Moho Forum

using v.12 pro and win.10 I am unable to get the perspective shadows to work. The tutorial works fine (labeled 6.8 or 6.5 depending where I looked, titled perspective shadows pro only) but when I use a complex character i.e. switch layers for hands and mouth and many body parts it doesn't work. following the tutorial as a guide I am unable to select the layer masking settings under the masking tab. One thing I did experiment with was to put all my vector and switch layers in a group layer in order to access the masking tab and that worked, I was able to access the layer masking and selected "add to mask, but keep invisible" according to the tutorial. But in the end the mask on the shadow did not work 100%. I say that because all it did mask was the active hand and mouth in one of the switch layers. Could the manual/tutorials be out of date for v.12? the tutorial worked fine, my attempt at following it to the letter with my character did not. What am I missing? Any thoughts?

Without seeing any examples, it's just a guess.

Some general tips: Normally, you enable it for the main group, not subgroups. Also, getting good results is dependent on where you place the origin.

Personally, I find Perspective Shadow is too fiddly to work with.

I usually just manipulate a copy of the character render in comp to make it look like a shadow. You gain a lot more flexibility this way. In AE, for example, you can use tools like Liquify to make the shadow fall across irregular topology. (You can now do this in Moho 12 too by pre-rendering the shadow element, importing it, and then using a custom mesh to warp it.)

Alternatively, I'll make a reference copy of a rig in Moho and set the group color to solid black. Then I'll position the reference version in 3D space to align with and follow the character as a shadow element. This is preferable because I can see where the shadow is and how it falls on the ground in the Workspace without making a bunch of blind test renders. In fact, recently I used multiple 'shadow' references rigs and had the shadow appear to slide across the floor and up a wall. You can do this using masks along the wall/floor edges, and simply stretching and sliding the multiple rigs in different directions.

Greenlaw wrote:I usually just manipulate a copy of the character render in comp to make it look like a shadow. You gain a lot more flexibility this way. In AE, for example, you can use tools like Liquify to make the shadow fall across irregular topology. (You can now do this in Moho 12 too by pre-rendering the shadow element, importing it, and then using a custom mesh to warp it.)

Great tip! I hadn't thought of doing that.