Still struggles using binding :(

[Daxel]

Now this is an example of how I would design the terms and the system for clarity (trying to not change the system too much so not much development is needed)

Changes to the system:

Make an option on the Add Bone Tool to select the default force of newly created bones. Make a tooltip system (already made for the tools) for the menu options. That's it.

Changes to the terms:

Flexi-binding: Strength Influence, something like that. It doesn't sound fancy but users just want clarity. Students read this and suddenly know the most important thing: what actually moves the points is the strength of the bones. No strength, no influence. They can intuitively guess that if a point is strength influenced, it can be influenced by the strength of any bone.

They won't be confused by the word "binding" thinking that they have to bind points with the Bind Points Tool or anything like that. "Bind" sounds too selective and too rigid to define an element that can be influenced by the strength of any bone. I think this change improves not only its own clarity but also the clarity of the Bind Points and Bind Layer concepts because the word bind is now reserved to them.

The Flexibinding modes: instead of being called "Flexibinding" (ambiguous, repetition) and region-binding, they would be called just Flexible and Region based or just Region. So instead of having to say: Hi my friend, do you have the Flexi-binding of this rig on Flexi-binding mode or on Region-binding mode? You would say: Do you have the Strength Influence of this rig on Flexible mode or on Region mode? I think one can almost guess what are they talking about without having used Moho in his life.

Release Points: Release selected Points from bones with the tooltip [The points won't be influenced by strength or binds to any bone]

Flexi-bind Layer: Enable Strength influence on Selected Layers with the tooltip [Strength will influence the origin of the selected layers instead of their points].

Release Layer: Release selected layers from bones with the tooltip [The layers won't be influenced by strength or binds to any bone]

Release layer and points: Release selected layers and their points from any bones [The layers and their points won't be influenced by strength or binds to any bone]

Use Selected Bones for Flexibinding: Make only selected bones strength influence selected layers. [The strength of the rest of the bones won't influence the points of selected layers]

Flexi-bind Points: Activate Strength influence on selected points. We don't even need a tooltip for this, I think is just very clear.

Bind Points Tool: as it is, it's just clearer now. Now bind is only used when you need to actually bind something to something.

Bind layers Tool: same.

I think that's it. I'm sure it can be improved. Most names are longer but I think that's fine. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. I'm convinced we would see 10 times less questions about this topic and more debut users would end buying the pro version with changes like these. And it is so explicit that experienced users wouldn't need to learn anything. I probably wouldn't have to check my notes so often.

Alternative: just the tooltips. That alone would save many lives.

[mmmaarten]

Each time you mention "Flexi-bind points" I don't know if you are talking about the actual Flexi-bind Points option that is also on the Bone menu.

I say what I mean and use the terms used by Moho. If you have doubts about that I'm unable to change that. I'm sorry.


It's a pitty my words don't come across as I really think that I explained myself very well in how I think the system should be to make way more logical sense and to solve all these unnecesary problems and confusion I see myself and others here on the forum having.

But it looks like I'm screaming to a wall and people aren't getting what I'm saying here. And people only get it when they see it. And I cannot show you because I'm not a developer at Lost Marble. So some imagination and understanding of my words is needed for that.

Last time I try with a summary of what I wrote:
DON'T HAVE AUTOMATIC AND GLOBAL BINDING AS A DEFAULT. period. It is INVERSE and INCONSISTANT logic, which is always bad and never a good thing. And is causing only headaches and unnecesary and time consuming workflows for both beginners as well as more advanced users.

Next to that we seldom want to keep using this default (as stated by several users here now) and who even wants to have a parent bone layer to control all child layers at once from all bones per default anyway? It's the first thing we want to turn off, because normally you have overlapping things, want to have a different binding method, mix'n'match binding methods etc. It just doesn't make sense to start with this default behaviour and it creates confusion and is causing issues directly from the start because of all these influences and bindings we don't want. It's just prone to errors and misunderstandings.

Just try to imagine and embrace the idea I tried to get across in my previous post, which was mainly: NO AUTOMATIC AND GLOBAL BINDING AS DEFAULT. It's just a bad design choice and the rest of bad choices are stacked on top of that.

If this still isn't clear than I give up. I don't have more words than this to describe something that IMO could be very easily solved. And if Lost Marble is not willing to change this for the better, while obviously so many people struggled with this or are still struggling with this, it's just a waste of my time anyway. And than I have better things to do with my time. This took me way too much time.

[Greenlaw]

I hope it makes more sense now. The terms can be improved for clarity, the system is not very intuitive and we have no tooltips so it is hard to learn but it's not hard to use once learnt.

I tend to agree with this statement, especially the last part.

I've been using Moho in television production for about ten years now, and this is because, compared to other 2D puppet animation systems at my disposal, Moho has been fairly easy to learn and use, and it has allowed me and my co-workers to be very productive through several shows. After I created and animated my first rigs in personal projects (i.e., Scareplane, Hearts Like Fists,) Moho's rigging workflow made a lot of sense to me, and I built up my skills through practice, experimentation, and through solving each new situation that came up. (This forum and my fellow Moho users have been a tremendous resource.)

I should point out that my coworkers have a background in 3d animation and stop motion, which is probably why they latched on to Moho so naturally. But even the artists who came on board with mainly a 2D animation background picked it up quickly. (My own background is kind of all over the place, and it's still kinda all over the place.)

Anyway, it's not that I think Moho can't be improved--it certainly can be--but the reason I use Moho is that the version we have now is undeniably an efficient way to create quality animations quickly. And it's affordable too!

I agree about problems with some of Moho's terminology, but for me, it's that some of the terms are too long. For example, the commands 'Use Selected Bones For Flexi-binding' or 'Create Smooth Joint For Bone Pair' are quite the mouthful. I think the lengthy naming was an attempt at clarity, but the wordiness makes them sound more complicated than they actually are. Shortening these to 'Selective 'Flexi-binding' and 'Smooth Joint' are descriptive enough, and can be helpful to new users because they're easier to say, write, and remember.

It would also be helpful to new users if they could hover-invoke an (optional) tooltip with a brief description and maybe a link to the relevant section of the manual. Parts of Moho's UI already do that, so it could be an (optional) expansion to what's already there. I know that's a major undertaking for Team Moho, but it could reduce a lot of these types of threads.

Sidetrack: I was about to say maybe we need newer, more relevant examples in the manual, but TBH, I haven't really gone through the user manual in many years, and I probably should do that before saying anything further on the subject.

Anyway, sorry for being OT-ish. Just some thoughts I had.

[mmmaarten]

I tend to agree with this statement, especially the last part.

This is what I meant by people forgetting their struggle in the beginning. Just search for your older posts. It wasn't easy for you either.

And don't forget that this is my job for 25 years now and me too are coming from a 2D and 3D professional background.

I'm talking in a dessert and you don't seem to even understand or consider my words.

Which is a pitty, because I put a lot of time and effort in this to get my points across and to help new users with a better interface.

But guess some people just want to keep things the old way instead of improving.

This was my last thing I wrote on this subject. It's a waste of my time.

[Greenlaw]

I tend to agree with this statement, especially the last part.

This is what I meant by people forgetting their struggle in the beginning. Just search for your older posts. It wasn't easy for you either.

I don't think it was that bad. From what I recall, my main struggles came from expecting Moho to behave just like other programs I used in production at the time. But once I accepted that Moho was its own thing, along with input from its helpful community, I managed to complete a short film with Moho in about six weeks. That experience convinced me I needed to work Moho into my job.

It was kinda like when I was learning ZBrush. That program's UI and workflow made me nuts for quite some time. But once I got used to its logic and workflow, it's been an incredibly fast way to work. (Ok, full disclosure, ZBrush still makes me nuts, but I still use it, and it's still very fast. But only a few things in Moho make me nuts today.)

[Daxel]

I say what I mean and use the terms used by Moho. If you have doubts about that I'm unable to change that. I'm sorry.

Well it is as easy as writing, for example, "2 and 1". Anyway, I took the time to answer you in 4 different ways depending on what you meant in each case, and I'm sorry if you are feeling frustrated but you were wrong in any case as I explained, so I just wanted to help you to understand it. I feel like you are starting to take this personally because you are trying to make it look like you already knew everything when that is not true.

Last time I try with a summary of what I wrote:
DON'T HAVE AUTOMATIC AND GLOBAL BINDING AS A DEFAULT. period. It is INVERSE and INCONSISTANT logic, which is always bad and never a good thing. And is causing only headaches and unnecesary and time consuming workflows for both beginners as well as more advanced users.

That is not a good summary because only contains one of the last things you said. You have asked dozens of questions about the binding system and about the dragon rig and you have received many answers explaining everything and solving your problems, so if you were talking to a wall like you said, it was a very nice wall I would say. We went a little bit off topic with proposals to try to improve things, even when you were still demonstrating you didn't fully understood how things worked. And now it looks like you are trying to say you knew everything from the beggining, you have talked to a wall, nobody understands you, you used every term right and the only thing you said was that Moho shouldn't have automatic binding as default. That is simply not true, I'm sorry to tell you.

I hope you understand everything well now and you have a better day tomorrow.

[Daxel]

Anyway, it's not that I think Moho can't be improved--it certainly can be--but the reason I use Moho is that the version we have now is undeniably an efficient way to create quality animations quickly. And it's affordable too!

It's the most efficient animation technology of our time, in my opinion. Vector point interpolation is just amazing and unique, and smartbones are an incredible idea. I work with many programs and I don't waste nearly as much time helping others, making proposals or making critics with any other program. I just care a lot about Moho. I know they have a lot on their plate so I try to make proposals that are not too hard to implement and of course I am not expecting them to work on everything we say. They have to prioritize.

I agree about problems with some of Moho's terminology, but for me, it's that some of the terms are too long.

I think that's the case when you already know what each thing does. At the beggining, I had to look at my notes constantly because the terms were too short to let me know what they actually did. Of course, short and descriptive would be perfect but I am learning programming now and one thing they teached me was to avoid using short names for convenience, like "vel", and use long descriptive names instead, like PlayerJumpMaxVelocity because understanding it easily the next time you read it is more important than making it short. But I guess it is a subjective and complex topic. My memory is pretty bad so I like the benefits of descriptive names or tooltips.

It would also be helpful to new users if they could hover-invoke an (optional) tooltip with a brief description...

Yep with tooltips names don't need to be as long and descriptive and we don't need to remember or take notes about how everything works.

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[SuperSGL]

I'm copying and pasting everything greenlaw posts into my own pdf file

Seriously my beginnings started rough I got version 10 first just before 11 came out and have gotten every version since. I'm just starting to understand how all this flexi-binding works I use to give up and just use point binding and layer binding for everything. It was so frustrating. Now, one of them is called "Link Bones". I'll get it eventually already used it, does make things a little easier. I took alot of trips to this forum for help and honestly it's been more eye opening then any of the tutorials I've watched. I watched a couple where there is a few seconds of what I needed and would have to go back to it and find that one part again. Some people have to know how almost everything works before they get started. I can be a little like that but this program demands trial and error. I asked the same question "How do I know which binding method to use for different characters (parts)" The answer was and still is the same 'depends on the character, what you want the character to do and the type of art work you have' (not helpful) but it's a start the main thing I've come to realize there is almost always more then one type of rigging in every character.
Hope you've figured out most of what you asked for but thank you for asking the question because at least to me the answers have been very helpful