Road map for Moho

[BigBoiiiJones]

People keep talking about kids, teenagers, and young adults for the reason to lower prices, but I have the exact opposite opinion. I think Moho/Anime Studio tried appealing to younger people and animation noobs for so long and it hasn't worked. I actually want to see Moho start targeting the professional market more. No offense this is what caused Moho to have that dreaded "Moho/Anime Studio look" for so long and it still damages the brand to this day a bit. I get it's nice to have beginners and hobbyist adapt a software and use it since the market is a lot bigger however I don't think it's worked so well for Moho in fact I believe it has only damaged it a bit. I don't even care if the price increases look how expensive Toon Boom is, but hobbyist and beginners will still get it even if the price is high and is hard to learn because it's industry standard in the west and everyone uses it. Do you think Adobe is struggling because a few people boycott it? No obviously the model is working because they haven't changed their ways for over a decade now. People are willing to spend money on good solid software. I wouldn't mind a subscription as long as there is still perpetual license still. I wouldn't even mind if Moho cost $1000 one day as long as the feature list and improvements between each version were outstanding. However, with current Moho I feel the price is just right.

I just really want Moho to be aimed at professionals who actually know animation and drawing principles so that way we could see more good results by people who know what they're doing instead of the 1000th bad poorly done animation from someone who doesn't even know something as simple as squash and stretch or someone who doesn't even know the basics of drawing like the simple foundation of a head being a circle or a ribcage being rectangular for blocking out characters. Moho still desperately needs better drawing tools (both vector and bitmap), perspective grids/guides, better optimizations, actual transform tools for skewing and perspective warp similar to Photoshop or Clip Studio, and a better rendering engine, etc...

[Greenlaw]

Oh, don't get me wrong--I've always advocated Moho Pro as a professional program, and we do take it seriously at the studio where I work. In fact, we've been using Moho Pro (and previously Anime Studio Pro) in TV animation production since 2015. Now that Moho is in active development again, I don't see any reason to stop using it.

If anything, Moho Pro appears to be gaining a solid reputation in the industry. Lately, I've seen a ton of inspiring work in the Mohoanimation Instagram feed, which is encouraging. This gives me the impression that other studios and professional artists are taking Moho seriously too.

There are certainly improvements that can and should be made to make Moho a better fit for studio production. For me it's really only a handful of issues: more control over output paths, additional Layer Comps options for compositing workflows, improved Freehand and Blob Brush tools for FBF, better tools for rig and rig parts re-use, and support for higher color depths. If paying more would guarantee these improvements, I will gladly do it.

My previous message was specifically about Debut. Debut is an entry level version of Moho and I see nothing wrong marketing this version to users who are not ready to commit to the full professional version of Moho. But I feel some of the limitations in Debut make it more frustrating than it should be and these difficulties may discourage Debut users from upgrading. I agree that Debut's features should be significantly limited compared to Pro but it shouldn't make Debut hard to use.

Experienced hobbyist and pro animators are more likely to evaluate the Pro demo and base their purchasing decision on that experience, not from purchasing and using Debut...this is a very different market from beginners looking into Debut. As a long-time user of Moho Pro, I haven't used the program demo mode but I would expect it to continue working after its trial period but with some kind of watermark overlay so I can at least continue evaluating it. If it doesn't do that now, it really should.

That said, right now I would rather see Lost Marble focus their resources on developing Moho Pro 14, and making it better for production studios and experienced animators. Once that's released and had its run in the wild for bug-stomping, work on a better Moho Debut can follow.

Anyway, just my humble opinion.

[slowtiger]

I think BigBoiiiJones has a point there. Judging from new people asking questions here in the forum, the selling points for Moho seem a bit off. Moho is comparatively easy to use - but only if you have at least some knowledge about animation, and if you care to work through at least some of the tutorials. The promise of smart bones is featured to an extend that some people believe they have to use them everywhere.