It's time for non-modal property panels

[mgo]

Could it be that we got so used to opening and closing the model property panel that we chose to ignore more convenient ways of working? As an inspiration launch any 3D animation app and You'll see some sort of property panel (no extra opening and "OK"-ing or "Apply"-ing needed) where You drag sliders, push buttons and see instant changes on the canvas.

It would be a huge upgrade if Moho finally adopted this UI paradigm. The current way reminds me of Flash version 4 from two decades ago or so. But even back then, they ditched the modal panels for good and gave us a modern interface

Moho is great und unique, and I hope that some of the clunkier legacy stuff gets an overhaul. It's just about working with less friction, and removing modal windows gives us exactly that.

[rafael]

That would be a great upgrade to the Moho UI. Having to open up a panel for something like opacity animation is a pain in the ass.

[davoodice2]

Could it be that we got so used to opening and closing the model property panel that we chose to ignore more convenient ways of working? As an inspiration launch any 3D animation app and You'll see some sort of property panel (no extra opening and "OK"-ing or "Apply"-ing needed) where You drag sliders, push buttons and see instant changes on the canvas.

It would be a huge upgrade if Moho finally adopted this UI paradigm. The current way reminds me of Flash version 4 from two decades ago or so. But even back then, they ditched the modal panels for good and gave us a modern interface

Moho is great und unique, and I hope that some of the clunkier legacy stuff gets an overhaul. It's just about working with less friction, and removing modal windows gives us exactly that.

Moho is already good for making high-end animations, but it lags far behind in user interface design and user interaction, and also all of this is useless when you can't bring 4 characters into the scene with a number of backgrounds because Moho is not capable .its processing and any operation becomes difficult and tedious in this situation.
My suggestion is to speed up Moho before performing any first update

[synthsin75]

every update is useless until performance goes up.

Then quit updating and give it a rest.

[davoodice2]

Then quit updating and give it a rest.

Hey man, don't be so stubborn. Take a break from your small world and see what other powerful software works and has done. Learn their virtues and come to implement them in your work. By opposing anything, nothing is right.

[davoodice2]

And of course I know you are very smart

[synthsin75]

Then quit updating and give it a rest.

Hey man, don't be so stubborn. Take a break from your small world and see what other powerful software works and has done. Learn their virtues and come to implement them in your work. By opposing anything, nothing is right.

Hey man, quit pissing all over the place. Before you edited that post (which I quoted in full, and everyone can see was edited after my reply), it had nothing to do with the topic of this thread. It was just you whining as usual. That's not me being stubborn. That's you making off-topic posts. Glad you had the sense to correct your post, but don't blame me for pointing out that it was useless whining.
Plenty of people use Moho in professional animation studios without all the problems you claim to have.


But back to the topic, yes, it would be amazing if modeless windows had access to the current state of the document.

[davoodice2]

Then quit updating and give it a rest.

Hey man, don't be so stubborn. Take a break from your small world and see what other powerful software works and has done. Learn their virtues and come to implement them in your work. By opposing anything, nothing is right.

Hey man, quit pissing all over the place. Before you edited that post (which I quoted in full, and everyone can see was edited after my reply), it had nothing to do with the topic of this thread. It was just you whining as usual. That's not me being stubborn. That's you making off-topic posts. Glad you had the sense to correct your post, but don't blame me for pointing out that it was useless whining.
Plenty of people use Moho in professional animation studios without all the problems you claim to have.


But back to the topic, yes, it would be amazing if modeless windows had access to the current state of the document.

When I was editing my post, you replayed it. Do not feel too much victory. The subject of my new post was what I said.
Can you name some of the works that the great studios have done?
Everyone knows that 99% of big things are done with other software.
dont talk me about it I work over 11 years in animation's industry.
I'm not saying Moho is bad. On the contrary, in many cases it is much better, but it must be able to handle heavy files to do great things.

you are master in programing i know.but Why do you comment on things you do not specialize in?

Negative man.

[synthsin75]

When I was editing my post, you replayed it. Do not feel too much victory. The subject of my new post was what I said.
Can you name some of the works that the great studios have done?
Everyone knows that 99% of big things are done with other software.
dont talk me about it I work over 11 years in animation's industry.
I'm not saying Moho is bad. On the contrary, in many cases it is much better, but it must be able to handle heavy files to do great things.

you are master in programing i know.but Why do you comment on things you do not specialize in?

Negative man.

Don't blame me for not knowing you were taking 10 minutes to edit a post. Or even better, don't write such posts to start with.

DreamWorks Animation Television uses Moho, among other software.
These feature films were done largely in Moho:
La Reine Soleil (2007) - Belokan Productions (Belgium | France | Hungary)
To the Top of the world (2008) - Cine-Clube de Avanca (Czech Republic)
Technotise - Edit & I (2009) - (Serbia)
Secret of the Kells (2009) - Cartoon Saloon (Ireland)
Eve of October OVA1 (2011) - Studio Mars (USA)
L'arte della felicità (2013) - (Italy)
Song of the Sea (2014) - Cartoon Saloon (Ireland)
Eve of October: Sol Trinity (2014) - Studio Mars (USA)
The Breadwinner (2017) - Cartoon Saloon (Ireland)
Wolfwalkers (2020) - Cartoon Saloon (Ireland)

[Hoptoad]

I don't know what modal is, but I'm guessing from context clues that it's a window with buttons and whatnot that allows the user to get results with less clicking. If you have an idea for a new window or panel that would reduce clicking while animating, please draw it and label the buttons and propose a finished thing, and be sure to show how much screen space it would take, otherwise, like synthsin75 said, perhaps don't write such posts. It's easy to complain, as the saying goes. Perhaps your idea has not been implemented because of valid reasons -- like such a panel would subtract screen space presently used for animating.

I use DiVinci Resolve 17 for video editing. DiVinci is used by Major Studios. Nonetheless, it oftentimes takes me many clicks to accomplish something. This morning, for example, I needed to make a still frame from a video to re-insert into the video. This seems like a simple thing. Nonetheless, I had to click a button, right click on an picture, select grab still from a menu, click on the still to get a menu to save the still, choose PNG and name the file, browse to a folder, click a button to go back to the editing page, import the still as media, and drag it to the timeline. That's a lot of steps. But that's what it takes, and because a process took a lot of clicks does not make DiVinci a flawed program. DiVinci has many features that require only a few clicks: adding transitions, playing the video slow, and so forth.

Nearly everything Moho does can be done in three clicks or less. Can you submit a list particular things you do in Moho that takes you far too many clicks to do? I'm just not seeing what the big deal is.

Making and placing that still frame in DiVinci Resolve took me eleven clicks. But I say, So what? Sometimes things simply take as many clicks as they take.

[synthsin75]

A modal window is a window that you have to hit OK or Cancel before you can do anything else in Moho.
A modeless window is a window that you can keep up all the time and still do other stuff in Moho.

The problem for scripting modeless windows is that they generally cannot access the current state of the document, like the current frame, layer, etc.. They can pretty readily access the state of the document when they are opened, just not any changes until they are closed and reopened.

[Hoptoad]

Ah, thanks for explaining.

[Daxel]

Can you guys mention which examples of modal panels bother you the most using Moho?
Just trying to understand what do you mean.

That would be a great upgrade to the Moho UI. Having to open up a panel for something like opacity animation is a pain in the ass.

This is the only example I saw, but I just tested it and you can actually keep working with the layer settings panel opened. To test it:
I opened the panel, then selected the select points tool, selected some points, then selected the magnet tool, moved some points to create a keyframe, and the layer panel was still opened there. I checked the "allow animated layer effects" option and started making opacity keyframes on different frames, no problem, you just need to click on "apply" to apply the opacity values to the frame you are currently in. No need to click on "ok", that is the only option that closes the panel (spanish settings, other languages may vary).

Maybe you only wanted to say that you would like to have some permanently visible UI to control opacity, without having to open the panel even once. That would be ideal but generally you want to limit as much as posible permanently visible UI because obviously there is a space limit for that and it adds clutter so it's not something easy to decide.


By the way if that was what you were talking about, check these two tools by Mynd SK that may help you. Not sure if they are updated though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvp2k0N ... t&index=13

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuJJQJa ... t&index=14

[Greenlaw]

Any of the Effects windows from the Styles window are an example of modal windows. When these windows are open, you can't do anything else in Moho but work in the panel. But, TBH, I don't think this has ever been a problem for me when working in Moho.

(Speaking of Effects, one thing that has been a problem for me from time to time is that I cannot use the shift key to constrain the movement of the Image Texture widget. I always need to draw a line across the screen and eyeball the widget position. This can be time consuming because it can require multiple render tests to check the alignment. Sorry for the OT...mostly writing this to remind myself to bump this request.)

[Daxel]

Any of the Effects windows from the Styles window are an example of modal windows. When these windows are open, you can't do anything else in Moho but work in the panel. But, TBH, I don't think this has ever been a problem for me when working in Moho.

Yes, those are. Not a problem for me either, but yeah I can imagine someone trying to keyframe a lot of changes in the direction of the shadow effect and having to reopen it each time, so yes that's a good example of a modal window that would be better as a modeless one.