Feature request from a Motion Designer

[larsgudm]

Hey all. I've only started using Moho this year and I really want to love this software, but there are so many things in this software that I find lacking or unintuitive - and therefore I wrote down everything I could I think of during the work on my last moho project.

The main takeaway here is that the user should be able to do things outside of a specific arbitrary order of steps. I find that in this software, if you know all the steps but do them in the wrong sequence you will be punished for it and most of the time it forces you to delete how far you've come and start over. What I’m suggesting here are features to make this a lot more forgiving and to give the artist and rigger the ability to to go back and forth and test out designs and its rig without the constant threat of it breaking, or worse; corrupting it completely.

I also think there are simply too many tools that are too similar to justify them being separate. If they were merged and modifier keys were used for different functions it would just flow so much better. Sometimes as well, it happens that options hide away when you are selecting a specific tool. Select shape for example displays the style of a shape. But if you select points on that shape with the select points tool, the style panel literally becomes useless, but you can still tweak things giving the impression you are doing something (but it does absolutely nothing!!). It does not reflect the shape you are working on and does not inform you of this. There are more examples of similar issues like this that follow in this list.

Ah and also, to give some background; my name is Lars Lundefaret and I’ve worked as a professional motion designer for 7+ years and have developed plugins and scripts for After Effects for the last two. I believe this will put some professional weight behind what I write here;

Feature Requests
1. Adding a style with the same name just increments the name. No option for merging or similar.
2. Select shape should be able to select across layers. And if it did; it should make a distinction between shape paths that are in the current layer and in other layers. And a selection between selected and unselected.
3. Select shape should highlight paths... If you make a shape with a similar color inside another you have literally no way to tell it's there unless you change the tool or remember where exactly you made it.
4. The transform points outline varies in zoom, sometimes making it smaller than the actual artwork. It should stay consistent, as is logical, and not to indicate to the user that it is larger than it actually is.
5. Selecting a layer should clearly indicate what bone it is currently layer bound to! If any. Layer binding is incredibly diffuse in what it does to what layer. When a layer is bound nothing really changes except a bone and layer outline color, but only when you've selected that layer. The information is a one way street. Selecting the bone should clearly indicate how it is related to the art and how it will affect it. It shouldn’t just be via the vector selection.
6. I have to be completely honest; I think the frame zero editing is a terrible system. It should be replaced with a defined edit mode vs an animation mode. Something that makes going between the two not happen by accident. And something that makes it blatantly apparent that you find yourself in one or the other.
7. Spacebar moves canvas and plays animation. Making it extremely prone to make an error when intending to edit a rig and not edit the animation. This shortcut cannot be changed...
8. No gradient tool. This is incredibly powerful and a real shame that Moho hasn’t added. A standard in every other vector software and application.
9. Select shape/transform/select points should literally all be the same tool. They all logically have something to do with selecting a shape.
10. The tool panel should display all tools, always. Or at least have the option to do so. It’s really frustrating that everything changes layout all the time since it hides icons and even entire groups.
11. UI should be able to be adjusted more easily! One can only resize the height of the timeline or width of the right side. Try working on a small screen. It makes it all a serious pain, when the style panel takes up most of that side. And yes you can disable certain panels. But this is more tedious than just having a thing you can drag.
12. Selecting more than one vector layer only displays the points of the last layer selected; making adjusting more than one vector layer at a time a terrible, frustrating and tedious task. I obviously want to adjust more things if I select more things. There are times when I don't just want to globally resize a layer but make adjustments to a lot of points in relation to each other.
13. Try rotating something that's small. It is impossible without zooming all the way in. Make all transformations a possible manipulation no matter the zoom. The small frame around the transform gizmo needs to be removed. It’s a slimmer version of the transform one (visually indicating that they are the same) and it’s not always visually accessible. It should always be accessible when the gizmo is showing.
14. Transforming the tip of a bone should affect the rest of the bone chain. DUH.
15. Delete key does nothing... Oh yeah you can't bind anything to that key either.
16. Ctrl + c and ctrl + v does nothing in the layer panel.
17. The transform bone should display the same gizmo as you get with transform points when you select more than one bone. If I select the transform bone tool, and select a lot of bones, my intention is of course that I want to adjust a lot of bones.
18. Can't delete bones from the bone list. Should maybe have an x next to the names. This is only an issue really because you can get ghost entries in the bone layers. Not really sure how it happened and how to fix it.
19. Can’t change the spacebar shortcut.
20. Can’t search for shortcuts based on inputs rather than action names.
21. What's the point even of having style 1 and 2? And why can you change it without having anything selected with the select shape tool? Changing it here really does nothing. It will not go across to a new shape when thats created. So is possible to change it around but it serves absolutely no purpose. Honestly it’s just confusing..
22. The style override makes no sense at all. The checkboxes to the right of the color settings are so obscure and hard to make sense of. They should have a tooltip. Also they should be completely removed in my honest opinion. Why on earth should you have to do these extra arbitrary steps? Why have indivdual customization, then styles and then overrides again to just end up back at individual customization?
23. Make a clear distinction between editing styles and editing objects. I really get confused by it every single time I try to make anything have a new color.
24. Style UI needs clarity, and, to be frank, a complete redesign.
25. Can't change the order of shapes on a vector layer. Unless they're liquid shapes. Frustrating.
26. Moving artwork into a group will shift the artwork in relation to the layer transforms. Somehow there should be an option to put layers into groups without applying any transformation. Making the artwork stick to wherever it visually is.
27. Stroke width should be able to view paths on other layers and select across layers. The Alt key could be used to select different layers.
28. Having all points selected with the stroke width tool does not allow you to select individual points. You have to change the tool for selecting and then change back to stroke width and now you can individually change things. Very stupid!!
29. Line width tool should be able to change cap type. Meaning that you could set a round cap on one end of a line and a butt cap on the other end.
30. Lines and shapes should be able to snap to other points in the same vector layer to make aligning easier. Or across layers for that matter. Also have them align to vector lines would be sick. Shift key to make it stick.
31. What is the point really of drawing a path and then having to switch tools to “create” the shape??? Drawing a path is creating a shape no? Why on earth would I ever just draw an invisible path? It has literally no uses?
32. Should be able to separate shapes into layers. Try working with three shapes in one layer that have overlapping points... I now have to delete two of these shapes and redraw individually on two new layers.
33. You should be able to not select any layer to make it easier to not see any overlays or path points or transforms so you can get a proper impression of how your render or artwork look or will look in the final. Just by clicking away. Right now you are stuck with a selection. It feels really bad.
34. Should have line join options. Miter and round. Expected this from a vector software.
35. Layer types should remember the last selected tool. If I select a vector layer, with a transform point tool, and then select a group layer or bone layer, when I return back to a vector layer it's defaulting to layer transform tool. And your mouse icon looks exactly the same. You've not changed anything, or selected another tool but moho does this behind the scenes and tricks you to believe you are working in the same tool. As the user it is very annoying to have the tool be changed without you actively changing it! Get rid of this!
36. Autolinking bones should be OPTIONAL. I know exactly what bones I want to affect what layers, so let me define those!! I'm making the spine and moving legs and arms and everything. You can turn off bone strength but that is just hiding the influence, not changing or removing relationship. Instead of having to go through and test how one bone affects the layer I want to test, I have to rig all of the artwork to something else just to see that the one bone i want to make move the head does what I want it to do.
37. Binding an entire group to a bone also applies deformation within that group? What? How can I not have that be an option? There's no way at all for me to tell what is causing this or how to remove it? I just want the group to follow the bone! Turning off bone strength makes it do nothing. I don't want deformation as well as translation!
38. Should be able to bind points while selecting the bone layer. The bind points tool work on points and bones, so logically; they are inherently interlinked. It’s ridiculous that selecting a bone in this case does not let you select the bind points. You have to select the vector layer always. It’s a one way street.
39. The influence of each bone should be visualized somehow, when creating the skeleton. It’s impossible to make sense of what is going on under the hood.
40. I had an idea, but this one is more experimental and kinda out there. I think every layer should have a z depth option. Like an indexing system next to the layer names. When they are indexed the same it should respect the layer order as it does now. However if one layer is below in the layer stack but has a z depth which is one order higher than a layer above in the layer stack, this layer now will end up on top. Does that make sense? This value should also be able to be animated. It would make organizing and animating things passing through and behind so much easier. For example; you could stack all the layers of a human character however you'd like, say, from top to bottom. So all the layers related to the head are on the top of the layer stack. But if you have something like a hand passing in front of the head, you wouldnt need to put it on top of the head in the stack. You could just change the index.
41. When bind points is used, spacebar or something similar should bind points for ease of use. If you are binding points you've specifically selected that tool and I'm certain you don't want to play your animation in that case. Naturally you'd test out the rig. This shortcut change or option could easily be displayed next to the cursor. It's annoying having to move the mouse up and down all the time to click bind or unbind points. Or use right click!!! Right click literally does nothing in the canvas with any tool whatsoever. That's seriously a wasted opportunity. Or yeah it does let you move the canvas around. But this should be the middle mouse button, like literally any other software ever.
42. What's the difference between link bones and bind layer? If it's the same thing why is the name different? If it's different, what's different? Could it be one and the same?
43. There is no way to differentiate between two or more points that occupy the same position. There should be some visual indication of this.
44. Another kind of out there idea. There should be an option of welding points together across separated shapes. This would actually be sick. You could make overlapping or parallel shapes stick together. And alt + click or something to unstick them. So imagine drawing underpants, white cotton and a grey lining on top. This could be one layer, two separate shapes, and then you could “weld” the bottom of the lining to the top of the cotton. It would still count as two separate shapes, but you just basically tell the software that these points move in unison. Flagging the vertices. Would just make overlapping and converging points so much easier and fun to work with!
45. The transform bone tool should always be available as long as you've selected any layer within a bone group. The bones are always visible in this case, and you can do other things like manipulate bones, but you can't transform them. Absurd.
46. There should be an option to lock down the onion skin markers. Im 100% sure everyone who uses this software make a ton of them by mistake cause of their overly large size and placement above the timeline.
47. Onion skin system should also display x amount of keyframes rather than x amount of frames as well. So if you set it to one frame behind it will find the last keyframe behind the current one and display its ghost.
48. Bind layer can only bind one layer to one bone. But when you are drawing a bone it can affect every single layer. It’s a very strange discrepancy.
49. If you use bind layer to link a layer to a bone you cannot use bind points anymore. You have to click off and unbind the layer to nothing and you can bind points. At least tell me why with some prompt or something. Tell me why I can’t do this within the software.
50. As mentioned all tools should be displayed in the toolbar. But the greyed out ones that need frame zero (or the suggested edit mode - which would be preferable) should automatically make the switch for the user..... Intention and result.
51. The IK target menu in the bone dynamics should essentially have a color picker but for bones instead of color. So similar to how a color picker in the color options let you pick a point on the canvas to get the desired color, you’d just select whatever bone you’d like as the target.
52. Should be a way to turn off auto keyframing when you just want to test the rig. This system is honestly so bad and makes it extremely easy to make mistakes. Actually, another idea; there should be a pose mode for testing, edit mode for editing and adding art, and animation mode for actual production. The way you have to work now is beyond absurd. You have to go back to frame zero, create something - and for some bones you can test at frame zero - but for target bones you have to go into the timeline and test, which creates keyframes. Then you have to delete those and if you need to make changes go back to frame zero again. The logical flow here is neither logical nor does it flow at all.
53. Should be able to copy bone constraints settings to other bones.
54. Squash and stretch scaling should work with target bones so that they scale and stretch the chain of bones that are the children. So for example. If you make a leg, with a foot target for IK. You should be able to set squash and stretch for that target, and it will let the leg stretch that given value. Right now you have to go to the thigh bone set it to a percentage and then the shin bone and set it to a percentage. But say if you want the leg to stretch 10%. Well, setting the thigh and shin to 110% stretch will not be right. The total influence would be 1.1 * 1.1 = 1.21. This lacks precision and you have to reverse engineer the math and you have to do more steps than if the target just could control it.
55. Right click moves the camera I just realized but it should be middle click. Right click should allow different operations instead. Similar to absolutely any other software or UI in any other OS anywhere. There’s no reason at all why Moho should work differently.
In the timeline you have the view of “all” keyframe data and selected data. But it is so frustrating that it doesn't apply this logic across all the layers too. If you have keyframes on something anywhere you should be able to see it. It shouldn’t be hidden till you click on that specific layer. If you have animation at any layer with or without any selection it should list it so that you can see where stuff is happening. And then if you select the layer you can see the specific properties and keyframes and make the adjustments. Right now you can animate stuff by accident or otherwise and you won't be able to tell that it's there unless you can see the animation clearly to track down that specific layer. This is not good at all.
56. Bone constraint menu should be available for any tool that essentially selects a bone.
57. There should be an option to set a default type of keyframe for any keyframing you do. I always linearly first and then tweak easing and it really sucks that for all the keyframes I add, I have to manually go in and change it to linear for each layer individually. Complete waste of time... I know of the copy last keyframe type but that does not work across layers. You always have to manually change it from easy-ease first. And if you delete all keyframes to try a completely different animation, you again have to change the keyframe type back to linear. Also, I find it crazy that easy ease is the default keytype when making actions.
58. Select, manipulate and transform bone should all be one tool. And you could hold shift to manipulate. That'd be so nice.

Nice-to-haves
1. Hovering over tools should display conditions for why on earth you can't use it anymore. The UI does little to nothing to help you understand this program better.
2. Empty vector layers should have some sort of indicator that they are empty. Maybe add “(empty)” in the layer name.
3. Path outlines should inherit color from layer color. Or at least have the option.
4. Path outlines are sometimes very difficult to see. Be it with white background or otherwise. Yes you can change the color but that doesn’t really help cause it might make a different part hard to read. Maybe there should be some inherent difference blending for brightness. Have colors adhere to the scheme but make the general outline of the specific shape change in value somehow. Or maybe add a soft shadow on the selected outline. Idk. Make an option to make it bigger. There's gotta be possibilities to make subtle changes that lets the user be able to distinguish the outlines more easily.
5. Lasso tool should draw a fill area for clarity. If you make a complex selection that goes in and out or maybe accidentally you cut into your selection this would help all that become crystal clear.
6. Naming conventions like “.R” or “ R” for right should be recognized by the software and prompt the user if they duplicate a group with that naming convention to change it and the child layers to L.
7. The colors in the bind points to separate bones are honestly worse than just having a uniform color. The default is blue, the selection is red, but when the bone fill randomly becomes red it makes it very hard to tell if a bone is selected or not! At least remove the colors that are in the same hue as outline and selection!!!!!
8. Hovering over the layer list should highlight what we see in the canvas. Nice to have. Like if you have hand R and Hand L as separate layers you can immediately tell whether or not you're about to select the right one, without thought.
9. The bone color with bind points allows fully similar colors to other bones. Impossible to tell which is connected to what unless you investigate and relink.
10. Holding shift while creating a bone that's a continuation of a chain snaps it to 90 deg increments based on the previous bone, which is alright but it would be nice if it also snapped perpendicularly to the canvas. Whichever the mouse is hovering closest to. The UI should also inform the user about this - by drawing dashed line or something.
11. Should be able to scale bones visually and have more customization options, both for clarity and organization. Default bones are much too slim in my opinion. Especially when working with targets or more advanced controls.
12. Should be an option to view angle constraints on unselected bones.
13. Can't delete entire bone structures if layers are inside. Should just be able to do so and it removes the rig and extracts all the layers from the group. Or just deny the user with a popup. Just any feedback here would be nice.
14. Selecting a layer and doing scale transforms in the top bar does nothing. You have to select all the points first. Could just skip this extra step. If I select a layer and view the scale at the top and start changing values, I of course want to actually affect the layer. Input means intention, which means action. I select and I act.

---
I feel if these requests and issues were addressed by the next update, Moho could easily turn from one of the most frustrating softwares I've ever used into an instant favourite. It seriously has so much potential to be great, but there are so many quirks that interrupt the flow of work, leaving you flustered as you have to fix issues rather than make progress.

[Maestral]

Hi, Lars

You've made a rather odd (upside/down) composition of your introduction but, fortunately, I read it all

Have you checked this one - https://mohoscripts.com ?

[larsgudm]

Hi, Lars

You've made a rather odd (upside/down) composition of your introduction but, fortunately, I read it all

Have you checked this one - https://mohoscripts.com ?

I know of it but I've not tested any plugins. Are there tools that adress the concerns raised here?

[SimplSam]

I think this is definately a case of "less is more". I would consider that there are far too many items listed here to analyse or discuss in any meaningful way.

[synthsin75]

I think this is definately a case of "less is more". I would consider that there are far too many items listed here to analyse or discuss in any meaningful way.

Yeah, that was my thought too.

[Greenlaw]

Hi,
I read most of the post last week, felt there was just too much to respond to, and meant to come back to it later. Well, it's later, so I'll go through it again and pick a few items that stood out to me...

I also think there are simply too many tools that are too similar to justify them being separate.

I don't think there are that many that are similar enough to be merged, but I agree that some of the Bone and Point editing tools could be merged. Believe it or not, the current Transform Bone and Points tools were separated into multiple tools, so there has actually been a lot of merging done already.

A few users have taken this further in third-party scripts, but for Moho 14, I'll stuck with the native tools because the latest tools have improved behavior I need.

However, there are a few third-party mods and variants I like to use now in Moho 14.4. Here are some of them...

• Mult Rush's MR Curve Tool (Add Points on steroids)
• Alex Cousin's Freehand Pro (More precise, modern stabilization options)
• SimplSam's Blob Brush & Eraser (More options, improved interaction)
• SimplSam's Multilayer Transform Points
• AEveseeva's Magnet (Multi-layer options)
• DKWRoot's Magnet (Multiple fall-off choices)
• Synthsin75's Create Shape (Allows creating shapes on top of shapes)
• Hayasidist's Draw Shapes (Doesn't replace, but greatly expands choices.)
• SimplSam's Curve Exposure+ Allows setting new anchor point, and more.

I also have third-party tools that add completely new features that are essential. Rai Lopez' Shapes Window immediately comes to mind, but there are several others.

Not all of these tools will be useful to everyone; they're just the ones I find most useful personally, and there are many useful tools out there that I don't have installed because I don't use them often enough. Maybe ironically, (because I created an insane number of motion graphics for Fast & Furious Spy Racers using Moho & After Effects,) I had removed many third-party motion graphics tools from my Custom Content Folder because I mainly use After Effects for motion graphics. If you want to use Moho for motion graphics, check out Mynd Tools...I do still have a few of these installed.

If anything, I wish Moho had a better system for enabling/disabling sets of tools. Also, a more customizable Tools Window would be greatly appreciated. (I making tutorials on both of these topics, so watch for them.) Sadly, I had to cull a bunch of tools recently because my Tools Window was getting too big to fit on my display.

Anyway, I highly recommend going through the scripts at Mohoscripts.com. You may find many tools that address your needs there. There are also several good tools over on Gumroad (some free, like Freehand Pro), and of course, deep in these forums. (One of these days, I'll post a list of my bookmarks because many of them are impossible to find with the state of the current search engine.)

I'll comment on a few items. However, I may need to stop before reaching the end because my post is already getting a bit long. (And this is ME, the usual long-poster in this forum, talking.)

Feature Requests
1. Adding a style with the same name just increments the name. No option for merging or similar.

Once you create a Custom Style, it's intended that the Style will be used on multiple shapes so you can edit them globally. There's no need to make additional identical styles and merge them...just reuse the first one.

2. Select shape should be able to select across layers. And if it did; it should make a distinction between shape paths that are in the current layer and in other layers. And a selection between selected and unselected.

If you mean editing Shape properties, you can edit all shapes using the same Custom Style from the Styles Window, regardless of which layer they're in. Custom Styles are global to the project, and not confined to groups and layers.

If you mean editing curves across multiple curves, there are a few good third-party tools for this. I don't use them often, but they're super handy when I need them. A Evseea's Magnet mod and SimplSam's Multilayer Transform Points come to mind.

3. Select shape should highlight paths... If you make a shape with a similar color inside another you have literally no way to tell it's there unless you change the tool or remember where exactly you made it.

I like to change my highlight colors in Preferences. Generally, I prefer setting it much darker than default, which works most of the time, but I'll switch back to default when working with darker elements. This works, but I wish that having to edit the highlights to make items more visible were unnecessary.

4. The transform points outline varies in zoom, sometimes making it smaller than the actual artwork. It should stay consistent, as is logical, and not to indicate to the user that it is larger than it actually is.

I'm not sure I've ever noticed that. Maybe what you're seeing is an artifact of the GPU Cache? When this option is not showing what I want to see, I just switch it off.

5. Selecting a layer should clearly indicate what bone it is currently layer bound to!

This is a bug in Moho 14.4. Normally, it displays a big fat highlight that you can't miss. Mike and Victor are aware of it and working to fix it.

6. I have to be completely honest; I think the frame zero editing is a terrible system. It should be replaced with a defined edit mode vs an animation mode. Something that makes going between the two not happen by accident. And something that makes it blatantly apparent that you find yourself in one or the other.

You get used to it. In many 3D animation programs, using frame 0 as the setup frame is normal. Moho at least highlights the workspace window at frame 0. One useful feature is Toggle Frame Zero, which jumps between the current animation frame and frame 0...very handy when you need to affect something 'downstream'.

7. Spacebar moves canvas and plays animation. Making it extremely prone to make an error when intending to edit a rig and not edit the animation. This shortcut cannot be changed...

Don't use the Spacebar for panning. Just use the Right Mouse Button. Here's a list of the 'expert' navigation controls...

Pan - RMB
Rotate - Ctrl+RMB
Zoom - Shift+RMB

Bonus...
Select Layer - Alt+RMB
Seect Parent Group - Shift+Alt+RMB

I only use Spacebar for Playback, which is consistent with most timeline-based programs. Press and hold is there mainly for artists used to how it works in in paint and draw programs, but I always suggest adapting to the above...it's more consistent and easier to remember.

8. No gradient tool. This is incredibly powerful and a real shame that Moho hasn’t added. A standard in every other vector software and application.

There are actually multiple options for applying gradients in Moho.

9. Select shape/transform/select points should literally all be the same tool. They all logically have something to do with selecting a shape.

In Moho, Shapes and Curves are actually VERY different entities with different properties. I explained this in an earlier drawing tutorial, and the reasons for using separate tools make more sense once you understand it.

However, I agree that combining Select Shape and Edit Shape could make sense. But I can also see how combining them could make working with Shapes more complicated and confusing.

Oh, my...that was only number 9! I really can't continue this right now.

It's actually been good for me to re-evaluate the tools and workflow in Moho. (I'm sure the devs will tell you I do that all the time anyway!)

Anyway, welcome aboard. If I have time later this week, maybe I can pick up a few more points to reply to.

[Greenlaw]

Oh, wait...one more. This one I couldn't let go...

42. What's the difference between link bones and bind layer? If it's the same thing why is the name different? If it's different, what's different? Could it be one and the same?

These are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT binding methods.

Bind Layer is a rigid method: a layer is bound to only ONE bone. It is used when you want no deformation from other bones at all. If you bind a group using Bind Layer, this binding applies to all the child layers.

Link Bones is the same as Flexi-bind, except you can restrict which bones can affect the selected layers you apply it to. Super useful when rigging a character, and it can be combined with Bind Points, another completely different binding method.

So Bind Layer and Link Bones are basically incompatible with each other. However, one thing they share in common is that either can be used to define which layers get included in a Vitruvian Bone set. Other binding methods cannot be used this way.

To learn more about binding methods, check out my tutorial here...

Learn the 5 Moho Bone Binding Methods!

I don't have a tutorial about Vitruvian Bones yet, but I'm working on them. (Yes, there's more than one.)

Okay, now I really am done. For now.

Hope this helps.

Note: When you use Links Bones with only one bone, then, the result can resemble using Bind layer, except you'll be free to use other binding methods in the group's child layer. Technically, you can't bind a group this way, so you'll need to apply it to individual layers. Luckily, Link Bones lets you select multiple layers and bind them all at once.

Most of the time, you would use Link Bones for two or more bones, though, and this is probably one of the few situations to choose it over Bind Layer for a single bone.