Daxel wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 3:33 pm
By the way I think the naming of those two tools is not consistent and creates confusion unnecesarily:
The "bind layer tool" makes reference to what is being binded to the bone (the layer), while the "bind bones tool" doesn't. It should be called "bind points tool" to be consistent and specific...
Hiya Daxel,
Check again...I believe the tools are called Bind Layer and Bind Points.
If anything is confusing to new users, it's probably that some binding methods are applied using menu commands and some are applied using tools. I remember that used to confuse me way back when I was learning Moho. There is a difference in how they're applied though: the two Tool methods, Bind Layer and Bind Points, are each used to bind selected items to a
single bone. The menu commands can use multiple bones. Keeping this in mind makes it easier to know where to look for the tool you need.
@Found Pebble,
The many methods might seem overwhelming but, it's just matter of getting familiar with each method as you need it, and experimenting with each method to learn its strengths and weaknesses. Don't try to learn all of them at once because most of the time, you only need to use one or two methods in a rig.
Back when I was learning Moho (starting mostly with Moho 9.5,) I figured out two methods worked for me for nearly everything and pretty much stuck with them for the longest time. These two were
Selective Flexi-binding and
Bind Layers. In time, I ran into situations where they weren't adequate, so I branched out to include some of the other methods.
From what I remember, here's how I learned each method (I'll stick to what was available in Moho 9.5 since that's what you're currently using)...
1.
Flexi-binding (Menu). This is Moho's default mode. When you create a bone in a bone layer and you place layers inside it, they are automatically bound using this mode. This method is probably the easiest to understand because it's very basic. Every bone affects every layer, and how much each bone affects a layer depends on each bone's strength and how close the layer's content is to the bone.
2.
Use Selected Bones For Flexi-binding (Menu; unofficially aka
Selective Flexi-binding). Sometimes you'll find that you need a layer to be affected by ONLY a couple of bones and not the entire skeleton. Enter Selective Flexi-binding. To use this, select your layer or layers (like the arm artwork), select the bones (the arm bones,) and choose the menu command Bones > Use Selective Flexi-Binding. Now you'll find that the other bones in the skeleton will not distort the arm artwork.
It's important to understand the the arm bones will still affect other artwork because the other artwork is still using the default Flex-bind method (i.e., still affected by every bone.) So if you're like me, you'll quickly figure out that you want to use this method to bind every layer to specific bone selections. It's pretty easy though because you can select multiple layers and multiple bones and apply the command bind them all at once. When I learned this method, I used it for almost everything. For everything else I used the next method...
3.
Layer Bind (Tool). Probably the simplest but very useful in its own way. This method binds a single layer to a single bone. Period. It's great when you want to add an item to a character that's going to be moved by a single bone but not deformed by any bones. You can use this method for points, images or groups.
When you use it for a group layer, you need to understand that any layers inside the group will be cut off from all the other bones. So if you want to use other binding methods for some of the contained layers, you need to not bind the group but instead apply the different bindings to the layers inside the group.
For the longest time, I only needed the above three methods, and really only Selective Binding and Layer Binding. But when I was tasked with animating
Puss-in-Boots for the interactive episode, I started using the next method...
4.
Smooth Joint (Menu). This is a specialty method that works great for certain styles of artwork. It works with vector art and bitmap art but I found it especially useful for bitmap art with parallel sides, like Puss' arms in the footage mentioned above. It can automatically apply a circular deformer at the joint of two selected bones. What's unique about it is how it deforms the artwork, and looking at the footage will give you some idea of what I mean, especially when Puss 'twirls' his arms at the elbow. Surprisingly, the method can work well for detailed textures too, and it Puss' painted fur textures.
BTW, there's no reason to stick with only certain methods for a give rig. In the case of Puss-in-Boots, I pretty much threw every Moho technique I knew at the time for this rig.
5.
Point Binding (Tool). This is one of the more versatile methods because it can be combined with most of the other binding methods. It's kinda like Layer Binding but for Points in that you select a bone and then select the points you want to be affected ONLY by that bone, and press Enter to bind them. What makes it versatile is that you can assign different selections of points in a layer to different bones, and each point selection will be rigidly bound to it's assigned bone. Any points not bound using this tool remain affected by Flexi-binding or Selective Flexi-binding.
Note that just like the result with Bind Layer, Bind Points is a rigid binding method. This is good when you don't what the squishy effect that comes from Flexi-binding.
I think the only other thing you need to know is how to 'fix' your binding when everything seems to go wrong. My trick for this is the select the layers that are misbehaving and choose the menu command Bone > Reset All Bone Rigging. The resets the binding method for the selection to the default Flexi-binding. From there, you can apply the method you want. This is almost always easier and faster than taking the time to figure out what went wrong.
That said, there's merit in figuring out what went wrong if you keep repeating the same mistake. Once you understand the problem, hopefully you won't do it again.
Hope this info is helpful.
