Rigging nested layers of imported PSD

[alleycat216]

I’m spending my lockdown time finally trying to learn Moho 13, and I’m encountering a problem that I’m having a devil of a time figuring out. It’s probably something really stupid and simple like layering order or something like that.

I’m trying to rig an imported PSD file with nested layers that were arranged in the original PSD file. Each layer is a portion of the image. There are three different head angles grouped inside a “Heads” switch layer. The layer order is like so:

Entire grouped image (bone layer)
—>Heads (switch layer)
——>Head (angle view)
————> Eye group (switch layer)
————> Ear
————> Face
————> Ear

The character has long ears. I want the ears to have a little bit of follow-through movement along with the head. I’m able to flexi-bind the main head bone to the “Head” group, and parent the ear bones. But if I try to click on any layer inside that group (such as the ears), the rig and bone controls disappear.

I checked some of the online tutorials and the layering order seems to match. The other tutorials (using imported PSD files) are able to rig the child layers inside of grouped/switch layers. What am I doing wrong?

[Greenlaw]

Some of the following is a bit advanced but it may give you some ideas for what's possible:

For setups like the ears you described, I usually have the ears layers separate from the rest of the head artwork. This way, the bones from the main Bones layer can be used to animate the ears. Then, when the head changes angle, the ears can change position by moving the bones. Moving the ears can be part of the same 'Head Turn' SBD. If the ear drawings needs to change, use switch layers just for the ears. The drawings can change based on the head turn SBD or a separate ear turn SBD.

To animate the ears, I would use multiple bones to control the bending and swinging for follow through, but point animation can work too. Sometimes I'll just add this using the Magnet tool directly in the artwork layer. Synthsin75's Layer Shortcuts works well for selecting nested layers quickly. More info about that here: Layer Shortcuts.)

Alternatively, it's possible to have a separate bone layer inside each ear group. The hassle with this setup is that you need to drill down into nested layers to select the rig. You can deal with this in by clicking with modifier keys but it may take multiple clicks. One way to simplify that is to create a 'click' layer inside the group so make it easier to get into the group. BTW, I think you can make any of the artwork group layers a bone layer, if that helps, and then use the shortcut to select the 'click' layer's parent. This is similar to what I used on some characters years ago but nowadays, and it's probably more complicated than you want to deal with. If you want to avoid the convoluted selection process, Layer Shortcuts could work well here too.

Another useful approach is Victor Paredes' Switch Bones technique. I sometimes use this technique to swap out complicated bone setups like turning digitigrade legs. (For example, the 'Toullie' rig's legs seen in some of my recent videos.) You can read more about this technnique here: http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtop ... tch+victor (Unfortunately, the illustrations are gone but I think the video shows the technique well, and it might be useful for your ears setup.)

All of this said, I would be careful about over-engineering your setup. Depending on your character design, how you intend to animate it, and how much time you can spend on it, it may be better to keep things simple and more direct to animate.

As far as using PSD goes, I prefer to use PNGs instead for a variety of technical reason but mostly because they're just easier to work with and edit after you've imported them. The main problem I find with using PSD is that it's too easy to break the Layer ID associations when layers are merged, created, or deleted in Photoshop (which I do often.) With PNG exports, it's just a matter of overwriting the files, and what I do with layers in Photoshop has no effect on how Moho reads the files.

To export PNG layers from a PDS file, I like to use the free Photoshop Export Layers To Files Fast plugin. It's not only faster than Photoshop's native commands, it also features useful export options that Photoshop lacks. You can get the script here: https://github.com/hsw107/Photoshop-Exp ... Files-Fast

If you use Krita, that program has a similar export script. The options are not as robust as in the script for Photoshop but it works similarly and gets the job done nicely.

Hope this helps.