Moho Forum

I'm sure this is a noob question, so please forgive me. I've been trying to find a way to make it easier to move the pupils of my characters, as I normally I have to open the main character bone layer and navigate to the Eye Layers, as I have to put the bone layers for them in there as it wouldn't be able to have a bone layer otherwise (I put the pupils and the eyeball/eyelid switch layer in groups for masking purposes Note that I did not yet attach the bone layers in the "eyebone1" example image).

I also have the eye groups, among other things, assigned in a "Head" group to keep the layers more organized, though many experts will probably criticize this choice. Anyway, I attempted to take the pupil and eyeball/eyelid switch layers out of their own groups and put them in the main "Head" group layer, which I converted to a bone layer with Masking. This allowed me to attach bones to the pupils, however, it caused a weird error of making the mouth layer almost vanish completely aside from in one of the eyeball layers. The mouth thankfully does appear in the preview, so I'm guessing this is just a bug.

I've heard about some people using Smart bones to move eyes, but some argue it's too complex for something so simple. As such, is there an easy way to add bones for the pupils (still with masking effects) without having to constantly go into the layers menu?

https://sta.sh/0i0o87vy464 "Eyebone1"
https://sta.sh/0178djdqy730 "Eyebone2"

Tip: I put the all of my bones in the top layer. This way I'm not constantly hunting for nested bones and managing keyframes across multiple layers. It's so much easier when you can edit everything in one place. This shouldn't be a problem because bones can move any layer or point set in any child layer even when it's nested under several groups.

The one exception is when you layer bind a group. Do this ONLY when you don't intend to animate the contents of the layer with separate bones. Most of the time, it makes more sense to bind the contents individually. Layer Binding layers and groups make more sense for static props or items that are transformed using only Actions, not bones.

You can, of course, add a Bone layer inside the layer bound group but you may be unnecessarily over-complicating the rig.

IMO, if something is difficult to animate in Moho, it's because the setup is difficult. Keep it simple...or at least, keep the controls and data easily accessible.

Hope this helps.