Moho Forum

Okay... I made a fairly complex character with several different layers, then spent about an hour rigging the bones using point binding. Everything was great until I created some switch layers for different hand gestures - pointing, fist, fingers spread, etc. Now I am unable to bind the bones to the switch layers. The only option I have is to bind a bone to the switch layer itself, which won't work because each layer is an entire arm and I need it to bend at the elbow, so region or point binding is the only way to go. Am I missing something, or am I going to have to completely re-think this model?

Strictly speaking, yeah, it does need a bit of a rethink. But all is not lost. It's been said in a few places, this right from the help file, that "a switch layer is a bone layer, just a specialized one." You can build a separate skeleton inside the switch layer to control the arm and then attach the entire switch layer to a bone in the main skeleton. It does limit somewhat how you can set up the way it connects at the shoulder, since the parent layers bones can't directly influence the bones. You might be able to make, say, an upper arm bone in the parent layer that duplucates the upper am bone in the switch layer, bind the switch to the one in the parent layer. and make a bit of a "shoulder overlay" vector layer that moves with the arm switch layer to smooth the join. Hope that last bit isn't too dense, if so I'll try it again..

--Brian