Shearing

[Yosemite Sam]

Hey guys, I have a question. I understand that Moho works in a 3D environment, but is there a way to Rotate and Shear image layers without them being effected by camera movements? I know this can be done with points, but what about layers? I'm working on a big project with a team that primarily uses Flash and Toon Boom, and they are constantly ask me to use Shearing for layers (I'm guessing this can be done in those programs and not effected by camera moves), but is there any way to do this in Moho.

I have many image based props where this would be incredibly handy.

Thanks!

[synthsin75]

If you're not animating the image, you could set it, or it's group, immune to camera.

But more likely, you're animating them. You could export and reimport an image sequence of the shear/rotate animation. That would work if camera animation was done on a final pass, where it wouldn't mess up interactions with props. Another options would be to track the camera back far enough (and zoom in to compensate) that you don't notice the parallax of sheared/rotated layers.

[Víctor Paredes]

It requires an extra step, but you could use a mesh to distort the layers.
You can use this tool over the mesh:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=22441

[synthsin75]

D'oh, smart mesh. Perfect, Victor.

[Yosemite Sam]

It requires an extra step, but you could use a mesh to distort the layers.
You can use this tool over the mesh:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=22441

Thanks for the link Victor!

[Yosemite Sam]

D'oh, smart mesh. Perfect, Victor.

Yeah I was looking to avoid meshes because of time, but yeah that's def a solution. I will check out that script Victor linked!

[slowtiger]

Had that problem, solved it by first animating without camera movement, then re-imported the sheared layers again and continued.

[Greenlaw]

I don't know if it helps in this case but sometimes I just mute the camera's motion.

[Víctor Paredes]

Oh, wait! there's a way I used some time ago.
Put your layers into a group and scale that group in Z to a very small value, like 0.001 (but not 0, because that can break the project). Now you can rotate the internal layers in 3D, but since the group is flat, they won't suffer any distortion when the camera moves.

[Greenlaw]

While we're at it, another trick is to set your view to Front View. The camera has no effect in any of the orthographic views and you will see the artwork completely 'flat on'. (In fact, you can see the camera as an independent item from this view and other 'non-camera' views in Moho.)

Naturally, this assumes you haven't rotated the layer in Z-space.

Another tip: you can set you project to have two views, one in camera view and one in Front (or any of the other views.) Sometimes it can be helpful to view the project from two or more angles simultaneously.

Hope this helps.