Layer reference acceptable parameters

[Hamedss]

Hi.
I am confused what parameters changes from target ( original) layer to reference layer?
For example points animation in target layer will be the same in reference layer but shading fill effect parameters will not!
Please list if possible!
Thanks.

[Greenlaw]

I don't know about that example specifically, but in my experience, many items that are not keyframeable will not carry over in a Reference update.

For example: Bone Strength. If I update a 'master' rig for referencing, and one of the changes is in bone strength, other animators on the prod need to be notified to make this change in their projects manually. (If they need it, of course.)

However, most other changes (Smart Bone Actions, artwork edits, new layers, point animations, etc.) should carry over.

[Hamedss]

Thanks.Yes you are right. But the developers should list these in the moho user manual

[Nicohk92]

I totally agree.
Still wrapping my head around reference layers myself.

By the way, is there a best practice for folder and file hierarchy when dealing with references across several files? Should all files be in the same folder for example?

[Greenlaw]

[Revised from a previous post:]

When I’m working on a production with multiple shots, I typically make a 'work' directory where I save incremental versions of my project, and the most recent version of the asset is saved outside of my work directory and has no version number. This unnumbered version of the shot project is the one I render from using Moho Exporter.

This is done because Moho takes its output name from the filename when using Moho Exporter. (I REALLY wish it didn't do that.) Keeping the output name unchanged is important because Moho will not overwrite the previously output file when the project's filename has a version number that changes.

For production assets (rigs, props, backgrounds,) I have a ‘work’ folder inside the asset’s folder. As in the shot folder, the asset folder’s ‘work’ folder contains the incremental versions of the asset, and I save an unnumbered ‘master’ version outside.

In a larger production with multiple animators, the 'master' file is the version that will be imported or referenced by the animators to their shot projects.

This child-parent-grandparent setup was adapted from the system used by Cartoon Saloon (thanks, Jeremy!) and I used it when I worked with multiple animators on Boss Baby: Back In Business.

The system works very well, but you need to be aware of a few flaws with using project references this way.

The first is that Moho tends to create unwanted keyframes in channels you're not using when referencing a rig. When you see this, you want to sync all the channels to the original immediately before you begin animation. If this happens along the way, you can sync individual channels to remove them. (This can get tedious after a while.)

If you make a lot of changes to the rig, you may want to break the link at that point because updating the rig to the current 'master' may break it.

Or, when the rigger makes an extreme update to the rig, and the existing rig may not update as expected. In this situation, I break the link and make my updates manually to ensure I don't break the project-specific changes I made to the rig.

Styles is another consideration. Moho's custom styles use an internal ID system to identify custom styles, so changing the style names will not work. This is what the Unlink Shared Styles option is for. Use this when you want to reference multiple copies of a character or prop, and you want to change the global styles differently for each character.

A good example of this are cats in the Boss Baby footage on my 2020 demo reel. As I needed many differently colored cats, I created a base version, which in a duplicate project I imported a reference of itself and made sure to enable Unlike Styles. This allowed me to set a different color for the custom style in the second cat. I repeated this until I had 8 or so differently colored cats. If I wanted to, I could then save each color of cat to its own project for individual referencing in the scene projects. I didn't bother with that; because I needed so many cats in these scenes, I just imported the file for all 8 cats multiple times, and removed the cats I didn't need.

Hope this helps.

[Nicohk92]

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer Greenlaw.

I'll try using those conventions, and remember you words of caution. Luckily there isn't too much rigging in my particular project.