Moho Forum

Sorry, I am not sure how to ask this question in a way that makes sense.

So I took a picture of a stuffed monkey, it's arms and legs are spread out in a "Jesus pose". I cut him out, left him in one piece and made the background transparent.

I then put him into anime studio debut and add bones to his body. and they animate well except that when I move his hand in front of his head, it's in front of his head, like I want it. But when you move it to below the chest area the hand disappears to the back when it should stay in the front. I could fix this easily if the arms were on a separate layer, but the steps of cutting out the arms etc would be unnecessary if there is a way to change the bone behavior.

Is there?

No.

If anything needs to go in front or behind something else, it's necessary to be on different layers. The bones have nothing to do with this.

There must be something that makes the bone decide to be in front of the head but behind the chest. Maybe not something I can change, but something.

Maybe it's elevation or creation order?

No. Definitely not. All bones in the same bone layer are on the same level. You can have lots of different layers inside one bone layer, and animate the layer order of these at any time - that's how it's done. The top (containing) layer has a tab "depth sort" were you have to check "enable animated layer order" to allow for this.

Ok

Any idea why it's not just in the back always or in the front always? Why does it change from being in the front to being in the back? Is it just a bug in the software then?

If you warp only one image, there's nothing in front or in the back at all. Only the image is distorted in a way that parts seem to vanish, where in fact they're compressed infinitely.

When you are working with an unique image, I think bones define which part will be in front and which part will be in back. I can't understand in what criterion that movement is based, but it exists.
I was trying to get it with an image of a guy. I put bones in its legs. If I rotated the right leg over the left one, right left was in front. But if I rotated left leg over right left, now left leg was in front. If I crossed the legs, I got a weird 50% front 50% back for both.
It's a mysterious topic. Anyway, I recommend you to just cut your character in pieces, one layer each. It's simpler and more controllable over the time.

The higher bone strength region will generally appear in front. This is why the hand is in front of the head but behind the torso (torso has higher strength). Bone strengths cannot be animated, so there is no way to change this along the timeline.

synthsin75 wrote:The higher bone strength region will generally appear in front. This is why the hand is in front of the head but behind the torso (torso has higher strength). Bone strengths cannot be animated, so there is no way to change this along the timeline.

It's a good theory, but It doesn't seem to be correct. At least not for me, changing the bone strength didn't change what was in front.

So anyway, I am not expecting a solution to this anymore because I don't think it's something I can control. But I did make a video to illustrate what is happening.