Moho Forum

Hi!

I want to change the color of a character, like a Chameleon. I know that if I select a shape with the paint bucket and then change the color in the actions, it will adjust. However, if I have a more complex character, this is a very tedious and confusing task as I can never select more than one object. It almost feels as if MOHO doesn't even want to use this, because you don't have access to it in the actions and always have to go to the layer first, select the area, then go into the action and then adjust the color and then do it all over again. This becomes a mind-boggling task if the character is more complex.
Is there an easier way?

Depends on your character design. If you want to change each shape into a certain colour: no, that's only possible in the tedious way of changing one by one.

If you want your character getting darker for being in shadows or a night scene: put it into a group folder and create another layer with a shape in solid blue. Use the character as mask, set the blue layer to multiply, adjust opacity.

If you need several colour changes, like in a real chameleon: same as above, but with several differently coloured layers which you can fade in and out. Or even with bitmap images with a painted pattern.

You should do the colour changes in a moment when your character is at rest, it's easier to control that way, and will be more visible than when it happens during a movement.

Whatever you do, test all colour changes and settings before you create the real character.

if I know I'm going to animate changes to a colour, I tend to make the shape mid grey (x808080) then use that as a mask for a colourisation layer, which has blend mode overlay. as in this: https://youtu.be/t9WDnWi9F7s

This can be done easily with Styles, imo.

If a lizard is 5 greenish colors, make 5 appropriate Styles on frame 0 and use them to color the lizard.

If the lizard changes to brown colors on frame 24, go to frame 24 and change the 5 Styles to new brown colors. The lizard is now brown, and you'll get a keyframe in the timeline channel called Selected Fill Color, which can be moved around. Even better, the color transition is gradual over time, not instantaneous.

This is a task where I really miss the old Animo software. You could colour a character once, then have different color sets based on the first one so you could have a completely new coloring without having to assign colours again.

Rai's Shapes Window script can change color of all or selected shapes in a layer: viewtopic.php?t=36508

(school vacation time over here... been busy with our 10 y.o. son! however, a quiet moment to finish this off enough to publish this as examples of how overlays over greyscale images can work.

All done in Moho -- mix of bones and warp layers for the motion. Two different approaches to colourisation: one using liquid shapes that flow together and apart - there are three separate layers of these, one for each of the primary colours, each layer is blend mode "add" inside a group; the other (for the leg) simply fixed colour shapes that move around (point animation). The colourisation layers are blend mode "overlay" on top of greyscale images: x808080 for the base colour, varying down towards xFFFFFF for darkening and up towards x000000 for highlights. I could have (but didn't bother to) animate the levels in the greyscale images - these are bitmaps from a widely available chameleon image.