Moho Animation Forum

I know the questions have been flowing freely today, but now I hit a wall. So here is the dilemma.

I am trying to create a character with the hands having a switch layer. Before I talked through the whole switch layer solution with you guys, I created the character on multiple levels and had it all stored in a bone layer with a rigged skeleton.

Now I am having a problem understanding the proper heirarchy. So I thought that I would be able to create switch layers of the hands inside the bone layer and have the bone layer act as the skeleton, but that was a no go.

I know that there is a way to do this, but I am at a loss.

Thanks so much for all your help. This is really great stuff and I appreciate it more than you will ever know.

I know that I am biting off a lot because of the complexity of the character, but hey, I love a challenge.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
S:)

Hi Stephen,

The whole switch parent layer needs to be bound as a layer to a specific bone e.g. a hand bone, in the skeleton (oh, and the switch parent layer needs to be a child of the skeleton layer).

Highlight the switch layer in the Layers window, choose the Bind Layer tool in the Tools window (just under the Add Bone tool), then click on the bone in the skeleton layer to which you want to bind the switch layer (don't change to the skeleton layer, you should be able to see the skeleton with the switch layer still selected).

Regards, Myles.

That is great Myles. Now I have you all on the run.

Let me throw this curveball at you.

The bind bone works well, but now there is another problem and I went through this with Vern a couple of months ago.

My character has an outline around the entire parimeter. The arms are separate and lay over the torso. I can't have full outlines on each object because I end up getting lines where I don't need it.

If I create outlines on the parts of the objects that cross over other objects plus use the Shadow layer for the outline, it ends up doubling the width of the line in the areas with strategic lines underneath. I'm hoping that AS corrects this. Shadow layers would be very powerful if they would work to my needs. Isn't that always the way.

Vern's solution which is a good one was to create a layer underneath with a black fill and outline of the objects. That was perfect for a solution but now that I have Switch Layers the black Layer and the object layer will not be in the same area which means I can't manipulate the both with one skeleton.

When I did the "bind bone" tool, I was only able to bind the Switch Layer to one bone(which is the palm) in the Bone Layer and then I can go into the Switch Layer and manipulate the fingers. Shame that You can bind to all the bones in a Bone Layer.

The only solution I can currently think of is to us Darth Furby's idea of "patch putty" and float a same colored object over the nasty outlines.

If there is something I am overlooking, PLEASE HELP! I'm sinking.

Thanks again everyone. If you made it through this long rambling, you must be engineers!!!!

CHEERS!!!
S:)

If I create outlines on the parts of the objects that cross over other objects plus use the Shadow layer for the outline, it ends up doubling the width of the line in the areas with strategic lines underneath. I'm hoping that AS corrects this. Shadow layers would be very powerful if they would work to my needs. Isn't that always the way.

That`s one of the drawback of the usage of switch layers. You only see one layer at each time. Even the masking options and the sort layers by depth are disabled for obvious reasons.

If you only need to use switch layers to achieve shaper sort, then you can use my "sort shapes by bones position" script (it is an embedded script for the vector layer) and work for switch and bone parent layers - See My scripts in the forum at my signature-. With the movement of a set of special named bones you can alter, during animation, the shapes order to any type or order. Imagine that you continue adding more and more shapes and they can be combined in lots of order combinations. Then the amount of vector layers inside a switch layer would increase a lot and its mening becomes impossible to remember. (Imagine now that you want the hands to be hidden inside a pocket, you'll need almost 6 new vector layers - left hand inside/outside the pocket, rigth hand inside/outside the other pocket, both hands outside and finally both hands inside the pockets- total 6 vector layers). (Even if you want you can insert only one finger in the pocket...). With my script you only need to move some bones...
Remember that I have created a menu script that would create automatically the set of bones properly named and properly placed to represent the depth of the shapes of the selected layer. Use it to make the embedded script useful.

If you fell brave to use that script please don't hesitate to ask me for help if needed.
-G

Hmm, in theory you could possibly duplicate your hand switch layer, and move the duplicate beneath the body layer.

Have the version above the body with outlines and masked to only show inside the body.
Have the version below the body without outlines, and using either shadow outline or Vern's black object technique to provide an outline (the black object technique may require a black version on the switch layer itself ?).

Regards, Myles.

Where have ya been my whole life?????

This really is the best forum I ever posted to. You guys give me great ideas that I would never think of doing.

Although it sounds like a great idea, to me that is a lot of layers to manage. Right now she is about 14 layers without the switch layers.

I sent AS my project files and outputs asking them if the would consider creating a check box in the Shadow Layer dialogue box that you could select to ignore the outline and just multiply off the fill. That would be a great fix that would really cut down on the number of objects and layers needed to manage in a character.

They liked the idea. I wish they would adopt it but I know nothing about how difficult it would be to add to the program. What do you guys think about something like that.

The Shadow Layer used as an outline is extremely powerful and I was amazed when I saw it in the tutorials. the problem is that it is too limiting and does not work with complex characters. I tried everything to get it to work.

So now I just went back to basics and here is that I came up with. I redid the shoulder part of the bicept to not have an outline and to fit nicely in the torso making sure it stays inside the body when it is rotated. Then when I am animating in the timeline I can correct the endpoint of the outline without it being too roboty.

This is a solution that will take the number of layers down, but I am going to have to compromise on artistic styling which really sucks.

My wish of wishes would be if someone could make that Shadow Layer thing happen. Then artists like myself would spend more time creating and less time trying to cheat the system. Everytime I create a character in AS, I run into this problem.

Thanks guys. And this week I'll be sure to post a few tests that I have done so you can see what I have been up to.

You are all the best!!! Glad to be a part!

S:)