Moho Animation Forum

I know a shape can be filled with a color, but I have a character wearing a loose, floppy shirt. Can I fill that shirt with a black & white texture that approximates chained mail?

Try it.

Sure. There are two approaches you can take:

1. Image Texture Effect in Style.

2. Use your shirt layer as a mask for an image layer.

Note that point animation by itself will not deform your image, you need the character's bones to do that. The exception is when you use a Smart Mesh, but you probably won't need that.

So, 1 or 2? There are different advantages with each. With 1, the image is automatically clipped by the shape, so it's much easier to setup. Also, the image won't occlude (i.e., prevent you from clicking) what's below it because it's not a separate layer. 2 is directly manipulated and has all the properties of a layer, so it might be easier to work with. The downside is that because it's a layer, it might prevent you from selecting an item beneath it, even through the masked areas of the image. If the image is only big enough to fill the vector shape, it shouldn't be a problem.

For that last part, I wish Moho was smart enough to not block layers with 'invisible' parts of layers. Synthsin75 wrote a useful Layer Selector script a while back that lets you click through the invisible areas. (Sorry, I don't have the link handy. Maybe Wes can help here.)

Thanks Greenlaw. I got Option #1 working. Option #2 (Masks) is going to take some practice.

Glad to hear it worked out for you.

I usually like to use #1 for texture fills but it can be a pain for textures that you need to wrap around seamlessly inside an action because you can't constrain the transform gizmo on an axis like you can with the Transform Layer or Transform Points tools. But I can usually manage by drawing guides and marks in a separate layer and then carefully lining up the gizmo to that.