Moho Forum

I have a character who is sitting behind a table. The table obviously needs to be in front of the character, but his arms and hands need to be in front of the table for him to work at the table. What is the best way to accomplish that?

Make the arms and hands in a different layer from the body.

You would need at the end 3 layers, the one with the arms and hands on top in the order of the layers, then the one with the table and at the bottom the one with the rest of the body and the chair.

PARKER wrote:Make the arms and hands in a different layer from the body.

You would need at the end 3 layers, the one with the arms and hands on top in the order of the layers, then the one with the table and at the bottom the one with the rest of the body and the chair.

Thanks. And thank you for all of your tutorials. Very helpful.

I thought that might be the answer, and wonder how it might complicate animating the character behind the desk. I'm guessing I would need to hold the torso still to minimize complications.

If you're planning to use bones there is a way to fix it so the torso can move and not affect the table. In the bone layer for your figure, create a bone (not parented to the skeleton for the figure) in one corner so it's strength wont affect the other bones. Drag the table layer into the bone layer and place in the ordering where you want. With the table layer selected, go to the bone submenu at the top and select the release layer button. Then in the bone pallet on the left, the bind layer tool should now be available. Click on it, then click on the bone you just created. It should highlight to red. Now the table layer is bound to this bone only and should not be affected by the other bones so you can freely move the torso with the arms. You will be able to use the translate layer or other layer tools on the bone layer to affect the figure and table together.

jonbo wrote:If you're planning to use bones there is a way to fix it so the torso can move and not affect the table ...

Awesome. I will work through this.