, then it can be used for animation as well. In general, tools that are used for bone setup can only be used when the time is set to frame 0 - others can be used at any time.
The following tools are available when working with Bone or Switch layers. If a tool has the following symbol next to it: , then it can be used for animation as well. In general, tools that are used for bone setup can only be used when the time is set to frame 0 - others can be used at any time.
Using this tool, you can click on a bone to select it. You might want to select a bone in order to delete it (press the <delete> or <backspace> keys - all of its children will be deleted too). You also might want to select a bone in order to add new child bones to it. Click anywhere besides a bone to de-select all bones.
Translate Bone
This tool (along with the Rotate Bone tool) is used to reposition bones after they've been created. If you've added a new bone in the wrong place, or you just want to move it later on, click and drag it with this tool. Clicking near the base of the bone will move its position, while clicking near the tip will move the tip around, changing the bone's length and direction. Note that if the bone has any child bones, they will be moved as well.
Holding the <shift> key will cause the bone to only move horizontally or vertically relative to its parent (if you click near the base), or to point in a direction that is a multiple of 45 degrees (if you click near the tip).
If any objects in other layers have been bound to the bone, they will not move if the current frame is 0. At frame 0, you are modifying the bone layout - at later frames you are animating with this tool, and bound objects will move with the bone.
Nudging: When this tool is active, you can "nudge" the selected bone by small increments by holding down the <ctrl> key and pressing the arrow keys. Hold down <shift> in addition to <ctrl> to nudge the bone by a greater increment.
Scale Bone
The Scale Bone tool is used to change the length of a bone. This tool is only available during an animation, not at frame zero. To change the length of a bone at frame 0, use the Translate Bone tool and drag the tip of the bone.
Rotate Bone
The Rotate Bone tool is used to change the direction a bone is pointing in. Click the tip of a bone, and drag it in circles around its base to change its direction. Hold the <shift> key to constrain the bone's direction to a multiple of 45 degrees.
Use this tool to add new bones to a skeleton. The location you click will be the base of the bone (the point it rotates about), and where you drag to will be the endpoint. If another bone is selected before you click and drag, it will be the parent of the new bone you create. Otherwise, the new bone will be parentless, a root bone.
Hold the <shift> key to constrain the new bone to point in a direction that is a multiple of 45 degrees.
Note that bones don't have to be touching to have a parent-child relationship. In the example under Bone Layers, the upper arm bones are children of the spine, even though they are separated from it by a small distance. This will often be the case - arms should rotate about the shoulders, not the neck, even though they move when the spine moves.
Sometimes when building a skeleton, you may accidentally add bones to the wrong parent. Later, when you discover the error, deleting bones and adding new ones is just too much work. Instead, use the Change Parent tool to change a bone's parent. First, select the bone whose parent you want to change (using the Select Bone tool). Then, using this tool, click on the new parent bone. (The new parent will become highlighted in blue.) If you want to turn the selected bone into a root bone (one that has no parent), just click on the background.
When using bones to control the points in a vector layer or to warp an image layer, by default every bone has some degree of influence over every point in the vector layer (or image). The Bone Strength tool lets you adjust how much influence each bone has. When this tool is activated, a semi-transparent region appears around each bone - this region indicates the strength of the bone. If you drag side to side on a bone with the Bone Strength tool, you cause the region of influence to shrink or grow. Points that are closer to the center of this region move more when the bone itself is moved.
Although by default, all bones have some influence over some points, you can change this behavior. In the Layer Settings dialog, under the Bones tab, there are two options, "Flexible binding" and "Region binding". Flexible binding means that every bone will influence every point. Region binding, on the other hand, means that a point will only move under the influence of the bone(s) in whose region of influence it lies. If that point only lies in one bone's region, it will only move with that bone - if the point is overlapped by the regions of two bones, it will move with both of those bones.
Flexible binding is the default setting for new bone layers because it works reasonably well almost automatically. The downside is that it leads to "rubbery" movement of the attached vector artwork. Region binding will give you cleaner movement, but takes a little more work to set up. The Tutorials section of this manual shows you how to use the Bone Strength tool together with both types of binding to quickly set up a character's skeleton.
Manipulate Bones
The Manipulate Bones tool has two purposes. First, when the current frame is set to 0, it is used to test whether a skeleton is set up and working properly. Although it moves bones and points around, the changes it makes are only temporary. When you switch to another tool, the skeleton is reverted back to its original shape.
The second use of this tool is at frames greater than 0. If the current frame is greater than 0, then this tool will move the skeleton in the same way, but the move will introduce a keyframe for animation.
To manipulate a skeleton, just click and drag the various bones that make it up. If points or other layers have been bound to the bones, they will move as well. The way the skeleton and the bound points move with this tool is exactly the same whether at frame 0 or a later frame. If some part of the skeleton doesn't move correctly, you can find out with this tool and fix it before you start animating.
Note: If you only want to rotate a single bone, it's better to use the Rotate Bone tool. The Manipulate Bones tool will move a whole chain of bones, which is definitely not what you want if you plan to rotate a single bone.
Other layers can be contained within a bone layer. For example, you could create a "hand" layer and place that within an "arm" layer. To bind the hand to the arm, use this tool. Just click on the bone in the parent layer that you want to connect to, and the entire layer will move with that bone. In the arm/hand example, you would click on the bone nearest the wrist to bind the hand to the end of the arm.
Use this tool to bind an entire layer to a single bone. If you would rather bind certain points in a vector layer to certain bones, then you should use the Bind Points tool instead.
The Bind Points tool operates exactly like the Select Points tool described in the Draw Tools section. Use it to select a group of points to bind to a bone. In order to use this tool, a bone must first be selected. When a bone is selected, the points that are currently bound to it are automatically selected as well. Use this tool to add or remove points from that selected group. When the correct group of points is selected that you want to bind to the bone, press the spacebar - this tells Moho to perform the binding.
This tool used to be very important for setting up connections between bones and points in Moho. However, starting with Moho 5.0, we don't usually recommend using the Bind Points tool. Instead, the best way to attach points to bones is to use automatic bone binding, together with the Bone Strength tool. This technique is demonstrated in the Tutorials section of this manual.
The Offset Bone tool lets you add an extra amount of bone movement starting at frame 1 of your animation. The reason you might want to do this is to simplify the setup of a complex character. Often, parts of a character such as arms and legs overlap, making it difficult to set up bones and attach the proper parts of the character's body to them. The Offset Bone tool lets you draw the parts of a character in disconnected positions, set up bones, and then move them all back into position.
It's difficult to describe the usefulness of this tool without a hands-on example, so look in the Tutorials section of this manual for character setup examples.