Moho Animation Forum

As I said elsewhere, this week I have to work a project in 6.1 which I just bought for this job (500 MB unneccessary download! Shame on you, Smith-Micro!) So far everything is running smoothly, I haven't found any bigger obstacles. But I thought I share some observations.

1. Sequencer:
Great, especially when I have to create hordes of running things. But #0 is visible when I shift some layer to the right into the timeline! I have to set it to invisible by hand when I want to have my character enter the scene a bit later. I'd rather set the #0 content to invisible automatically and set the sequence to visible automatically in #1 (shifted to whatever frame). Opinions?

2. Cycle
OK, I have to change my calculations now, but the cycling works. Only the cycle popup ist still the nuisance it was: at least it should remember which values it was set to when I re-open a key, and preferrably the checkbox state should be remembered independent from any key: I never used "absolute", and I have to click "relative" every f* time I change something.

3. Default Interpolation
As was already mentioned, this important thing must not be hidden in the project preferences. Instead it needs to be placed in the top bar of the timeline window, right next to "onionskin" or maybe even before.

4. Checkbox "allow animated layer effects"
How I have searched for that, cursing, since I knew it must be somewhere! And the info about the checkbox wasn't on page 284 of the manual as it should be.
Still I'd like to have a global on/off for this as well.

5. Freehand mode
This is a real bug, methinks: when I draw in freehand mode in in a very enlarged view, the red squares get bigger than the objects I draw and cover them completely. Once drawn, the points are displayed in normal size, independent from enlarged views.

6. New default dimensions
Great. But on my machine I can't play any HDTV properly, so I have to render everything smaller. What about adding another option to the rendering window, "render at quarter size"? This even could make rendering faster.

7. Render a still image
My screen is smaller than HDTV. When rendering a still, it's cropped to my screen size. I'd expect it to render the full format, that would be more useful.

8. Scrolling Timeline vertically
I like the timeline top to be adjustable, and that the project view adjusts to this as well. But I also like it to be fixed. Seems that sometimes the vertical scrollbar is missing in sequence view, maybe only when I've just added a bunch of layers?

To be continued ...

1.- Absolutely yes. Sequencer is great but deprecates the frame zero concept. I think that "setup" mode should be an status not a frame. It must be accessed from any frame and would be toggled by a button and or a keystroke. Then frame 0 should be just the first frame.

2.- Agree

3.- It was more accessible in the 5.6 version but since the channel integration it has been hidden in a menu. Very important indeed.

4.- Yes too.

5.- I don't see a bug. It just works fine here. It shows the width of the stroke in its real size. If you zoom in a lot you will get a thick stroke.

6.- I don't agree. Use other default project size and then change the size at render time only.

7.- What about a smarter image viewer that allows zoom in and out if the frame doesn't fit the window?

8.- Can't reproduce.

-G

Genete wrote:I think that "setup" mode should be an status not a frame.

-G

That's an interesting idea. I'm about to play with switch layers, to see how to create more detail in mid scene. That could end the problem of not always being able to see into the future correctly; trying to have everything already exist at zero.

Genete wrote:I think that "setup" mode should be an status not a frame.

-G

Good idea. The red border could appear whenever you're in setup mode.

Another question: Can you enter setup mode multiple times, or just one per layer?

Another question: Can you enter setup mode multiple times, or just one per layer?

In Synfig (where that idea of Animation / Non Animation Mode comes) you can enter into Animation mode or return to non Animation mode at any moment, at any frame and it affects to the whole document at the same time.
The particularity is that in Synfig each parameter can be of two types:
1) Constant
2) Animated

If you modify a Constant parameter and your status is Non Animation mode you effectively modify the constant parameter and it continues being a constant parameter.

If you modify a Constant parameter in Animation mode it turns to an Animated parameter and it has it first keyframe in the frame where it was modified (well in Synfig the keyframes are called waypoints and keyframes are other "thing" )

Later if you return to Non Animation mode and try to modify an animated parameter you receive a message that informs you that you cannot modify an animated parameter in non animation mode (obviously)

You can always clean the animation of a parameter (erasing all the keyframes) and then it turns back into a Constant parameter again.

-G