Moho Forum

I've ran into a fix now. I created a reasonably good head turn and tilt and everything, with smart bones working nicely, but everything is done with point motion since this is what I got to work. Now my problem is that the mouth shapes look nicely in front view but ugly in 3/4 view. (No switch layers used.)

Is there any good example in the factory content with a good mouth shapes setup which works even in head turns, so I can study this? Or anywhere else?

Also my understanding is that by using switch layers, I need to apply any changes in a head turn to each and every layer inside the switch separately. Correct?

I have tricks for this I've used over the years.

The easiest is to simply rotate the mouth on the Y axis, adding real perspective to the image. This can work with simpler characters who don't have a lot of detail in their mouth shapes. I use this as part of the head turn Smart Bone Dial (SBD), but sometimes make it a separate SBD so I can control the degree of the rotation.

For more realistic mouths, I place each mouth shape in it's own group, and separate the drawing into the following layers:

1. Mouth (the main shape)
2. Teeth (upper and lower)
3. Tongue

Now, when I want to 'turn' the mouth, I can change the angle by sliding the Teeth and Tongue layers a shorter distance than the Mouth layer, creating the appearance of depth. Simulating depth this way is a trick, but a pretty good one...and a lot easier than animating points in a single layer.

For more realistic mouths, I'll also add some point animation in the mouth shape to change the drawing's perpective. Depending on the level of detail in the design, I can see also doing this for the tongue and teeth, but I don't think that's ever been necessary in my work.

Another convenient option is to employ a mesh warp to alter the shape of the mouth during the turn. I frequently use this technique as it's a global change that doesn't necessitate modifying individual drawings. I first saw Victor using this technique when I worked with him on Boss Baby, and I adopted it ever since.

Many times, I'll use a combination of the techniques above. How effective the techniques are depends on the planning I put into the drawing construction and layering, but I've also successfully applied these tricks as an afterthought.

Hope this helps.

Thanks! But I should've been more specific: I need some help with the rigging/smart bone setup, in particular, which transformation should be done with bones and which one with points. I've seen a bunch of videos which either tackle a head turn or a mouth shape setup, but none combining both.

Oh well, maybe I should just go to bed and let the solution come to me in a dream.

Oh, I think I understand. I animate the mouth direction movements with two separate Smart Bone Dials: head turn (Left/Right or on Y) and Head Tilt (Up/Down or on X).

A long time ago, I did this exclusively with Point animation, taking great care that the Turn Smart Bone controlled only points' X movement and that the Tilt Bone controlled only their Y movement. This can work, but it's a headache to prevent errors and conflicts.

Since then, I prefer to use a bone to move a mouth group for the turn motion, with some point animation added to the Smart bone for perspective shifts, and directly animate the mouth group on Y for the up/down motion. I tend to avoid adding Y-point animation, especially if that axis is being controlled at all in the Turn action. Usually, just moving the group up and down works fine.

Sometimes, I'll use a separate child bone to move the group on Y instead; this means I can keep all the keyframes in the Bones channel, which simplifies animation and editing. To prevent confusion and error during animation, I'll Shy these 'mover' bones. This way, I use only the Smart Bone to animate these items, and can't accidentally keyframe the 'mover' bones and create a conflict.

For very realistic characters, I might also insert Mesh Warp layers and/or other tricks I described earlier. This level of detail doesn't come up that often, though. When I need that much realism, it's time to switch to a 3D program.

I found a solution - for now. Using a switch for the mouth, controlled by a smart bone.

Each mouth shape is a complex setup of shapes on one layer, with holes to avoid masking but still show teeth. (I'll maybe post the setup, but not before September, I have 3 jobs to finish at the same time now ...)

Duplicate this layer, make phonemes M X E I A O F (X is the idle mouth which I need often).

Turn action: go into each mouth layer and change what's needed (a lot). Repeat for other direction. (Points only.)
Tilt action: same, but only for 3 mouth shapes.
Smile action: only affects M layer.

Now I can continue any dialogue while he's turning his head, and in front view even tilt it a bit.

This is not a 100% complete rig, it works only for what I need right now (again, I did the storyboard so I should know which expression and poses I need).

I guess y'all want to see the results by now ...

https://youtu.be/vWnc8BzuaJM

WOW great job with the lip syncing even if you used a program this must have been quite tedious to animate. Even the jaw moving adds greatly to the effect. I see so many that don't move the jaw and makes the animation appear static. Nice work! When I use switch layers I can never get them all to work with the head turns.

In fact it wasn't as tedious as you might think. The setup worked as planned (aside from tiny quirks). Drawing body poses is very fast, and the time I used to refine the head rig was well spent since I had nearly no corrections done later. Lip sync was done by hand, again having to move just 1 dial makes it fast.

I've noticed that a certain order of doing things works best for this:
- First overall poses, like the body (switch layer), sideways head tilts, if necessary, adjust head position a bit.
- Next would be head turns and tilts.
- Eye brows. Swinging hair (only 1 character).
- Blinks and eye lid positions. Pupil positions.
- Last thing I do is the lip sync as all the keys clog up the timeline.

Sticking to this, all scenes with this setup were simple assembly line work. Otherwise I wouldn't been able to turn out 7 minutes of this in about 2 months' time. And don't forget that I also do backgrounds and all other stuff all by myself.

Hi I'm just starting Moho and I'm at my wits end with smart dials right now. I thought I might add to this post to be conservative since it almost hosts the same issue I have. If I'm wrong in this let me know, I'll make a new post accordingly.

I have a video of the issue to spell it out clearly and a copy of my file hyperlinked for review. To be short I can't figure out how to get what I call smart dials to animate like the actions I've created inform them to. How exactly do I make smart dials active and ready to use for animation? Thanks in advance

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
https://youtu.be/fxdsOQthkhU

Your smart bone action name must match the smart bone name exactly. They are connected by the name.

ain't that something, you're absolutely right. The animation for the 'head turn' dial is wonky and the 'eyes' dial doesn't move at all now but I should be able to figure that out. Thank you synthsin75!