How to deal with Moho flow

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Rasheed
Posts: 2008
Joined: Tue May 17, 2005 8:30 am
Location: The Netherlands

How to deal with Moho flow

Post by Rasheed »

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Do you recognize this problem? You want your animation to be as shown on the left, but it comes out like the one on the right. Somehow the limbs seem to flow, instead of showing a "snappy" behavior. This is often referred to as "Moho flow". This tutorial shows you how to prevent it and how to remove Moho flow from your animation.

Let us look at the Moho file. At a first glance, it seems there is no difference between both bone animations (except that they are eachothers mirror images).
Image Image

But look what happens in the animation channel (in the Timeline window) if we select the lowerarm bone:
Image Image

There is a difference. And not only there, but with every bone, e.g. the handroot bone:
Image Image

The Selected Bone Angle animation channel in the left arm has additional keys. These keys prevent the bones to rotate in the frames that they are not supposed to rotate. And this does not only apply to the Selected Bone Angle animation channel, but to all Selected animation channels in the Timeline window. If certain Selected keys are missing, there will occur Moho flow.

If you select a bone or a group of points and you see that the Selected animation channel doesn't have a key at the frame where it is supposed to have a key, just select the key in this channel before the current key (even if it is in Frame zero), go to the frame where the Selected key should be put and press copy and paste in the Timeline window. Now the selected item will not change between those frames.

Here is an example how to correct the Selected Bone Angle animation channel in the above arm example.

Select the bone which Selected Bone Angle you want to change (here the lowerarm bone) and go to the frame where the Selected should appear (here frame # 4):
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Select the key before the currrent key (here the key in frame zero):
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Press Copy and Paste in the Timeline window.
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And the key is added at the appropriate location in the Selected Bone Angle animation channel:
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Repeat the process for all your bones.

Good luck and have fun animating.
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mr. blaaa
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Post by mr. blaaa »

very good tutorial. great job!
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ulrik
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Post by ulrik »

well done tutorial! thanks you!
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Rasheed
Posts: 2008
Joined: Tue May 17, 2005 8:30 am
Location: The Netherlands

Post by Rasheed »

I really appreciate your kind words. Thanks!
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