Lost Scripts' Shapes Window (**New** BETA 3) for Moho 14.1 Pro

[Rai López]

And turns out it (seems to) work/s like a charm

[Rai López]

Well, new BETA (3) ready for download at the top of the first post. More info & (low quality) gifs there too...

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The last with new features, or I hope so. If anything, maybe some more little helpers, but I'll try to center now on improving performance and do some code cleaning, as well as resolving other issues more related to development, repositories an so, I hope it goes better than the last time... Anyway, as usually, thanks for any feedback/reports!

[Daxel]

Amazing, so many goodies! o:

Thank you!

[Rai López]

Glad you liked! And thanks to you too for all the given feedback . BTW, I just corrected the text of the download link (the link itself always pointed to the correct file, thought).

[Rai López]

Hi there. Just a thought about making "Recolor (RGB/HSB)" feature work over multiple layers... Well, the logic I decide to make Recoloring work is that, should you have some shape/s selected in layer, only those shapes get affected and if on the contrary no shape is selected, assume you want to affect all of them (instead of just do nothing); well, I did it that way becase I thought it could be handy not to necessarily have to select all shapes in most case uses (I think) before applying recolor and I hope it make sense. But now that it can work over all selected layers, I think a different approach could be convenient?

The case is if I do nothing, everything will just follow the very same logic but over all selected layers. That is, if in the current layer (the one more highlighted in palette) there is some shape selected, Recolor will affect ONLY to selected shape/s of the selected layers and, if no shape is selected there, all shapes of all selected layers will get recolored. This would be the "easy way" because I wouldn't have to do/rethink anything, but I'm not convinced it really gets along under the new multilayer situation... Mainly because, even thought it could help on recoloring just the desired shapes over all selected layers in one go, I think it can be hard from user's POV to really keep track of what is selected and what not over different layers and may not always obtain the expected results.

So, one of the ways I can think it could work instead would be more something like this: If only one layer is selected, stick to the above described logic, BUT if there are several layers selected forget about that and simply apply recoloring to all shapes in all of them, no matter which shapes are selected (even in the current or most highlighted layer) and which not. And I can think on several variations of that, but that might be the simplest alternative.

Well, turns out I'm in love with this (I hope not too hidden) feature, so there it is just in case someone had any suggestion or whatever about the best way to go on that regard... Thanks.


P.S. Oh, and another improvement is it can affect now fills AND/OR strokes

EDIT: Well, already applied the approach proposed in third paragraph, and I think I'm quite happy with results taking into account it turned to be a very easy fix... Cheers!

[synthsin75]

EDIT: Well, already applied the approach proposed in third paragraph, and I think I'm quite happy with results taking into account it turned to be a very easy fix... Cheers!

Yeah, that would be the most sensible for me too.

[Rai López]

Thanks Wes, sometimes the mere fact of exposing these kind of things help somehow... And, as I said, I'm happy with the outcome taking into account I didn't want to lose the previous shape selection logic, but it seems clear enough that if user has several layers selected upon applying, the most expected result is going to be end up with all selected layer's shapes recolored discarding any shape selection aspect (or one always can undo anyway, and that's why I also discarded the idea of a warning). So, even though changing this kind of behaviors has turned to be an easy task, luckily I'll stick to that and pass to other things... Cheers!

[Greenlaw]

Hi Rai,

The task I'm on right now doesn't involve Liquid Shapes, but there are multiple layers with MANY shapes that need to be animated in several Smart Bones. I was managing their stacking order and shape visibility manually, but it was getting very tiresome.

So, this afternoon, I decided to give Lost Script's Shapes Window a try, and...I LOVE it! This tool makes the most tedious parts of this rigging task so much easier to work through.

If I have any constructive criticism to offer, it's that the buttons are really tiny and hard to see. Or maybe it's that the buttons are positioned so close to each other that they visually blend together (notably, the ones along the left side of the window.)

Anyway, thank you for making this tool available, and please keep up the great work!

[Greenlaw]

If I have any constructive criticism to offer, it's that the buttons are really tiny and hard to see. Or maybe it's that the buttons are positioned so close to each other that they visually blend together (notably, the ones along the left side of the window.)

I tried switching from the default teal UI color to the gold color seen in your demo images, and this does improve visibility for me! I still wish the icons were a little bigger, but the gold color against dark is much easier to look at.

[Greenlaw]

Woah! I just discovered the Select Inverse button in the UI. THANK YOU! This makes it so much easier to hide everything but the one thing I want to work on.

Whew, I may actually get this task done today!

[Greenlaw]

I just discovered the Use Larger Buttons (wider spacing) option. Man, you've thought of everything. No further notes!

[Rai López]

Wow, that's a lot of feedback, Dennis! Thank you and I'm glad it's being useful

I was managing their stacking order and shape visibility manually, but it was getting very tiresome.

Not sure if you are really referring to use it along with "Animated Shape Order" or simply for managing stacking order and visibility (I think last ones), but I admit the first is something I had pending to test more in depth at some point, so if that were the case I hope it behaves as expected or, if not, of course I'm all ears...

Woah! I just discovered the Select Inverse button in the UI. THANK YOU! This makes it so much easier to hide everything but the one thing I want to work on.

In general, even though the palette should also ease selection tasks and so, I tried to cover as much little helpers as possible with buttons along with the help of Alt key. Luckily we have tooltips... And you might be already aware if you've been dealing with shape visibility so much, but the little * at the end of the hidden shapes name should help quite a bit with that. And another feature you may find useful should you're also animating shape visibility is Fill & Stroke buttons, again, along with the Alt key.

I just discovered the Use Larger Buttons (wider spacing) option.

Yeah, although the icons are really the same (not sure if that will change at some point, though), I introduced at least that option in a try to help on clicking the buttons one may use often, over all with stylus users in mind but, unless you are very picky with the window width (as I think I am ), that well could be the more convenient size for them. I would have liked not have to shrink things so much, but then the width of the window would have ballooned or the palette would have fewer rows, so it was tricky to try to reach a balance... Oh, and I couldn't agree more a vivid Highlights color helps . Cheers!

[Greenlaw]

I was managing their stacking order and shape visibility manually, but it was getting very tiresome.

Not sure if you are really referring to use it along with "Animated Shape Order" or simply for managing stacking order and visibility (I think last ones),

Yes, the latter. I'm working on a hand setup using Point Animation with individual controls for each finger. It's similar to the setup I used for the Boss Baby characters, but this one is for realistic human characters.

In each finger, there are four connected shapes (joints and fingernail), plus there are extra 'floating' line shapes for folds and knuckles. Then, this setup is multiplied for each finger in the hand, plus the hand shape itself and its 'floating' line details. All this adds up to a ton of shapes to manage for selection and animation. Then, this setup is similarly multiplied for each hand 'turn' drawing. (Four to ten variations depending on how realistic the character animation needs to be.)

What I found tedious was the process of selecting and hiding all the shapes except for the shapes in the one finger I needed to animate at a given time. Native Moho lets me select all Points in one finger, invert that selection, and hide the rest of the points in the hand, but Moho doesn't offer the equivalent Invert option for Shapes.

Shapes Window does!

Also, this was the first situation where I felt I had to name every shape in a drawing layer, but for working with Shapes Window, this was totally worth it!

(Tip for other users creating animated hand rigs: When naming each finger, use a recognizable pre-fix. For example, Thb- for Thumb, Ind- for Index, Mid- for middle, etc. When naming the shapes, you can select all the shapes and type the name once; Moho will automatically add a differentiating number to each name for you. This makes it easy to identify the related/connected shapes in the list.)

Thanks, Rai, for the additional Shapes Window tips! I'm sure I'll discover more ways to use Shapes Window over the weekend!

[Greenlaw]

Kind of a related question: Is there a way to select Shape 'groups' using Moho's Point Selection Groups? I'm looking for an easier way to select groups of Shapes. I see there is something called Point Based Selection in the Shape window's options...is this what that's for? How does it work?

I haven't had time to look into this yet and I wondered if anyone here already had an answer.

Update: Yup, I found this is exactly what Point Based Selection does. See later post for more info and a new related request.

[Greenlaw]

Hi Rai,

Minor (I hope) request: when renaming a shape in the Shapes window, can it be made so that double-clicking inside the name box will select all the text? Or maybe the traditional double-click to select one word and triple-click for all? (Actually, just double-clicking for all text is perfectly fine.)

Right now, I have to click and drag over the entire text to rename it. This is not a huge deal, but a quicker way to select the text will help when there are many shapes to rename. (As I had to do yesterday.)

Thanks for listening!