Moho Forum

I am trying to create a mesh layer using the Draw Shape tool and then selecting Draw > Triangulate 2D Mesh. When I select the mesh layer for my image layer, some squares in the mesh layer become opaque, so I can only see part of the underlying image. If the mesh layer is the default 4x4, then the 4 innermost squares are opaque. If I create a mesh layer that is 8x8, then more are opaque, but in a pretty symmetrical pattern. Rendering out a frame confirms that the mesh layer is partly blocking the image. What is happening?

And then, when I manually create my warp layer by drawing a vector and filling all the triangles in, and set that as the warp layer for my underlying image, the entire image is obscured.

That does sound odd. I haven't seen this problem but you can try one the following to work with this...

1. Hide your mesh by clicking the eyeballs on the Layer Window. It's not necessary to show this layer because when you click on it you still see the points.

...or...

2. Move the layer under the art your warping. Moho doesn't care if the mesh is above or below the art. Like in #1, you can still see where the point's are when the layer is selected, even when they're behind the artwork. I sometimes find this is easier to work with than having the mesh on top.

That said, I'm not sure why some of your shapes are being created solid instead of all semi-transparent. When I use Triangulate 2D Mesh, they always look semi-transparent here. To correct this, you can try sampling the style from one of the semi-transparent shapes and applying that to the solid shape. If that doesn't work, I suspect you have multiple shapes stacked on those points, in which case you should delete the stacked shapes and create a single shape there using the Create Shape tool.

BTW, while triangulated meshes should still work fine in Moho 13.5,I think the newer mesh warping methods have several advantages over it.

These days, I generally prefer using the Fill Quad Mesh command instead of Triangulate 2D Mesh. Quads are much easier/cleaner to animate with. You can access FIll Quad Mesh this from the Scripts>Draw menu. (LM really should ask Paul if they can move this to the regular Draw menu.)

There are rare occasions when quads don't work as well as triangles. In those situations, you can probably use a combination of quads and triangles in your mesh, and Moho 13.5 will still recognize the combo mesh as a warp mesh.

I also like using the new Smart Warp Layer as much as I can. This newest method isn't appropriate for everything but it's definitely the easiest way for warping image layers.

Hope this helps.

OK, SO helpful! It didn't occur to me to put the warp layer underneath the image. Duhh....

I also find that Smart Warp Layers are the most efficient, but I wanted to try this way because SWLs aren't perfect.

Thanks! Moving on........!

Greenlaw wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 6:57 pm You can access FIll Quad Mesh this from the Scripts>Draw menu. (LM really should ask Paul if they can move this to the regular Draw menu.)

There were a few additional things I'd had in mind (including a UI) before LM asked if they could have it, so I stopped development and made it "handover" ready ... But I don't see there's anything (technical or "commercial") stopping it being in the main menu in its present state as a button. (As an ancillary point, I guess I'm unclear on the protocol should I want to update it now that it's "part of the product" - a different issue from making a user-mod to a factory tool??!?)

Paul, if you have improvements in mind for Fill Quad Mesh, I'm all for that!

You should reach out to Victor or Mike. I'm sure they'd be interested too.

Can do, but don't hold your breath - it's all a matter of scheduling it in along with other stuff on my list! (ideas included e.g. options to: use only selected or un-selected points / shapes; delete all pre-existing shapes; delete and ignore all pre-existing 5+ sided shapes; better line crossing / co-incident point detection...)