Moho Forum

I'm an ambitious intermediate user, and realized (eventually) that doing a 360 body rotation on what is going to be a complex cartoony human WAS NUTS. I learned through reading here, that starting with the animatics was the best starting point, rig only the rotations you're going to use. Then piece them together when needed.

So I won't suck up more time on the 360, and will chop up the rotations to save my sanity. Definitely do the full front (side to side), and a 3/4 back angle.

Q1: Are you rigging the different rotation angles in the same character moho file? (Different bone groups) Or do you have multiple moho files for each characters rotation section?
I want to make sure I can easily piece together two rotations that are to look seamless in the same shot. I'm doing a rock star! She is going to get a little wild on stage.

Q2: A few times, all of the 3 members are in the same shot. What's the best approach for this? Just importing them as a reference? Layer them seperate in the video editor??

Q3: I'm going to have different guitars, outfits, hair styles, makeup.... Any additional tips for how to organize that would be appreciated. I already have reference layers for the arms/hands, so the guitar can be under them, and was just gonna use switch layers, but this is going to get messy fast! I'm slowly learning that one rigged character doesn't have to do EVERYTHING. Maybe that applies for this too.

Thanks for any tips. I don't know why the rotation muddles my brain so much!

a few personal thoughts.

Q1: rotations:

how fast is you character going to turn through 360? what else are they going to be doing whilst they turn? will this be the same for all 360 spins? take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_(dan ... ymnastics) for some inspiration if necessary. A thing to note: in some spins, different body parts turn at different rates!

Is FBF a sensible option? (There are ways to take a rigged moho vector-based object and bake its vectors to make a vector FBF layer -- and you can seamlessly drop an FBF sequence in to the animation to make a transition between different rigs.)

Would 8 poses (at 45 deg separation) each with the capability to turn 22.5 (and maybe up to 30 deg to give you some flexibility) in either direction be overkill (8 is what you get from moho's character wizard -- that's not advice to use CW, just an observation to help you decide) or would it perhaps be easier to implement than ...

...4 poses at 90 deg separation with the ability to turn 45 in either direction? (IOW in the 4-rig scenario e.g. rig "C" faces 270 degrees - it moves by -45 to 225 and hands off to rig "B" built facing 180 but starts at its +45 = 225, and moves by -90 to 135 when rig "A" at its +45 kicks in ...)

Rigs: you might want to consider different rigs for different shots. E.g.: your guitarist - you might want to show her fingers on the strings. So you'll need a good hand rig for this. But it's close up! So no need for the whole body. And the rig for the Long Shot (LS) (whole body) doesn't need the high detail finger rig. Also you might want to have a low-angle shot looking up at her from the POV of "the audience near the stage" -- IOW not every shot needs to be from a rostrum camera neatly positioned at "eye level" with a near horizontal aim -- maybe a rig or two for that???

Bottom line: PLAN and rig for the planned shots. If there's a transition that is simply "too hard" or "not worth the effort of FBF" plan a cut-away. Trivial example: you have a "seated" LS rig and a "standing-up" LS rig. For the 10 frames that would be the transition, cut to a CU of the face!

Q2: From the way you've asked this, it seems that you've maybe not thought too much about the number of moho files??? My own view: one shot = at least one file. So, in the above "trivial" there are three files: LS-seated; CU-face; LS-Standing (I experimented with a 2 minute "do it all in one huge moho file" ONCE. Never again!) For the "three band members in the same shot" scenario: firstly, is it really just one shot? and then, see Q3.


Q3: asset management.
My approach for "significant" animations (i.e. more than just one or two shots) Re-used assets are stored in their own moho files and imported usually by reference (e.g. all the guitarists' stuff is in her file). If there's an asset that really is unique to the shot, it's in the shot's file.


I'm sure there are other opinions...

Hi, thank you for addressing this, and giving me some advice.
I never realized my character could have a file for every shot and pose! lol. Breaking this down to even smaller pieces than what I was originally thinking would definitely be easier. My overthinking likes to get in the way.

I love your idea with using FBF for transitions, and playing with different shot angles as well.
Thanks again.

The quality of multiple rigs is going to depend a lot on how good the underlying turn-around reference is, if that's what you're using. There can be a conspicuous 'jump' switching rigs if you don't have the details just right.

360 rigs can be done, even with a fair degree if detail, though sacrifices will always be made to keep the seams from coming apart in the rig. There are 'cheats'. For example, many of my rigs feature shoulder pads or capes to hide the arm/body joinery.

Here are some thoughts and suggestions for anyone interested. It's mostly stuff I've talked about before, and some of it may sound repetitive to anyone who's been in these forums for a while. But if you're new to 2D puppet animation or to using Moho, this post might be insightful...

IMO, storyboarding is crucial for getting a production completed...period. When I storyboard my productions, regardless of scale, it helps me plan for what I'm going to need. This includes everything I need to draw, how I want to animate it, and how I'm going to rig it.

In my own projects, I typically build a single general-purpose rig for characters that can achieve at least 70% of my posing needs. This rig might be capable of full 360-degree turns, but only if the storyboard calls for it. The rig is also not so over-engineered that I can't easily adapt and modify it for special situations. This type of rig takes the most time to create, but it can pay off during the animation stage.

I avoid adding any Smart Bone controls that don't actually help me animate cleanly and quickly. When a rig is hard to animate because I'm keyframing too many separate controls, it probably needs to be simplified. Don't make controls for anything you can easily keyframe directly.

When I have multiple characters in the project, I'll repurpose my general-purpose rig as much as possible for each character. At the simplest level, this is just a matter of replacing the artwork. At a more advanced level, it can require transforming bones, rebinding the art, and editing or creating new Smart Bone Actions. It's another reason to keep things reasonably adaptable...I don't like using rigs that break easily when I want to change it.

By the way, it's possible to transfer body parts and Smart Bone Actions between characters without breaking them, but the procedure can be a bit complicated. I've explained some of my techniques in other posts, but a better way today is to use Kuzkuz's MR_Transform Rig Tool. This is an advanced rigging tool, but it's well worth learning, and it can simplify sharing rig parts between characters.

When a shots calls for poses and animations that a general-purpose rig can't achieve, I will make a quick one-off rig that performs only the one or two tasks required in the shot. This rig type is very simple, and I may not bother adding any controls because this rig might never be used again.

Another type of one-off is to draw a short FBF sequence. This doesn't typically involve rigging (although it certainly can in Moho,) but in some situations, it can be faster to draw an FBF animation than to rig a puppet to perform the same animation. The result can be more expressive, too. Previously, I would create my FBF sequences in another animation program, but with the recent improvements to the Freehand tool and FBF layer in Moho 14, I think I'll be drawing my FBF animations for Moho completely inside Moho now.

If you look at my very first Moho short Scareplane (2014), I created this in Moho 9.5, using a general-purpose rig for each character that I modified as necessary from shot to shot. There are a few one-off rigs here and there for simple motions, like the close-up of Toullie's paw pressing the seat button, or the side-view of sister jumping, or all three characters tumbling. There are even some hybrid FBF sequences that were drawn and animated using the Switch Layer because Moho didn't have the FBF layer back then.

This short film was conceived as a big learning project for me. When I drew the storyboard, I kept in mind all the features I read about in the manual that I wanted to learn. I created the short film on a laptop during my lunch breaks at work, staying up late at home in the evenings, and hanging out at the public library on weekends. The bulk of the production took about six weeks to complete because I had given myself a fixed deadline.

But before I started rigging and animating the short, I spent several days ahead of production where I just thought about it a lot and created my storyboard. I also experimented with Moho a lot, creating many throwaway tests, much like the simple examples I post in these forums. They're just tests so I try not to make them fancy or complicated; they just need to show me how a feature works so I know how to apply them to real work later.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for adding to the advice Dave and Greenlaw. Everything is in my notes! I feel a lot less confused on how to approach this now.

I'm glad that helps.

There are so many ways to approach rigging in Moho that it's impossible to cover everything in a few posts. I hope to release some proper rigging tutorials once I get some personal time.