A few simple questions

[Suomela]

Hey all fellow Mohoers!

I've started to use Moho recently and so far everything is great! There are a couple of things I've been wondering though. Hopefully someone's able to help me out!

1. On the top right corner of the timeline, there are "zoom in" and "zoom out" buttons which zoom the timeline horizontally. Are there any shortcuts for those buttons? I've tried to change shortcuts for "timeline: zoom in/out" but those keys only affect the curve editor vertically.

2. Is there a quick way to copy and paste / clone keyframes mirrored, other than just copying them and moving them by hand?

3. Is there a way to see the preview playback speed as frames per second? Or is it guaranteed to always be what's set in project settings?

4. Finally, is there a way to render passes? Let's say I'd like to render, for example, a couple of characters, the ground, the trees, buildings, clouds and the background all as their own passes so that I could composite them in another program and add effects etc?

Huge thanks if there's someone to help me out!

[Víctor Paredes]

Hello, welcome to the forum

1- The Zoom In/Out shortcuts work for the Motion Graph mode. As far as I know, we don't have shortcuts for horizontal zooming (And I'm taking a note there ).
2- There's no official way to paste mirrored keyframes. I think Paste relative and the Motion Graph could help a bit here.
3- I'm not sure I understand this, but you can preview your animation in real time by going to File -> Preview Animation. Also, you can see the playback speed at the bottom right corner.
4- You can use Layer Comps (menu Window->Layer Comps). Simply hide every layer you don't want to be part of the pass (by clicking over the eyes) and then create the layer comp.
For instance, if you want a layer comp only for the characters, be sure the characters layers are visible in the Layers window and hide all the rest (clouds, buildings, ground, trees, etc) and then create a layer comp.
If you want to export the file by layer comps you have two options:
- In the Export window check 'Render layer comp' and pick the comp you want to export
- Open the Moho Exporter (File->Moho Exporter), add the file you want to export and click the button 'Split Selected Item By Layer Comp' (the icon is a paper with an arrow pointing down).

[Suomela]

Hey, Víctor, and huge thanks for your answers!

Nice to hear that you took a note of the horizontal zooming. It's a small thing but (for me at least) a huge part of my work. I need to constantly zoom closer to keyframes to move them more precisely and then zoom back to move the playhead.

As for the layer comps: That's great, thanks! It seems, though, that it doesn't act like a real pass as all passes render fully visible. That is also a good thing but in certain situations there could be a need to render layers only where they are visible. Let's say I had 5 clouds, all in different Z-space and a bird flew through them. Would I, in that situation, need to render every cloud in their own layer comp to be able to add the bird correctly?

Oh, and one more thing - am I able to show a horizontal grid in the 3D workspace? "Show grid" seems to only show it vertically and the grid settings have nothing that lets me change the angle/size of the grid.

Anyways, thanks once more!

[hayasidist]

Tervetuloa! (unless I've put 2+2 together and made 5 - in which case: welcome!)

there could be a need to render layers only where they are visible. Let's say I had 5 clouds, all in different Z-space and a bird flew through them. Would I, in that situation, need to render every cloud in their own layer comp to be able to add the bird correctly?

If I understand that correctly, there are a few options depending on exactly the set-up and requirements:

First off, if I introduce the idea of "Tz" being the track number in a compositor...

you could render all the clouds and the bird in one layer comp - in effect creating a single layer at some "Tz" - and this works as long as that other stuff such as foreground and background doesn't intersect that Tz.

you could make a mask for the bird (e.g. copy by reference and colourize that copy so that you can chromakey out the shape of the bird) then render the clouds plus mask; and then bird -- thus having two layer comps (e.g. so that you can work on the bird alone for lighting) giving you two video streams at Tz1 and Tz2

but I don't think simply rendering the bird and each cloud layer in a separate layer comp would work, because you'd be creating multiple tracks (i.e. at various Tz), and the bird's Tz isn't in a fixed place in the clouds stacking order.

am I able to show a horizontal grid in the 3D workspace

If I get what you want - it's a grid in the x/z plane... easiest by far is to draw your own grid on a separate vector layer; set that layer to "do not render" and rotate it by 90 about the x axis.

[Suomela]

Tervetuloa! (unless I've put 2+2 together and made 5 - in which case: welcome!)

Your 2+2 was definitely 4! Kiitos!

And thanks to you too! Helped me a lot. Have a great rest of the week!

[synthsin75]

2. Is there a quick way to copy and paste / clone keyframes mirrored, other than just copying them and moving them by hand?

You can Alt+drag a group of selected keyframes to reverse them.

3. Is there a way to see the preview playback speed as frames per second? Or is it guaranteed to always be what's set in project settings?

Right side of the tool status bar (which can be set to either top of bottom in the preferences) shows the FPS as the timeline is playing.

[Greenlaw]

2. Is there a quick way to copy and paste / clone keyframes mirrored, other than just copying them and moving them by hand?

Not exactly sure what you mean here because I can interpret this a few ways.

Do you mean inverting certain keys to paste the animation into a mirrored item? If so, sometimes it's easier to just duplicate the layer and flip the layer...the animation will 'flip' along with it.

Or do you mean for bones, like for applying the same but inverted animation from a limb on one side of the body to the other? I don't think so, but I can see how could be useful. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody has written a script to do this but I'm not aware of it. Normally, I just recreate it by hand because with a decent rig, it's easy enough to do in Moho and I don't normally want the motions to be perfectly symmetrical anyway.

Or do you simply mean inverting the keyframes on the timeline? There is no paste inverted (or invert selection) command, but you can select the keys, hold Alt, and easily invert the keys by dragging from one end through the other. Tip: set markers on the first and last keyframes so you can easily match the original duration; continue to hold Alt while adjusting the selection.

For the most part, Moho's timeline editing has worked fine for me in the 7+ years I've used it in TV animation production, but it can definitely use a little updating. Happy to see Victor 'taking notes' here.

Hope this helps.

[Suomela]

Thanks guys, the alt + drag is ALMOST as perfect as copy + paste mirrored. (Yes, Greenlaw, that's what I meant by pasting mirrored. Sorry for being unclear there )

There appeared to be one more problem, which actually might also be just me messing around somehow, but when I created a smartbone for an arm, it bugs. It kind of flickers when the IK chain is animated. It's hard to explain but if I'm too unclear with this, I can record a gif too! Just checking if this is commonly known thing and someone has a straight answer.

[Daxel]

Thanks guys, the alt + drag is ALMOST as perfect as copy + paste mirrored. (Yes, Greenlaw, that's what I meant by pasting mirrored. Sorry for being unclear there )

There appeared to be one more problem, which actually might also be just me messing around somehow, but when I created a smartbone for an arm, it bugs. It kind of flickers when the IK chain is animated. It's hard to explain but if I'm too unclear with this, I can record a gif too! Just checking if this is commonly known thing and someone has a straight answer.

It sounds like the smartbone has a problem in its design. If you have the bone rotating from 90º to 180º in your smart action, make sure that you are not animating the bone outside of that range on the main timeline, or the smart action will be desactivated suddenly and activated again when you put the bone inside of the angle range again. That activation-desactivation of the smart action may be responsible for the flickering effect.

To prevent that from happening, you can use bone constraints or expand your smart action with an extended range of smarbone rotation. But without seeing the file the problem is hard to find, it may be something else.

[Suomela]

Thanks guys, the alt + drag is ALMOST as perfect as copy + paste mirrored. (Yes, Greenlaw, that's what I meant by pasting mirrored. Sorry for being unclear there )

There appeared to be one more problem, which actually might also be just me messing around somehow, but when I created a smartbone for an arm, it bugs. It kind of flickers when the IK chain is animated. It's hard to explain but if I'm too unclear with this, I can record a gif too! Just checking if this is commonly known thing and someone has a straight answer.

It sounds like the smartbone has a problem in its design. If you have the bone rotating from 90º to 180º in your smart action, make sure that you are not animating the bone outside of that range on the main timeline, or the smart action will be desactivated suddenly and activated again when you put the bone inside of the angle range again. That activation-desactivation of the smart action may be responsible for the flickering effect.

To prevent that from happening, you can use bone constraints or expand your smart action with an extended range of smarbone rotation. But without seeing the file the problem is hard to find, it may be something else.

Hi, and thanks for the reply!

Actually my animation is inside the limits I've made for the smartbone. The bug is more like the smart bone can't decide which angle the bone is on. It seems to happen when I have a target bone on my hand and then another bone is moving the arm (for example the spine), and therefore changing the angle of the arm bones. I'll do my best to record a gif for you guys when I have the time!

[synthsin75]

There appeared to be one more problem, which actually might also be just me messing around somehow, but when I created a smartbone for an arm, it bugs. It kind of flickers when the IK chain is animated. It's hard to explain but if I'm too unclear with this, I can record a gif too! Just checking if this is commonly known thing and someone has a straight answer.

First thing I'd check is to make sure the smart bone action has enough frames for smooth interpolation. Around 100 frames is usually good.
Second thing I'd check is to make sure that the smart bone doesn't cross the same angle twice in smart bone actions. If it does, Moho will have trouble deciding which to do, and this can cause flickering.

[Suomela]

First thing I'd check is to make sure the smart bone action has enough frames for smooth interpolation. Around 100 frames is usually good.

This was it. Thank you very much! Glad to see a great community around a software.