Is there a way to define the drawing order of a Live Mesh per region?

[mmmaarten]

Hi,

I decided to use the semi automatic Live Mesh method to deform a tail of a dragon. But now I'm bumping into the issue that I don't know how to define the drawing order of the faces of the mesh to define what goes in front and what goes behind itself.

And I now get issues like this where the tail isn't drawing in front neither behind itself... (the body and tail together are one image/one mesh):


I know now that this can be done if I had chosen to go for the complete manual route. By creating the fills/shapes of the mesh in a particular order. But it's not much fun to do this all over again and for learning Moho sake; I'm wondering, is there a way to do this with the Live Mesh method? (setting drawing order per face)

I'm sure I could find a trick to solve this with workarounds and that's probably what I'm going to do now (especially to also animate the order), but if possible with the live mesh method that would be great and I'm very curious to know if next time I should've chosen the manual way directly, or if there's still a way to do these kind of things.

Thanks in advance!

[mmmaarten]

OMG forget the question; Moho is so flexible, it's working already without the need to switch to manual meshes, love it! Have it working with a workaround and now it can even be animated! with a moving tail that goes from in front to behind
While still using the Live Mesh AND the Sketch Bones tool to animate the tail, while maintaining the spikes (with their own phsycis animations on them).

Truly briliant software! Extremely flexible!

(Don't mind the animation and the extreme stretching, this is only a quick'n'dirty test)

[Greenlaw]

So long as the larger shape is segmented, you can change the stacking order of the pieces...animate the order even if you enable Animated Shape Order. Use the u/d arrow keys to move selected shapes up and down the stack, shift+u/d to send to front/back.

[mmmaarten]

So long as the shape is segmented, you can change the stacking order of the pieces...animate the order even if you enable Animated Shape Order. Use the u/d arrow keys to move selected shapes up and down the stack, shift+u/d to send to front/back.

Yes, that's basically what I did now:
I have one image and mesh with both the body as well as the tail. So I copied the image of the body with tail into three parts:
- part where the tail is removed
- part where the body is removed (x 2)
And placed one image with only tail in front of the body layer and one behind. And used the same mesh on all three layers.

I thought about doing it with layer order during animation, as you write, but than I figured it may not be scalable when I add more layers later or move layers around, when using a Smart Action to move the order of these parts.
So I now just turn the visibility of the front and back tails on/off with a smart bone action! and animate the smart bone if the tail needs to go to the front or the back Than I can be sure it keeps working even when changing the layer order or count!

Five minutes of work. Pretty crazy how flexible Moho is!

And also a lot easier and more flexible than to paint areas on a mesh in a specific order!

[Greenlaw]

Layer order is my preferred method for animating stacked items because it offers more animation choices. There are a few issues to be aware of, like keeping the entire mesh intact in each layer (just delete the shapes) to ensure adjacent edges always line up when deformed, and preventing edge gaps from appearing in renders (caused by Moho's AA.) The tricks can mean extra work but, for me, it's often the better way.

Of course, it depends on the given situation. For the dragon tail example, doing the stacking animation in a single layer does seem to make more sense.

Pretty crazy how flexible Moho is!

Absolutely!

[mmmaarten]

Layer order is my preferred method for animating stacked items because it offers more animation choices.

I'm intrigued; what extra options? I only have a checkbox to animate layer order or not. And isn't it prone to errors when adding or removing layers after keyframing that layer order (although it's easy to fix probably when using a smart action that does this)? With animating visibility I can swap all layers around, add new layers, remove layers etc. without any issues even when I already keyframed the tail going front and back. I don't think that's possible when animating layer order? Not sure

There are a few issues to be aware of, like keeping the entire mesh intact in each layer (just delete the shapes) to ensure adjacent edges always line up when deformed, and preventing edge gaps from appearing in renders (caused by Moho's AA.) The tricks can mean extra work but, for me, it's often the better way.

Of course, it depends on the given situation. For the dragon tail example, doing the stacking animation in a single layer does seem to make more sense.

This isn't a vector layer, it's all raster. So can't do it in a single layer and also don't have the issue of images not being exactly on top of each other, because I'm using a PSD which was loaded directly into Moho as individuals and it worked by just erasing the parts in Krita and reloading the generated PSD! Which is a pretty nice feature (although sometimes we need to search where new layers, added to the psd later, has gone in Moho)

BTW I also tried animating the layers opacity from 0 to 100 or back, but for some reason I didn't get that to work. Maybe we cannot keyframe 0% opacity values, because Moho sees it as invisible? Not sure. Have to test that later

[Greenlaw]

Layer order is my preferred method for animating stacked items because it offers more animation choices.

I'm intrigued; what extra options?

With layers, there's a lot more flexibility because I can insert other layers in the stacking order, including completely different layer types. I can't do that when confining the sorting to a single Vector layer, I can only work with shapes in that one drawing. To me, that can get limiting. For example, let's say I want the tail to wrap around a tree layer and then over the dragon again...that's difficult to do inside a single Vector layer but not so hard with multiple layers.

That said, if the animation will never need that level of stacking flexibility, then it makes complete sense to use Animated Shape Order in a single vector layer. I would use whichever works best for the situation.

I only have a checkbox to animate layer order or not. And isn't it prone to errors when adding or removing layers after keyframing that layer order

I use Animated Layer Order all the time. It's very stable and allows me to insert and remove layers without disrupting existing layer order keyframes.

Where I might run into trouble is when I use Animated Layer Order inside a Smart Bone Action. With this method, I can quickly run into keyframing conflicts, especially when I run into a situation where I want to insert layer order keyframes manually. Technically, these aren't errors because the tool is working the way it's intended.

When I want to do something like this inside a Smart Bone Action, visibility with duplicate layers has been a more reliable way to animate layer order. This method can also be combined with manually keyframed Animated Layer Order.

For me, it's all about maximizing flexibility and adaptability because sometimes I don't always know ahead of time what crazy thing I will be asked to do next with a character.

This isn't a vector layer, it's all raster.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant for the mesh warp layer, which is a vector layer. You can use Animated Layer Order in the mesh warp which has the raster image projected inside the mesh's shapes. You can move the shapes up and down for the raster image there.

Hope this helps

[mmmaarten]

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant for the mesh warp layer, which is a vector layer. You can use Animated Layer Order in the mesh warp which has the raster image projected inside the mesh's shapes. You can move the shapes up and down for the raster image there.

As written above I'm not using a manual mesh warp here, but the Live Mesh semi automatic one. So I couldn't find any way to move shapes around to set a drawing order as the shape creation is done automatically 'live' by Moho. So I would find it hard to believe there's a way to move these automatically created 'faces' of the mesh around. Or is there?

[Greenlaw]

Oh, shoot, you're right. I guess this is one of the situations where I would switch to a manually drawn mesh where I have more control over things like that.

Alternatively, I might try making Duplicate or Reference copies of the Smart Warp layer and use masks to break apart the drawings. This may allow me to stack parts of the drawing and make them appear seamless. But, TBH, I've never tested the new system with masking. If you do this, let me know how it goes.

I might also try using different Smart Warp layers to reveal different parts of the drawing. The edges might not align, but if you have a slight overlap and bind it properly, this might not matter. I've never done that before either but it seems like it would work.

Anyway, lots of things you can try. Good luck!

[mmmaarten]

Anyway, lots of things you can try. Good luck!

No problem. But don't want to be rude, but you are missing the point some time now I believe; as I already got it working for days now and it only costed me 5 minutes (!!) to create. It's all described above in this thread /\ and tbh way easier to do than what you describe here now. There's no need for multiple meshes, just using the same mesh on different images is way easier, faster and more accurate. works flawlessly as you can see in the video above
This thread has some little miscommunications I believe, haha

Loving you still tho, thanks for trying to help

[Greenlaw]

Ah! Thanks. I somehow missed your post with the explanation.

Sorry about that. I don't have a mobile computer for the next two weeks, so I've been speeding through everything when I'm online at home. Unfortunately, I sometimes miss important details this way.

Anyway, looks good!

[mmmaarten]

Ah! Thanks. I somehow missed your post with the explanation.

Sorry about that. I don't have a mobile computer for the next two weeks, so I've been speeding through everything when I'm online at home. Unfortunately, I sometimes miss important details this way.

Anyway, looks good!

Thanks! And no worries. btw I saw I was mistaken too by writing that it was solved for days , while it was only one day ago , haha (guess I did a lot in the mean time as it seemed so far away )