Styles not working >>> Driving me mad!

[Windmill]

>__< another n00b question for you guys... any help would be appriciated!
I'm sorry, I'm only 15, I've had very little experience with programs like these.



I get a style I want to use sorted out. Yay. Now, the tutorial says to apply it.

But.... how? That section that I circled won't let me. Its grey. The tutorials don't seem to have this bit in them and its driving me mad. I'm currently searching and trying to find the problem but I so far am having no luck. Hoping by the time I figure this out its fixed. If I haven't replied when you read this and you know the answer, please help me!

Also, when I want to recolour a shape etc it asks if I just want to change the colours of the shape etc or if I want to create a new shape and if I click just change it doesn't change anything. Any tips?

Thanks for the help!

[Windmill]

EDIT: Actually, no I haven't sorted it out (thought I had). Any help still appriciated!

[heyvern]

My brother is going through the style learning curve in Moho. I have been helping him as best I can.

He mentioned a post from Rasheed I believe, he found doing a search on styles that really helped him recently but you would have to search it out.

What I discovered talking to my brother about this...

... the create shape and select shape tools can be confusing.

In the screen capture you provided... there is no shape created yet!!!

You have merely selected the points to MAKE a shape. You must hit the space bar at this point and now you have a shape.

To select the shape and modify it or add a style to it... use the shape select tool.

This is the tricky part that was confusing. The create and select shape tools... and hitting the space bar to create a shape.

Also... the drawing tools have an option for auto fill.

If you have that box checked once a shape is "closed" using any of the drawing tools it automatically creates a shape. Then you just use the select shape tool to select it and change it's attributes in the style window... or apply a style to it (the circled area in the screen capture would not be grayed out if you have a shape selected.)

I would also suggest going into the preferences and checking the box to automatically name shapes and bones.

-Vern

[heyvern]

Additional notes:

You create a style as in your screen capture.

You then must create a shape FIRST before you can apply a style.

You select the shape THEN apply the style.

At the top of the style pallette on the fill and/or stroke...

there are two check boxes:

Enable Fill (or stroke)
Fill color (or stroke color or wieght)

To use a style the Enable Fill must be checked. The Fill color must be unchecked! Otherwise the settings on the shape OVERRIDE the syle applied!

Also if the Fill color is unchecked in the named style the color of the shape will be used even if the Fill color box is unchecked for that shape.

This is kind of tricky... but once you "get it" it becomes much easier and almost seems "obvious".

For me this was one of the trickiest things in Moho to get the hang of... well... next to masking...


-Vern

[heyvern]

One more thing...

When you use the create shape tool on a mesh that already has a shape you get that alert box mentioned about creating a shape or modifying the old one...

Keep in mind one thing...

if you hit No a new shape is created ON TOP of the old shape.

If you hit yes the previous shape is selected and it's attributes are editable in the style pallette.

However... you still have the create shape tool selected. In some case this may prevent you from editing the selected shapes properly. You really should select shapes using the shape select tool or the named shape select menu in the style pallette.

-Vern