Modularity in rigs/Cloning elements

[JoelMayer]

Hi.

So I've worked with TBH for the last couple of projects doing a more or less deep dive into rigging and i can see why maybe some people might prefer it. Apart from just the things we already know like superior drawing tools there's ONE big key to it all in my opinion and that is the ability to "clone" drawing layers and having them basically share stuff like drawing substitions, deformers, etc. That way you basically just need to rig half a character and then clone everything to the other side.

For Moho this would mean i.e.

I rig one arm and hand including smart actions and smart bones and then after the rigging is complete clone the whole thing over to the other side and flip it. Now whenever i add a new hand to a switch layer i.e. the cloned instance of this arm will update as well and include it in it's Switch folder. Same with any smartbones/smart actions attached.

I think this would be a pretty vital addition to Moho and could save you literally up to 50% of rigging time since setting up corrective actions etc. Is a ton of work.

Hope this makes sense.

[synthsin75]

You can already do this with references. Especially if you build a modular rig, with each limb having its own bone layer.

[JoelMayer]

Oh? And it keeps separate animation but also takes over any added smartactions/smartbones after the referencing? Gotta check that maybe i was mistaken i‘ve just never seen anyone doing it in any tutorial i‘ve watched

[synthsin75]

Oh? And it keeps separate animation but also takes over any added smartactions/smartbones after the referencing? Gotta check that maybe i was mistaken i‘ve just never seen anyone doing it in any tutorial i‘ve watched

Yeah, any separate animation you do just unsyncs that animation channel. As long as you're not making changes to existing vectors layers, you can update the reference to add/remove layer changes in the original. Since you can't alter smart actions in a reference, those are always the same as the original.

[JoelMayer]

I‘ll have a go at it! Thanks for enlightening me and sorry for the redundant feature request then

[chucky]

What would be really great would be if bone groups could nest better.
Then you could ( for example) copy a head with all its bones and just plonk it onto a body.
If the nested bones could be seen and controlled from the top bone layer, that would be pure gold.

[synthsin75]

What would be really great would be if bone groups could nest better.
Then you could ( for example) copy a head with all its bones and just plonk it onto a body.
If the nested bones could be seen and controlled from the top bone layer, that would be pure gold.

True, that would make things easier. If I want a modular rig, I usually just make a smart bone skeleton in the main bone layer, to control everything else. So the animation is still all on the main bone layer.

The transform and manipulate bone tools could be modded to work with nested bone layers from the main layer, but the keyframes would still be on separate layers, likely requiring timeline visibility for all the nested bone layers.

[chucky]

What would be really great would be if bone groups could nest better.
Then you could ( for example) copy a head with all its bones and just plonk it onto a body.
If the nested bones could be seen and controlled from the top bone layer, that would be pure gold.

True, that would make things easier. If I want a modular rig, I usually just make a smart bone skeleton in the main bone layer, to control everything else. So the animation is still all on the main bone layer.

The transform and manipulate bone tools could be modded to work with nested bone layers from the main layer, but the keyframes would still be on separate layers, likely requiring timeline visibility for all the nested bone layers.

Yeah right, we have timeline visibility options now... hmmmm.

[Greenlaw]

If I want a modular rig, I usually just make a smart bone skeleton in the main bone layer, to control everything else. So the animation is still all on the main bone layer.

I totally agree with this. It's not always possible but it sure makes life easier when I'm asked to create a new character that's similar to characters I've already rigged. This happens so often, I always keep this possibility in mind now as I'm building the first character in a project.

The original Boss Baby show comes to mind. When we started, I had set up a fairly complex hand/fingers rig setup for Boss and Timmy. This setup worked great for these characters but because I hadn't planned to re-use these hands for other characters in the show, it was a pain to re-purpose them for differently proportioned characters. When Victor Paredes joined us for a few episodes, he figured out a way to re-purpose my hands setup with custom meshes for use with the adult characters. This clever adaptation worked brilliantly!

[chucky]

If I want a modular rig, I usually just make a smart bone skeleton in the main bone layer, to control everything else. So the animation is still all on the main bone layer.

I totally agree with this. It's not always possible but it sure makes life easier when I'm asked to create a new character that's similar to characters I've already rigged. This happens so often, I always keep this possibility in mind now as I'm building the first character in a project.

The original Boss Baby show comes to mind. When we started, I had set up a fairly complex hand/fingers rig setup for Boss and Timmy. This setup worked great for these characters but because I hadn't planned to re-use these hands for other characters in the show, it was a pain to re-purpose them for differently proportioned characters. When Victor Paredes joined us for a few episodes, he figured out a way to re-purpose my hands setup with custom meshes for use with the adult characters. This clever adaptation worked brilliantly!

Sounds like more workarounds,
Moho should be mature enough to support modularity without hacks and tricks.

Plug and play methods that can be applied commercially , even to the point of being able to buy and sell parts as kits.
Noobies would love that, could be a great selling point as well as a real hand for production ( not just highly funded and specialised ones)

Lost Marble should do themselves as well as their users a favour and add some selling points that would be properly popular to more than a few 'vector nerds' like us.

[Greenlaw]

Sounds like more workarounds,
Moho should be mature enough to support modularity without hacks and tricks.

Oh, absolutely! Animating a character in Moho is very fast and efficient, but creating/modifying rigs is where using Moho can get time consuming. I'll certainly welcome any effort to streamline modularity of character parts in Moho.

For me, seeing freehand drawing tools working better and getting a basic set of paint tools is still #1 on my wish list, but improving rig modularity is a very close second.

[chucky]

For me, seeing freehand drawing tools working better and getting a basic set of paint tools is still #1 on my wish list, but improving rig modularity is a very close second.

Complete agreement... These two issues in that order.

I am hoping that because fixing freehand is probably a deep issue, that by fixing that , there might be significant incidental flow on improvements in general performance.
Then rig modularity. Oh that would be sweet.

[Daxel]

I also agree with those two. And I share Chucky's opinion about workarrounds. Sometimes the power users are used to do all sorts of workarrounds that work and are the only possible way to do certain things but some of those workflows can be far from ideal and Moho shouldn't rely on them.

[Greenlaw]

For users who are considering working with 'modular' character parts, here's something to be aware of...

One thing that breaks my 'modular' rig parts is when the rotation of linked Smart Bones changes/resets before reparenting it for another character. When this happens, the SBDs will not work properly, and to fix it, you need to delete the keys and re-key. To prevent this from happening, see the information below.

But first, here's why this happens...

Because the rotation value is relative to the rotation of the parent bones above the Smart Bone, when a bone is unparented or parented to a bone with a different rotation, the value to the child bone can change. And since Smart Bone Dials are based on explicitly keyframed angles, the control can break.

This used to happen to me because I like to keep all my Smart Bone Dials (SBDs) parented to a 'Control SBD Mover' bone (so I can easily move the control SBDs when necessary,) which is parented to a 'SBD master' bone that holds all the control SBD 'mover' bones, which is then parented to a 'stabilizer' bone with Independent Angle active and parented to the character's root bone. I may have additional 'SBD Control Mover' bones for separate control sets (i.e., one set for limbs, another for the face, etc.) This way, the whole SDB setup for the character moves with the character's rig but keeps its orientation when the character rolls or flips. Unfortunately, if any of SBDs or their parents 'movers' are unparented, as when saving the parts to a 'modular' parts project, it can break the dials.

To work around this, I copy and past the bones directly from one character to the other, which preserves the original rotation values so the SDBs do not break. If this is a 'modular' project, I keep the parent bones with the item in the file and maintain the hierarchy to preserve the SBDs until I'm ready to copy and past the part. This, of course, assumes the bone hierarchy is the same or at least the rotation values of the parents add up to the same rotation value at the SBD level.

This is actually simpler than it sounds, and you get used to it with a little practice. But, yeah, it should be easier, and Moho should have a way to preserve the SBD control angles regardless of how its reparented.

Hopefully, there will be easier ways to work with 'modularity' in the future.

[JoelMayer]

Cmd+C, Cmd+V in ToonBoom… and maybe selecting to only link drawings and not transform/Rot/scale coord.

Sorry don‘t mean to be snarky or anything but yeah, i think Moho could improve a bit in this area.

But i also agree the vector drawing tools have the highest priority in my eyes as well.