Colour palettes?

[Mejin]

Hello!

I asked myself if it is possible to have some kind of colour-palette, which I could change through some scenes(like in Toon Boom Harmony)?
I have some colour-schemes for the same character and it need to be changed from one scheme to another from time to time.

I could build the rig with a smartbone for the colour-change - but I'd have to change the colour of the Backgrounds manually...

Is there a way to just change a whole palette?

Grettings!
Mejin

[Greenlaw]

I think you might be asking for two different things here.

If you want presets that you can apply to shapes and share between files, you want to set up custom Styles. Styles are made up of any renderable property, so that includes line weights, brushes and shading fx as well as color. Creating Styles is done through the Styles panel, and Style sets can be saved in the Library for sharing. Alternatively, you can apply styles to a set of shapes and import them into other scenes. (That's how I used to do it before Styles could be added to the Library.)

If it's strictly colors you wish to share, the color 'palette' is just an image file, not an editable color tiles UI like in Photoshop or Illustrator. In other words, you can drop any image you want in the list as use that instead. If you just want to share colors from one scene or character, you can do a single frame render and then import that image to the color palette for sampling; a cleaner way would be to sample the colors from a render in Photoshop, fill a grid with the samples, and then import that image. Alternatively, you can drop the image in the Common>Swatches folder to add it to the default list of swatches. Any image size will work but default size for a palette image is 177 x 111, which is probably optimal and recommended.

Hope this helps.

[Mejin]

Hello!

Thank you!

Well - it's not excactly what I wish for... - Styles - there I can fill shapes with special options - but have to fill the shapes manually/set the style.

And - I don't want to share colors via Image-File - I would like to replace some colours, depending on different shots, but without filling the shapes again, or set the style for every shape again.

For example, I would have a "dark"-Colour for a color-scheme. But in one scheme it should be purple, in another blue.
It would be cool if I could just set different palettes and then the colours would be changed automatically.
In No. 1 Palette "Dark" would be purple, in No. 2 Palette - it would be blue - and that I could switch this with just one Click on another palette.

In ToonBoom there are Palettes where I can do that and share them with all people, working on the project.

But right now I can't think of such an easy way in Moho... .

Greetings!

[Greenlaw]

I see what you mean...you wish to swap out the styles for a different set of styles.

That might possible by importing a different style set that uses the same style names as the ones in use--I think the imported styles will override the existing ones but I can't confirm this.

Sorry, I haven't had to use styles in Moho quite that way so I'm really not sure about this. I think most Moho users will just create two different sets of characters or scenes but I know that's not what your'e asking.

Hopefully somebody who knows more about this feature can offer more info.

[Mejin]

Hello!

Thank you... - yes, I thought about creating different sets of character as well...
And maybe with the new future one could just transfer the animation pretty well to referenced rigs... (because in AS11 it had sometimes some bugs if I changed some colours/styles - they'd not work properly in the referenced file).

Hm - maybe I could test it with the styles...

thanks for your help/ideas!

Greetings!

[Greenlaw]

And maybe with the new future one could just transfer the animation pretty well to referenced rigs...

It's not a direct 'import' process but you can essentially do this now by creating a regular Action and applying that to another rig. Some considerations apply when using differently proportioned rigs (see Convert to Relative) but it should work directly for the same rig.

Also, Actions can now be exported and imported so you can create a library of 'motion clips' for a character to paste into a rig as needed.

[amanandink]

We have done a fair amount of researching into styles and being able to turn them into a colour palette system, for example to have a day and night version of a character. We haven't found a way to do it with styles yet, but if you don't use styles and just a normal shape fills you can use a smart bone to trigger a colour change. Storing all the alternative palettes in a smart action.

the other method we have used when using styles, is to use an external python script to access each scene file and alter the code of the style from one colour to another.

[synthsin75]

I'd be apt to just use a blend mode layer for making the night version.

[Mejin]

Hey!

Thank you!

Yes - the SmartBone-Colour-Switch would have been my workaround as well... .

But okay, I guess I'll go that way than...

Greetings!