masking rigged characters best practices

[alanthebox]

hello! i'm a new user with some masking questions! in the shot below (with rigged characters behind a vector layer), if I wanted one of the characters to have one of their arms above the table, is there some special way to achieve this? I tried moving the table layer inside of the character rig, but that had some pretty weird effects. would you just duplicate the rig, move it above the table, and then make all the layers invisible except for the arm that you would like to be on top?



thanks in advance!

[slowtiger]

Yes, that would be the most common solution. Just animate your character without caring for the table visibility, then duplicate that layer and switch off visibility so you get the desired result.

[chucky]

Funny, I actually normally put the table in the rig these days ( bound to a special table bone which is not parented to any other bone) , Of course the other character would need a reference or duplicate with half the table masked out.

[alanthebox]

Funny, I actually normally put the table in the rig these days ( bound to a special table bone which is not parented to any other bone) , Of course the other character would need a reference or duplicate with half the table masked out.

that's interesting! So, if you had a hand rig that is interacting with an object, you could place that object within the rig and just bind it to its own bone?

[Greenlaw]

There are many ways to handle something like this...it often depends on how you set up the character and the environment/props.

The 'obvious' way is to make a reference of your entire character (from its top parent), and place that in front of the table. Then, you simply hide all the parts that should not appear 'in front' of the table (basically, everything but the lower left arm and hand.) Be sure to animate only the original if you want to keep the animation in-sync. It's possible to re-sync but it's best to avoid animating the reference in the first place. To make the switch from behind the table to front, just keyframe the visibility of the reference until just before you need the arm to appear on top of the table.

If the arm is not 'split' so you can hide the upper arm in the reference, you can add a mask there to hide the upper portion. just make a mask slightly bigger than the upper part of the arm and bind it to the upper arm bone.

Another way is to make two copies of the table. Put one in front and one behind the character. Animate a loose mask to hide a section of the closer table layer to reveal the arm and make it look above the table.

Yet another way is to actually insert the table inside the character rig. This gets a little more complicated but I sometimes do this when I need to have the character interact with or directly affect the object. You can make duplicates and masks inside the rig as needed.

There are a few other tricks I can think of but this should get you started.

Hope this helps. Let us know what you wind up doing.

Nice art by the way.

[alanthebox]

thanks for the input, everybody! my background is in flash/after effects, so, it's been an interesting/fun/frustrating process learning how to best utilize moho, but it's great to have such a helpful forum.

and to answer greenlaw, I think using the reference layer is going to work best with the way I've set up these characters.

thanks again!

[chucky]

Glad you found the solution you needed.
I didn't see your last post and the answer was yes, I also could put the chair in the rig and be able to put limbs behind it and lift it too easily by parenting keys.
I think this parenting issue ( plus I was dealing with a lot of characters all sitting and I needed to keep the file from blowing out) was why I went with that method, ultimately. Also maximum flexibility.

Referencing should work fine unless you can foresee more complicated issues in your animation down the 'track'.

Oh I agree with Greenlaw , nice artwork!