Moho Forum

Through answers here and tutorials and such I'm learning that most everything I'm animating is done with bones. I can see why this is a good way to go, makes things a lot simpler. However...

Another thing I've been told is that it's best to keep all bones in the same layer, which of course is the top group layer for the character/object. This makes it difficult to see what's going on in the timeline, as now every keyframe resides in a single layer. I have been resorting to selecting the bone I'm interested in and then using the rows in the timeline for the currently selected object (in red on the left). This is fine, but I'm really missing seeing one row for eyes, one for the head, one for the hand, etc. Is this something I'm just going to have to get used to, or is there some technique I'm not thinking of? Ideally, I'd like to see a timeline row for each bone individually.

use coloured bones for different body groups (e.g. blue for eyes, red for right limbs ...)?!

I often animate projects with multiple characters in them, and managing what I see in the timeline has never been a problem for me. In fact, I prefer to see less information in the timeline so I can focus on what I'm animating at the moment. (This is often true when I'm animating in 3D programs too.) IMO, a lot of info that appears in the timeline is usually unnecessary and just a lot of screen clutter most of the time. (Except when I really need it of course.)

Here are some tips:

As you discovered, yes, it's easier to animate a character when you keep your keyframes in the bone layer as much as possible. This way, you're not constantly having to switch layers when animating. Also, because the bone layer is at the top of each character's stack of layers, it's easy to find and select it for each character.

By default, Moho shows a seperate channel for every bone color, which I normally find unnecessary. To hide this info, see this video and scrub to 8:54...

https://vimeo.com/335696360#t=534

(Actually, this video has a lot of suggestions for optimizing Moho's UI and workflow so if you haven't seen it already, you may want to see it from the start.)

Most of the time, all I want to see in the timeline is the All Bones Keys channel (the white keys at the the top) which represent all the keys for every bone in the layer, and the Selected Bones Keys (the red keys below) which are the keys for only the selected bone or bones. So, if I need to see the keyframes for specific eye bone, I just click the eye bone, and its keyframes appears in the red keys area. With few exceptions, I normally don't need to see more than these two areas of the timeline when I'm animating a character.

Sometimes it's necessary to see the keys for multiple layers and items at the same time, like the bones layer and a switch layer (when animating it with the Switch Selection window rather than a Smart Bone Dial.) To do this, I enable Timeline Visibility for each of the layers I want to 'pin' to the Timeline so they will stay active regardless of what other layer I might have selected. You'll even see the name of the layer in the timeline so be sure to give all your layers sensible names.

When I'm done, I'll disable timeline visibility because, as mentioned, I don't wish to see anything unnecessary for what I'm doing in the moment. For efficiency's sake, if I need view the same layers together often, I might create a preset for this in the Layer Comps window.

Another handy tip is to use one or more of the layer/item selection scripts available, like Layer Shortcuts, Layer Selection Buttons, and Bone Selection Buttons. These scripts can be found here in the LM forums or at mohoscripts.com.

Hope this helps.

Oh, I should clarify that I do use color bones in my rigs...a lot of them in fact. Mainly to instantly differentiate left/center/right parts of the body. I typically use green for left side bones, red for right, and orange for center, and maybe purple for special bones like targets. The Smart Bones are also color coded this way: green, red, orange, purple. This is really useful for identifying bones when a character is turning, turned around, or when its limbs are otherwise crossing over each other.

Sometimes I'll use a different color scheme depending on the character design...whichever colors are most visible against the character's shape/texture colors.

I just don't need to see bone color channels in the timeline. Seeing the red keys for the bones I'm currently animating is enough for me...it's the same data so the bone color channels are often redundant.