Why can't I bind a layer?

[Jkoseattle]

Characters A and B are built almost identically, in terms of layer names and grouping.

Both characters are rigged up with a single bone layer for the entire character.

Character A lets me Bind Layer to a bone even though it is nested two levels deep in groups.

Character B only lets me bind a layer that is directly within the bone layer's group. If I nest it in a second group, the Bind Layer option disappears. This issue has arisen when trying to bind pupils, which are nested in the Eye layer, which in turn is nested in the Head layer.

Why is this?

[striker2311]

Characters A and B are built almost identically, in terms of layer names and grouping.

Both characters are rigged up with a single bone layer for the entire character.

Character A lets me Bind Layer to a bone even though it is nested two levels deep in groups.

Character B only lets me bind a layer that is directly within the bone layer's group. If I nest it in a second group, the Bind Layer option disappears. This issue has arisen when trying to bind pupils, which are nested in the Eye layer, which in turn is nested in the Head layer.

Why is this?

As you would be able to see in the attached file below, for "layer 6" binding options are coming but it will not be available for "layer 5" because layer 6 is containing layer 5 so when you have binded layer 6 with a bone you have also bonded layer 5 with the same bone (as layer 5 is in layer 6).

You can't bind a group to one bone and its subgroup to other.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10_CEf9 ... sp=sharing

For character A it would have worked if you have binded a layer similar to layer 5 (that means subgroup) and wouldn't have binded layer 6 to any bone.

[Greenlaw]

I'd have to see the project to know why the two are different but with normal use when you use Bind Layer to bind a group, the binding stops there...in other words, you can't bind anything inside of that group individually.

When you use Bind Layer layer in Moho, you're telling it to bind this specific selection directly to this specific bone, if the selection happens to be a group, that includes everything inside the group. The Bind Layer is for quickly attaching items to a bone that you don't want to deform...it's good for attaching a prop or for isolating a group of elements from being affected by other bones in the rig.

If what you really want to do is bind the items inside the group to different bones, then you can't use Bind Layer on that group, you need to bind the items inside the group individually.

When you have a lot of layers, it can still be easy to do because Moho allows you to make multiple layer selections so you can bind them all at once. For example, if you select all the right arm layers, then select all the right arm bones, choosing Use Selected Bones For Flexi-binding will bind all those layers to the bones at once.

Of course, the binding method you wind up choosing depends on how you want the artwork to deform (or not deform as the case may be.)

[Jkoseattle]

Yes, ok that makes sense, and I've followed this advice to get things to bind properly. Now I have a different confusion. I thought I had this working yesterday, but it's not working now.

I have bound everything in the head individually to the head bone. So far so good.

Now I want to bind the pupils to a pin bone per your suggestion from yesterday. But I can't seem to get it to work. If I bind the pupils to the pin bone, then moving the head doesn't move the pupils. If I make the head bone the parent of the pin bone, now I can't move the pin bone at all. What am I doing wrong?

[Greenlaw]

What I do is I create a hierarchy of bones for the face that is parented to the head bone. A typical structure could be...

+bodyUp
+ + head
+ + +face
+ + + + nose
+ + + + mouth
+ + + + eyes
+ + + + + pupilR
+ + + + + pupilL

In a head turn SBD, I would just move the face bone side to side. For a head nod SBD, move the bone up and down. This can really simplify setting up the head controls since I'm only controlling the position of one bone instead of many individual parts of the face. if you want, you can add offset animations to the other bones to make the SBD's turn animation more convincing. This is still much easier since you're only sliding a few bones in a single bone layer, and not trying to animate multiple layers.

The eyes bone can be the parent for your eyes artwork or you can add child 'eye' bones for each eye and bind the eye art to that. The pupil art should be bound to the pupil bones of course. Because all the eyes child bones have a common eyes parent bone, they will move along with it (including the pupil bones,) and of course the eyes bone will move with the face bone, and the face bone will move with the head bone, and the head bone...etc.

In my usual setups, I would add the two eyes bones to be able move each eye artwork individually for the head turn SBD, and each pupil bone would be parented to each eye bone. Or, I might parent each pupil bone to a common bone so I can move them both together as one. Then I would parent that to the eyes bone or the face bone. There are so many ways to do this...just go with what works best for your character.

Since this arrangement of bones can get cluttered, I would then Shy some of these bones. If I want to animate the pupils directly on the face, I would probably Shy the eye bones. But if I need to animate the eye bones, then I would Shy the pupils and use bone constraints to control them remotely with visible bones outside of the head. (For example, I think the gorilla from Moho's content has that.)

The complexity you pursue should depend on what you expect your character will do and how you intend to animate it. In general, don't make it more complicated than it needs to be...it's more important to be able to animate easily and quickly while being able to hit the poses you want.

Hope this helps.

Edit: Sorry, my initial post was grammatically challenged. I cleaned it up and will probably do a little more editing to it later.

[Greenlaw]

About Shy...

You might be wondering why I prefer to use Shy instead of Hide Bone. This is because Shy can be easily toggled on and off. Basically, any bones that use the Shy option can be shown or hidden as a group. This is handy when there are bones in the rig that I don't want unintentionally keyframed by the animator, but I want to be able to quickly reveal them when I need to fix or modify the rig and then hide them again.

You easily Shy and un-Shy bones if you assign a shortcut for the command or use my MQC buttons panel which has a button for that.

[Jkoseattle]

OK, I was instructed a few weeks back not to nest bone layers, but rather have all bones for a rig in the top group layer for the entire character. This solution sounds like I can, and indeed should, have bone layers nested within other bone layers. Yeah?

[Greenlaw]

Oh no! I think you've misread my post.

Everything I'm describing above happens in a single Bone layer. IMO, you should avoid using multiple bone layers in a single character because it's more work to animate with.

Personally, I almost never use more than 1 bone layer per character. About the only time I might add a nested bone layer is when I have an unusual technical reason to do so.

If I have time this evening, I'll post an example of what I mean.