Is There a Way To Know How Many Pixels Are in Line Width?

[Greenlaw]

...do you have a favorite line weight that you like to start everything off with? Maybe one that reads better? Say the project is like an 80s animation with the classic black cartoon outline

Or, I guess it's better to ask what size canvas you prefer to start things on, and then ask what line weight you like to start with.

I work on many different shows, and each one seem to have their own design rules, so line weight is largely a matter of taste.

Even in my personal projects, like my old 'Brudders' comics, I've seen my own preferences in line weights and styles change over time, and I wasn't always aware of it happening. Sometimes it was a conscious decision because I wanting to try something different, but for the most part it was because I gradually grew more confident about my line work, and you can see the difference in the later comics. (Actually, you can see me drawing with less confidence in one of my old CSP videos...back then, I relied way too much on being able to tweak and noodle vector lines after I drew them in CSP, instead of just improving my drawing skills. Thankfully, I don't do that nearly so much now.)

Personal preferences aside, just choose a weight that gives your drawings clarity at the resolution you decide on. There are no firm rules, you just need to run some tests. Also, if you intend to do any compositing or post processing to the renders, consider how the lines will be affected then.

This kind of design and technical exploration is part of preproduction. Once you settle on the 'rules' you will follow, you're ready move onto the next stage: production.

[Greenlaw]

If you're intent is to mimic an existing style, I would start by studying the source and copying it.

For example, if you want to capture the look and style of an 80's TV cartoon, download some footage from YouTube, and render it out in frames so you can step through it frame by frame. You might even want to import part of the footage to your animation program and try to recreate the footage. That will inform you about styles, line weights, the use of color, and how the drawings were animated.

Once you feel you understand their rules, apply it to your own work.

Since I have to work on so many different productions, this is something I do often at the beginning of a new project.

Hope this helps!

[drumlug13]

"This" always helps Greenlaw. And pretty much every single time

[Greenlaw]

Some rules of thumb:

I avoid setting a line width thinner than 1 pt because it may break up in animation, especially if you need to scale down the artwork or render it at a lower res than the current setting.

Rendering a line even at 1 point thickness can be pretty fragile, so I like to use 2 pt or higher. This is a personal preference though and it really depends on the art style I'm using.

Note that if you really want thinner lines, Moho will allow let you dial in widths thinner than 1 pt. If you have GPU Acceleration enabled these lines may appear to break up on screen, however when you render the lines at this setting, you should get faint lines that appear thinner but are unbroken. When you have GPU Acceleration disabled, the on-screen lines will display no thinner than 1 pt but they will still render as faint 'thinner' lines.

Also, I like using thicker widths for the outlines of characters and props, and thinner lines for the interior parts of artwork. This is a design choice and not a rule, but I think it helps make each element stand out.

In addition to this, Moho has an Outline section in the Layer Settings which can make the outer edge of the selected layer thicker. If you enable this on the top Group layer of a character, you can exaggerate the whole outer edge of the character for that early Cartoon Network look. (i.e., Dextor's Laboratory, Power Puff Girls, etc.)

[synthsin75]

...So I can't really see a difference on anything over 10. There's some variations on the lower widths. But at least it looks like, if the project sizes match, the number on the line width setting is going to be close

That's a good test!

Yeah, the visible variations in the thinner line pairs is probably due to different methods of antialiasing between the two programs. Most of the thicker line pairs look identical enough to me too.

Yeah, my thought was either antialiasing or bitmap stroke hardness, which has no analog in vectors aside from maybe a blur effect.

[drumlug13]

You guys are right. I didn't even think about that. The Moho side was drawn with the basic line tool, no brush. CSP side, I couldn't say which brush it was but almost guaranteed it has some sort of tip or texture on it. Nice catch

[chucky]

Adam, in CSP you can also change your antialiasing for strokes. SO you could set up a brush to match even better.
Are you using vector line layers in CSP?
You can change all the line widths retro actively, if need be, that way.

[drumlug13]

Yes I just started using the vector layers for line work. I was actually going to ask you about that. You know I'm into that 70's heavily cross hatched look and I guess I'm going to find out how well CSP can handle it. So far no problems. And honestly it seems silly for me to even worry about it. I've seen soo many super detailed drawing done in CSP, my work would barely come close. Some of my drawings did overwhelm Moho 12 a few times so that's why I was concerned

Btw... sorry for the late reply, I had to do another stay in the hospital. I can't wait until this chemo crap is all in the rearview mirror

[slowtiger]

Chemo, urgh. Wish you all the best.

I was heavily into crosshatching when I was starting drawing with pen and ink in the 70's, but in animation I avoid it. I also noticed that woodcuts look fine in 60's films, but not so good in the digital video of today because of moiré effect. Instead of these I know sometimes use a high contrast textured look which I can achieve even in animation with the brushes in TVPaint. Basically I do some spots with hatching and make them into an animated brush. Took some experimenting to find the sweet spot between nicely alive and annoyingly flickering, but I think I got that now.

[drumlug13]

"Moiré effect", I had to look it up. I've seen it but I didn't even know that it had a name.

[hayasidist]

... So is there a way to calculate pixels in Moho?

I may have the answer to the "pixels in line width" question as in the OP -- this was a "stumble across" whilst doing other stuff (with styles) -- and I think the answer is: a line width of 1 is 0.5 pixels (before such as scale compensation etc is taken into account)

Explanation:
Internally, Moho stores line width in "Moho units". The height of the screen is exactly 2 Moho units irrespective of the screen resolution (at default camera).

With a project resolution of 1920*1080 the height of the screen (1080 px) is exactly 2 Moho units, so 1 pixel is 0.001851852 Moho Units - and a line width of 4 is stored as 0.003703704 (i.e. 2 pixels)
With a project resolution of 889*500 ... 1 pixel is .004 Moho Units - and a line width of 9 is stored as .018 (i.e. 4.5 px); and a line width of 4 is .008 (i.e. 2 px).

changing the resolution of a project does not change the internally stored line width, so a line with width 4 at 1920*1080 (stored as .003704) becomes a line width of 1.85 (i.e. 0.003704 / 0.002) if the resolution is changed to 889*500
(both taking up 0.00741 of the screen height)

Observations (corrections if necessary!) welcome