Moho Forum

Hello, I want to ask, is it actually possible to control layer settings with smartbone? Like setting the shading direction?
Because it seems I found the problem here. You can see the video I embed. Thanks

Thanks for sharing that.

I did a quick test and I believe your right: my SBD lighting setup works perfectly inside the Smart Bone Action but it doesn't seem to work on the Mainline. I want to do further testing tonight to be sure but if it looks like a bug, I'll report it right away.

I'm sure this worked in the past but I normally apply my lighting in After Effects and hadn't run into this till now.

I don't have time to try myself right now but if you get a chance, try disabling multithreaded rendering. Not sure if that will help, just wondering. (Actually, I'm pretty sure it won't make a difference since the error is visible with Ctrl-R.)

Thank you very much sir for your valuable feedback. Hope this is just a fixable bug
Because I'm improving the quality of my animation especially in lighting and shadows. That's why I need the "action"



If you apply lighting in AE, does that mean you have to export each character including the background?

You'd need to use shape effects, if you want it to work with smart bones.

I revisited my test and, yeah, I think this is a bug. But if so, it's been this way for some time because I see the same behavior in Moho 12.5. I'll file a report tonight...hopefully it's something easily fixable.

Re: After Effects for lighting effects, I use Moho's Layer Comps to output layer passes, which I then composite and manipulate in other programs, like After Effects. So, yes, in this situation, I would output the characters and backgrounds as different Layer Comps, and then use any number of tricks in Ae to light the characters.

Using Layer Comps is really easy. Just set a layer comp for each of your passes in the Layer Comps window. A basic example might be BG for only visible background elements, Char for characters, and FG for foreground elements. Then when you launch Moho Exporter, double-click the project so you can enable Render Layer Comps, and set the output path and any other custom render settings, and close the settings window. Next click the Split Selected By Layer Comps...this will generate all your render passes. Finally, click the Start button and Moho will save the passes to separate folders. (To save time, you may want to save a render profile before clicking Start so you can reload these settings later.)

In Ae, load each of the render passes and apply your effects. There are many ways to light a character in Ae.

I usually like to duplicate the character layer and precomp it so I can use it's alpha to build a custom light and shadow pass...this probably gives you the most control over the look of the effect.

If you prefer to use existing tools in Ae, you can use Styles to create edge lighting and shadow effects similar to how Moho does it. One big advantage Ae has over Moho for this is that you can see and adjust the effect live.

Another way is to use a custom script. There are many scripts for this, some free some paid. I like this one from Reuben Lara:



Sometimes I like to set up my lighting as a pass in Moho and comp it in Ae. You can see this approach used in the Kung Fu Panda footage on my 2019 demo reel For Po's lighitng, I used masked paths to get the lighting pass, and the direction for this was fully controllable using an SBD but I was also able to reshape it using the Magnet tool when I needed to. I was also able to separate the arm in a Layer Comp pass so I could get lighting cast on the arm when it's in front of the body.

A good example of where I relied on Moho for lighting effects is the spaceman version of Timmy (Dekker Moonboots) from Boss Baby (also on that reel.) Like with Po, I used masked paths to get directional lighting that I could easily control with SBDs and reshape with the Magnet if I had to. The rig is even able remove the upward interior lighting on the face entirely when the helmet was removed. That was probably the most complicated lighting setup I've done in entirely in Moho...but since then, I try to do lighting in Ae as much as possible because it's so much easier and faster there.

synthsin75 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 2:41 am You'd need to use shape effects, if you want it to work with smart bones.

That crossed my mind but, FWIW, I do see the effect working inside the Smart Bone Action so it probably should work? I'll ask.

But yeah, shape effects should work...definitely used that with SBDs before. I believe parts of Dekker Moonboots (Timmy) were lit that way.

Another tip about using Layer Comps: I like to create a Master layer comp that has all the layers visible. This way, I can easily go back to this view when I'm working on the animation. After I click Split in Moho Exporter but before I click Start, I'll select and remove this pass from the batch queue since it's not needed for compositing.

One more tip: To speed up the render, if you have passes that don't move--like the background for example--set that pass to render only 1 frame. This will save a ton of time, and in AE you can simply hold that single frame for the duration of the scene.

I revisited my test and, yeah, I think this is a bug. But if so, it's been this way for some time because I see the same behavior in Moho 12.5. I'll file a report tonight...hopefully it's something easily fixable

Hopefully this is a bug and in the future it can be used properly in Moho, because it will be very useful.
Thanks for taking the time to review and test.

Thank you also for explaining about layer comps and after effects. I'll try to implement it in my future projects while waiting for a fix for the problem I'm facing.

I reported this today.

I don't know if this is a bug or not but it would be cool to see this working as a feature someday.