Unlink shared styles

[Hamedss]

I fall into problem with this option and not working for me.
We have a character like a cat and we need for example 8 copy of them into a scene. And they should different in colors.
The best way is to import them as reference and tick that unlink shared styles.
But it's not working.
When I change the cats colors. And updating one of cats layer reference all of them get back to original character.
I tried to copy each style and change it for every cat like :
Cat1-->bodystyle1
Cat2-->bodystyle2
Cat3-->bodystyle3
And ...
But it not working
Can you explain me how it exactly work.
A simple example.
Thanks.
( Waiting till tomorrow )

[Greenlaw]

I had this same 'cat situation' years ago when I worked on Boss Baby: Back In Business.

Try this instead:

Import the original cat into a new project. Do not use Reference, but DO check on Unlink Styles. Make your Style changes to this project, and save it as a variation of a cat. I also recommend changing the Style names to associate them with this particular cat. It's not absolutely necessary, but it may help identify these styles later.

Repeat this for each Cat variant.

When you have all your variants ready, you can import each as a Reference or Duplicate, and they should all be unique.

(Note: The current version of Moho has a problem with References, where all the channels may get unexpectedly keyframed. I suggest using Dupiicates unless you absolutely need References. LM is aware of the bug, so hopefully, a fix will come before too long.)

I think the reason the Unlink option doesn't work with references is because Styles are not a keyframeable property. So changing the Styles in a Reference may appear to work at first, but when you reload the project, the changes disappear because no keyframes are available to indicate the change. This isn't a bug, by the way; it's just how References works. That said, I would love to see this option improved in the future.

Hope this helps!

[Hamedss]

It's really help. thank you . you allways

[hayasidist]

there are a few other things that (ideally) should be preserved if modified in a copy-by-ref -- layer origin is another one... and, ofc, I can't now find the thread that talked more about this -- but exactly as Greenlaw says - if you can't _animate_ it (i.e. no keyframe), then any change you make to a copy-by-ref won't be preserved.