Release layer and points breaks flexi binding

[p8guitar]

After Bone - Release layer and points, it is not possible any more to apply flexi binding with the bone - use selected bones for flexi binding command. You can only apply point binding, flexi binding is broken. You must select the layer and choose "reset all bone rigging".
I think this happens both in Moho 13 and Moho 12, can you confirm this?
the problem was dicussed in the how do I... section:
viewtopic.php?t=32100
But I think this is clearly a bug, not a feature...

[Greenlaw]

My suggestion is to select the affected layers and choose Reset All Bone Rigging. This will reset the selected layers to use the default Flexi-binding.

I wrote more about this topic the other day in this thread...

http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtop ... ll#p192617

Hope this helps.

[Greenlaw]

Just to be clear, Release Layer & Points is not the same as resetting the layer to its default binding state. What it actually does is it removes binding from the layer so that the layer is not longer affected by bones. Thus, it ignores any attempt to bind it.

To reset the binding for selected layers, you need to use Reset All Bone Rigging (as you discovered.)

[p8guitar]

Just to be clear, Release Layer & Points is not the same as resetting the layer to its default binding state. What it actually does is it removes binding from the layer so that the layer is not longer affected by bones. Thus, it ignores any attempt to bind it.

To reset the binding for selected layers, you need to use Reset All Bone Rigging (as you discovered.)

But why does it break flexi binding but not point binding? After release layer & points you can bind points again with the bind points tool, but you cannot apply flexi binding again (without reset bone rigging). This makes no sense.

[Greenlaw]

It might have something to do with when these features came out; Point Binding, for example, is a much older Moho feature than Flexi-binding, which is why the UI is a bit different. Yes, the UI behavior for all the binding methods should be more consistent, but the devs probably haven't got around to it yet. (Note: I'm making an assumption here; I'm an animator, not a programmer.)

That said, I agree it can seem a bit confusing to new users. I asked the same questions you did when I started working with Moho several years ago. I eventually got used to how it is, but I've long felt Moho could use a refresh for some of its terminology and and UI consistency.

I'm pretty sure this is being discussed within the current dev team.

To be fair, some UI improvements have been made over the years by both Mike's old team and Davit's team (Moho's previous devs), and I'm confident that more improvements can be expected from Mike's new team.

[synthsin75]

But why does it break flexi binding but not point binding? After release layer & points you can bind points again with the bind points tool, but you cannot apply flexi binding again (without reset bone rigging). This makes no sense.

You can, but it's easier with one command.

If you want to do it manually, after Release Layer and Points, you can select all the layer's points and use Bone>Flexi-Bind Points, for vector layers, and use Bone>Use All Bones For Flexi-Binding, for image layers.

[Greenlaw]

You can, but it's easier with one command.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[p8guitar]

But why does it break flexi binding but not point binding? After release layer & points you can bind points again with the bind points tool, but you cannot apply flexi binding again (without reset bone rigging). This makes no sense.

You can, but it's easier with one command.

If you want to do it manually, after Release Layer and Points, you can select all the layer's points and use Bone>Flexi-Bind Points, for vector layers, and use Bone>Use All Bones For Flexi-Binding, for image layers.

This is an alternative, thanks for pointing that out. I didn't try that.

[Daxel]

I agree that the names for the different binding commands and how they work can be incredibly inintuitive, and the documentation doesn't help too much. I remember doing a lot of tests to understand how everything worked and writing my own documentation, that I still have to check from time to time because it is difficult to remember.

I think that Moho, being in my opinion the best software for puppet animation right now, is very atractive and suitable for begginers and it will benefit tremendously from being more begginer friendly and having a better documentation. I won't benefit from that directly, as I already made the effort to understand the software, but now that it has new owners I really hope the program sells well.

[Greenlaw]

I agree that the names for the different binding commands and how they work can be incredibly inintuitive, and the documentation doesn't help too much.

I think some terminology should be simplified. For example, 'Use Selected Bones For Flexi-binding'. I guess that says exactly what it does but that's a mouthful. Maybe it could be simplified to 'Local Flexi-Binding' (to differentiate it from the global effect we have with regular Flexi-Binding.) Or the command 'Create Smooth Joint For Bone Pair'...maybe we can just call this 'Smooth Joint'?

I know that's less descriptive but it's definitely easier to say and write, and easier to remember names can be less intimidating to new users.

[Daxel]

I agree that the names for the different binding commands and how they work can be incredibly inintuitive, and the documentation doesn't help too much.

I think some terminology should be simplified. For example, 'Use Selected Bones For Flexi-binding'. I guess that says exactly what it does but that's a mouthful. Maybe it could be simplified to 'Local Flexi-Binding' (to differentiate it from the global effect we have with regular Flexi-Binding.) Or the command 'Create Smooth Joint For Bone Pair'...maybe we can just call this 'Smooth Joint'?

I know that's less descriptive but it's definitely easier to say and write, and the easier to remember names can be less intimidating to new users.

Yes, some names are too long, but at the same time even those are usually difficult to understand for begginers. So I would shorten those names like you propose, but I would also make a description of what they do that would appear when you hover your mouse over the command. Those "hints" are incredibly helpful in Godot, and if they are well presented, in most cases you don't even need to check the documentation.

A few examples that I can remember about my confusions are:
The tool Bind Points: a begginer could think that you need to use that tool to bind the points to the bones when actually all points and all bones have automatic binding by default and what the tool actually does is desactivate the automatic binding of the selected points and activate the manual binding of those points. That could be specified in a hint.
The name flexi-binding is sometimes used to refer to what I call automatic binding, for example in the name "use selected bones for flexi-binding". There are two types of automatic binding, flexi-binding and region binding, so it is confusing to refer to both of them as flexi-binding when you could be actually using region binding. Things like that.

[synthsin75]

Even with Flexible Binding (binding mode) and Flexi-Binding (binding method) having slightly different names, that can still be confusing...even just explaining to someone in text. I would probably suggest "Binding mode" be called "Bone influence" and the options be called Global and Regional. After all, we're not really talking about binding with these, just how their influence is handled, whether every bone affects the whole layer or only its own region.

Then "Binding" would only refer to the default flexi-binding, point-binding, and layer-binding.


I agree that "Use Selected Bones For Flexi-Binding" could be shortened to something like "Selective Flexi-Binding", since it's already in the bone menu. And "Create Smooth Joint For Bone Pair" could be something like "Smooth Joint Pair". But yeah, tooltips or a contextual "?" help button could make a lot of the manual info readily available, without looking anything up.

[Greenlaw]

Funny, my first thought was to suggest "Selective Flexi-Binding", but then I thought maybe that was still too long. But anything shorter than what we have now works for me; I get tired of writing out these long command names in these posts and tutorials. It's why I tend to abbreviate a lot of Moho terms (SBD, SBA, etc.) in my posts...but then that can be confusing for beginners too.

[Daxel]

Point-binding is another name that we are used to it, but doesn't make much sense from a didactic perspective, because flexi-binding also bind points to bones, so what characterizes point-binding is not that the bind is applied to points, it is that the points are not binded to the force but directly to the bone and they move directly as the bone.

I would rename Point Binding to "Direct Binding", and I would name Flexi-Binding to Force-Binding:

Direct Binding because you bind things (points or layers) directly to the bone, and their movement is directly the same as the bone as you move it. To reffer specifically to points, you could say Direct Point Binding.

Flexi-binding could be named "Force Binding" or "Bone-Force Binding" to explicitly say that it bind things to the force of the bones, instead of the bones directly. And you can choose between two kinds of Force Binding: flexi-binding or region-binding (I would probably rename those two too to make them more explicit)

That would have been much easier to grasp from the beggining, at least for me.

[synthsin75]

Point-binding is another name that we are used to it, but doesn't make much sense from a didactic perspective, because flexi-binding also bind points to bones, so what characterizes point-binding is not that the bind is applied to points, it is that the points are not binded to the force but directly to the bone and they move directly as the bone.

I would rename Point Binding to "Direct Binding", and I would name Flexi-Binding to Force-Binding:

Flexi-binding is what bones do to image layers, so points being flexi-bound is not really point binding but a flexible layer binding...hence flexi-binding. It means everything is bound equally, while point-binding means points are bound individually. "Force-Binding" would imply that the point is forced to move with a particular bone, because "force" has more than one meaning in English.

Direct Binding because you bind things (points or layers) directly to the bone, and their movement is directly the same as the bone as you move it. To reffer specifically to points, you could say Direct Point Binding.

Since point-binding and layer-binding are two different things (with different tools), it wouldn't make much sense to lump them under the same or an even longer name, like "Direct Point Binding".

Flexi-binding could be named "Force Binding" or "Bone-Force Binding" to explicitly say that it bind things to the force of the bones, instead of the bones directly. And you can choose between two kinds of Force Binding: flexi-binding or region-binding (I would probably rename those two too to make them more explicit)

Since there is no mention of "force" in Moho, except for physics, it would be better to stick with an existing reference, like "bone influence". So "Influence-binding" might work instead of "flexi-binding", but flexi-binding also implies that the artwork will be moved in a more flexible way. "Influence" or "Force" don't really convey that end result.