Moho Animation Forum

Hi all,
I thought I read somewhere not to use the offset tool when creating a character. What I mean is when you create all the separate limbs, body, head, etc... of your character as separate pieces away from each other on the screen and rig them, then you use offset tool to reassemble your character (I’m assuming at frame1, not frame 0). Is this still a good practice or will there be problems down the road?

Thanks!

You use the offset bone tool to assemble the rigged parts on frame zero. It's still occasionally useful for some characters that make use of image textures or have very complicated rigging, but overall, Bone>Use Selected Bones For Flexi-Binding has made bone offset largely obsolete.

Thank you for clarifying!

Yes, Offset Bones became generally unnecessary after Use Selected Bones For Flexi-binding was introduced. With Use Selected, it's easy to isolate the influence of specific bones to specific layers without moving anything.

However, as Wes points out, there are still reasons you may want to use Offset Bones. For example, a while back in a 2D segment from All Hail King Julien, I used the Offset Bones tool to move Thighsander Plunderhorse's extra long tail off to the side at frame zero. This was done to help me manage the bones and artwork clutter that was developing in the character, making the rig less confusing to set up and edit.

Thanks for the additional info Greenlaw!