thank you for your ready responses to the noob questions. Your comments on my questions helped a few things click and I have been poking at animating simple geometric shapes just to figure out the relationships with the bones alone, to the children and using group folders to contain little sub animations -very cool. I am going to poke at the switches tomorrow after another hour or two playing with the bones. Great product, and just as importantly a helpful community.