Moho Forum

This is my mouth design. The green "patch" hides all the other elements that come into play with different mouth shapes. When I put this on a cell-shaded character, I just change green to the skin color and it becomes invisible.

However, now I want to put this mouth on a photograph. No matter how hard I try to match the color of the patch to the photograph, I always get a "patch" look. I've tried replacing green with a texture from the photograph, but getting it to match up exactly eludes me.

Any ideas?

P.S. If I redraw the mouth to eliminate all the hidden stuff, I lose the ability to do switch interpolation.

You can try playing with a gradient fill with multiple skin tones and a blurred edge, Not sure if anything will perfectly match the complex coloration of a photo since shading and lighting make multiple colors, but the above suggestion might be able to make it less of a patch look

Good Luck

You'll need to use the mouth shape to mask the rest, so you don't need the green patch.

Little Yamori wrote:You can try playing with a gradient fill with multiple skin tones and a blurred edge, Not sure if anything will perfectly match the complex coloration of a photo since shading and lighting make multiple colors, but the above suggestion might be able to make it less of a patch look

Good Luck

Thanks. I've been playing with this. I have a gradient stored as a style, but when I apply it to another shape (of the same size) the orientation and origin of the gradient are not copied. Is there any way to make that consistent?

synthsin75 wrote:You'll need to use the mouth shape to mask the rest, so you don't need the green patch.

Thanks. Unfortunately masking seems to kill the interpolation as well. Unless I am missing something.

RichardU wrote:Thanks. Unfortunately masking seems to kill the interpolation as well. Unless I am missing something.

You can make several references of your switch layer, place each element in its own switch, and mask using these switch references. Here's a quick example:

https://sites.google.com/site/synthsin/ ... ects=0&d=1

Then just animate the 'mouth' switch and all the others follow automatically.

You can just duplicate the mouth layer....and do adjustments there.... But don't add points

synthsin75 wrote:You can make several references of your switch layer, place each element in its own switch, and mask using these switch references. Here's a quick example:

https://sites.google.com/site/synthsin/ ... ects=0&d=1

Then just animate the 'mouth' switch and all the others follow automatically.

This is unbelievable! And thank you so much for setting up an example. This will revolutionize my work. I knew Layer References would have some cool possibilities, but I never thought of this one.

Thanks again. Awesome!

Richard

RichardU wrote:

synthsin75 wrote:You can make several references of your switch layer, place each element in its own switch, and mask using these switch references. Here's a quick example:

https://sites.google.com/site/synthsin/ ... ects=0&d=1

Then just animate the 'mouth' switch and all the others follow automatically.

This is unbelievable! And thank you so much for setting up an example. This will revolutionize my work. I knew Layer References would have some cool possibilities, but I never thought of this one.

Thanks again. Awesome!

Richard

Glad to help.

Hopefully I don't seem like an idiot but how are there two layers showing in a switch? Also I'm confused as to why couldn't you just do tongues and teeth in the same layer? Would that have interfered with the mask?

TheMinahBird wrote:Hopefully I don't seem like an idiot but how are there two layers showing in a switch? Also I'm confused as to why couldn't you just do tongues and teeth in the same layer? Would that have interfered with the mask?

If this is about the file I posted...Each switch shows a single layer, and then these are masked at the switch level instead of the vector layer level. The switches are references, so they stay in sync with each other. If you hide the tongue layer, you can see for yourself whether it is necessary for the mask. Exaggerated phonemes often put the tongue in front of the upper teeth.

This solution has worked well for me. The only problem I've experienced is occasionally, after importing a character with this type of mouth, the references between layers are broken. On the left side of the timeline, there is an icon. I can't recall exactly what it says and I'm unable to duplicate the problem right now, but it's something Layer Ordering (not referenced). It can be fixed by right-clicking on the Layer Icon and choosing "Sync Channel to Original" for each of the layers.

Actually: The file I'm working with now, when I reopen it, the Tongue, Teeth and Outline layers all say Layer Ordering (not referenced). I can choose Sync Channel to Original which seems to work (the lowest Mouth layer is outlined in red). But when I make changes to the Mouth layer, they are not reflected in the other layers.

This seems to be a Referenced layers problem. Is there a way to really fix a broken sync to original?

If you right-click the reference layer you have the option to Update Layer Reference. Unless you've made changes to the original, you can uncheck everything and hit OK.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. But the Mouth layer is the source for the Tongue layer. if you right click on the Tongue Layer and say Update Layer Reference, it pulls in everything from the Mouth layer, which is not good.