Bitmap Character rig: Hiding eyes after leaving face.

[DanielG1939]

Hi, I have a bitmap Character Rig with functioning head turning and functioning eyes, The only problem is when I have my character fully facing to the right or left the eyes and eyebrows hang off the side of the face. I only want one eye to be present when the head is turned to be fully facing to the right or left. I have tried using masks to hide the eyes but all the masking I've tried didn't work. I even tried making it to where there are single eye Rigs for both eyes but I found this to break the masking of the pupils and eyeball while also being possibly unnecessary. I might be missing something that could help me hide the eyes, but if I did know what I was missing I wouldn't be asking about it lol. If I need to, I can show pictures of how the character rig looks and how the eyes work!

[synthsin75]

Sometimes you have to render a frame to check the masking. Complex masking doesn't always display correctly in the workspace.

[Greenlaw]

For example of what synthsin75 is talking about, take a look at the Puss rig in this video...

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/269815494

In the demo section, when Puss turns his head, notice how the eyes leave the head? This is a masking display error, but it does not affect the final render, so I just ignore it.

It is possible to set up the eyes to mask properly in the Workspace, but I then find this might cause issues when rendering, so in situations where I absolutely need to see correct masking and get correct rendering, I will duplicate the eyes/head layers and use both masking methods, but set one to display only and the other to render only. However, I usually won't bother because such setups might degrade interactivity and performance.

One more thing to check is how the masking looks when you disable/enable GPU Acceleration. I find that head masking usually looks better with GPU disabled.

[Greenlaw]

This isn't to say you can't do this with one setup. The issue appears when you try to nest multiple masks. Simplifying the masking technique should work better if you need the matched preview and render result.

A good example of something that looks complex but is actually simple (for Moho to display and render) is Victor's method for masking eyes. He creates a rectangular shape that's larger than the head and has holes cut out in it. This layer is the characters 'skin' and it's a literal mask for the eyes (and sometimes the mouth.) Then, he uses the head to mask this 'skin' shape. This setup is technically simpler and should look correct in the Workspace display and in the final render.

I think this was the thread describing the technique: http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=87542. Unfortunately, many of the image links are broken in this thread. (Casualties of TinyPic.) See if you can make sense of posts. If I have time, I might be able to whip up an example project.

Update: I think there are some downloadable examples in that thread.

[DanielG1939]

Oh, okay. The masking solution I came up with to help mask the eyes did help, I just never saw the results cause I never rendered the frame. That's nice to know, Thank you guys for the explanation!