Rigging and Animating Vectors in Moho Pro

There are several ways you can rig and animate in Moho. How you approach the process depends on how the character is designed. In this video we go over what you need to know before we start laying down bones.

If you followed along with my Moho Vector Design course, you may have added the hair strands to the main hair layer. While you can animate and rig this way, you may find the process more appealing if you separate these areas. This video shows you how to make such a correction.

In this video we will lay down the bones for the character and demonstrate the proper hierarchy for connecting the body together.

With all the bones drawn out, it's now time to go through and label them. This is especially important for the bones that will be linked to Smart Actions later on.

We begin the process of linking layers by binding the main layers. We will also do this for some layers we plan to point bind later as layer binding can be a good placeholder for such cases.

We begin the process of point binding by connecting the arms.

By following the same procedure as binding the arms, the legs can be linked to create bends.

The coat can be attached to its own bones to allow for more control and later, physics. The coat art style, shading and highlights will need to be bound as well.

The torso will follow a similar procedure as the limbs with two bones making up the binding process. We will also need to take into consideration the shirt design.

Binding the hair involves attaching the hair strands and ponytail to their proper bones.

Target bones are used to anchor down areas of the rig, such as the feet. This can create a more grounded look, allowing to bend knees without the feet moving. You can tie targets anywhere you want with this anchor-like functionality.

Constraining bones allows us to reign in unruly movements that can easily occur with feet, hands, the head and more.

By making the bicep a Smart Bone, we can correct the movements that occur with bending the arm.

While we corrected the bend going one way, the other way also needs attention. We can create two actions for one Smart Bone to help correct this.

By following the steps from the previous two lectures, we can correct the bends for the back arm by using another Smart Bone.

The legs have some issues. We can use Smart Bones to correct these issues, much like the arms.

The torso has two bones we need to deal with. In this lecture we will start with the bottom torso and make corrections for both bends.

Like the bottom torso bone, the top must be turned into a Smart Bone to help correct issues with bending forward and backward.

In this lecture we will take some time to finish off any final corrections needed for the body bends.

There is an issue with the front leg popping into the coat when bending. In this lecture we will correct that.

By linking the pupils to a pin bone, we can easily move the eyes around for quick animations.

By controlling the eyebrows with a Smart Bone, we have easy access to creating basic emotions.

Using the same principle as the eyebrow Smart Bone, we can create a dial for the eyelids to control blinks.

Starting with the base masked mouth, we can toggle on Interpolated Sub-Layers for automatic animation between posed. Just be sure to refrain from adding or removing points between poses.

By placing some points on the head, we can generate a mesh which can be used to link layers and control them through animation.

We begin the process of turning the head by creating a dial and moving the head to the left using the mesh.

By following similar steps from the previous lecture, we can now move the mesh points and morph the head to create a front view of the face.

A second dial will be created to add an upward motion for the head.

With the new dial we can create a downward animation for the head.

With the head tilts in place we can go back and polish up the animations.

In this lecture we will move the hair strands and ponytail to build up the animations further.

We finish off by animating the ponytail with the rest of the head turn.

In this lecture we will correct the smaller hair strand with point binding.

Sometimes when working with actions certain keyframes can be accidentally applied. In this lecture we are going to clean up these mishaps.

Bone dynamics, or physics, can create motion for hair and clothing based on body and head movements. IK Stretching can also be applied to create squash and stretch through the use of targets.

Here we will add some hand poses to the rig which can be picked through the use of switches.

To begin our test, we will need to set up the canvas and position the character. These tasks include importing a background file, resizing the canvas and moving character bones to position.

By moving our bones and working within the timeline, we can set up the first part of our jumping animation for this test.

By using our mouth switch and an imported audio file, we can create an interpolated mouth by utilizing the Switch Selection panel.

To make the dialogue more interesting, we can finish the sequence by adding some more body and head animations to compliment.

Let's put those Smart Bones to use and create some additional actions for the character.

With the animation complete, let's render it out for the world to see!

My final thoughts on this course.