Moho Forum

every cartoon out there looks 3d , like the simpsons, is there away to make it like that? and not like a pieace of paper that can move its arms?

I use the shading option. You can get this by selecting the shape you want to fill and fill it normally, but before closing the style screen, use one of the drop down menus to select shading. Then type 4 into the box labelled 'offset'. The effect wont appear on your workspace, but when you render it, it will be on your shape.

Did this help? If you dont want as much shading, put a lower number in the offset box.

CrAzY Dan

i mean like if a character turns around how do i make it look like its 3d and he really has a width to him

You visualise the character as a 3D shape. It helps to simplify. And practise, practise, practise. There are no quick fixes or software applications that can help you.

yeah but what do i doo to make the effect that its 3d? what are the steps

try building at least three versions of your character. side-view, 3/4 view and front view. this will help as practice. use switch layers with ...for eg.
lots of hand positions fists, open, peace sign. do the the same for head positions. it can be used for emotions also. angry eyes, angry eyebrows...happy mouth, eyes etc.

what does switch layer do? and wont it be like a slide show with 3 diff characters, i want it nice and smooth

A switch layer is a just a group for turning layers on and off. What you do is you move the facial features across the head, distorting them some for perspective, until it's impossible to go further with what you have. Then you switch to another version of the whole thing that looks the same at that instant, but the front-to-back order and the way things are connected are actually different, so that you can do whatever you want to do next, whether it's continuing to move the face around the back of the head, opening the mouth in profile, or whatever.

It's an unfortunate fact that animation takes work. Moho is great because it allows you to do some things easily that you cant do in other software. But it can't do everything for you.

To use your example of The Simpsons. Even if they are using software to do the drawing and coloration, they are still creating mostly new drawing for each frame (or two or three, it all depends on how smooth the action needs to be). Pretty much traditional animation, where you make a new drawing for everything that happens. And if thats exactly the look you want, that's what you have to do. It's not automatic, it's a bunch of people making thousands and thousands of drawings.

That said, there are techniques to simulate some of that kind of movement, turning and such, which have been worked out by various folks. Really go through the forums, there's a ton of information available. And first it would be a good idea to really go through all of the tutorials. They're very well set up and will give you a solid grounding in basic techniques. If you don't know what Switch layers are, you haven't done that yet, and the basics are better explained there. You really need an understanding of the fundamentals before we can help you with the complicated stuff. After that, more of this will make sense.

Switch layers, if they contain the same number of points, can use interpolation. Which means one drawing can morph smoothly from one drawing to another. This can be handy for turning effects. Layers can be placed in 3D space and rotated to create turning features on a head, either over a static head shape that always faces the camera (or not, depending) or an imported 3D shape (which is discussed in one of the tutorials). All of this is talked about in a number of posts. Go fishing or do a search. If somebody knows how to do it, they've probably already explained how.