Moho Forum

I made a short clip of a shed. The camera zooms in on the window of the shed. I applied the "Spots" effect to both the SHED and the FENCE in my clip and made the spots long and skinny so that they are more like lines and an offshade of brown to get the feel of wood.

here is the clip: http://s41.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3MPT ... IFWKS79LIK

My problem, as you can see, is that the spots on the fence and the shed flicker as the camera is moving. DOES anyone know why? And how I can make it so that it doesn't do this?

This is a problem with Moho.
Check out my quick movie showing what happens when you get things rotating and the camera moving around and such:
Check This Out.mov 0.73Mb (Warning! You might get dizzy watching it.)
It has been brought up in other forums. Wish Moho could fix it or somebody tell me how to stop it.

The best way to avoid it is not use those drawing effect functions when making any animation.
In your case, instead of using the spots effect, the better way would be to:
a) try to draw the wall using Moho´s drawing tools.
b) draw the wall how you want it as an image (use a different program) and bring the image into Moho and place it where you want it.

Aw man... okay.... not the answer i was looking for... but okay....

Just because I have the same problem and can´t solve it, does not mean there is not a way to solve it. Perhaps some other verteran Moho user knows a special button to push or whatever to fix this situation.

Anyone know the answer? Ramon???

I REALLY hope someone knows.... because what good are all those effects when you can't use them in an animation???

It seems like a huge waste...

Does anyone know??

...Somebody called me?? SORRY! But there is NO solution for that, HOPE would be!!! I've been writed in the past thousand and thousand of Bug Reports and Feature Requests for that issue/BUG but nothing... I can't bring you more solutions that the good of Toontoonz, only say that if you like that effects or don't want to use a different program, you can make your texture in Moho using this effect, in the way that you want, and export to image and, then... well, aply it by masking like any other texture (incredible solution in this modern times, isn't ) ...well, I'm very tired too of talk about this peculiar theme, veeery tired, yes... CIAO... (...)

Dang! I thought Ramón would have some secret trick.

Venkman, you are right in your comment- why include effects that you can´t even use? (I often wonder if LM even has an artist on its staff or on call that even tests the features that Moho includes.)
In another effect example I experimented with, if you use a gradient effect and rotate your object the gradient does not rotate with the object, but with in relation to the screen and/or the camera. So your gradient is always turning to a weird angle that does not look right. The bottom line you can´t use it.

I made several shapes, applied every effect I could, then animated them and the camera...here is the result:
effects.mov 0.85Mb

As the shapes with effects turn and rotate, what is in the shape does not rotate with the shape. The shapes, as they move, are almost act like masks that float over the static images that are hidden somewhere in Moho, revealing and hiding different parts as the shape moves.
For example, the shape with the woman cartoon in it, rotates around - her head should move 90 degrees to the left and then back to 0 then another 180 degrees to the right. But her position always stays in the upright position, only the edges of the box move, revealing different parts of the image.

If you want something wild in your animation, then the effects could be what you want (difficult to control or predict what one will get, however), but if you think the image and colors in the shape should move in relation to the shape it is in....well, that ain´t gonna´ happen. So the end effect is, can one really use effects?

There are two ways to look at it. One way is that a software developer can not imagine every possible use and let the user play with the available tools. Maybe someone can use it for some brilliant animations. The other way is that programmers like to program silly stuff like that. After days and weeks of coding technically complex but visualy boring things they like to get some "instant-satisfaction" and create something silly just for fun. Not that they will admit it, but really, a lot of programs have a WTF? feature that is just a result of blowing off steam...

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

Yeees, yes, yes, nobudget... (really I don't know if I've understood you, sorry) But in the past, I've tried to use this "peculiarities" in my favour, because I like, in example, mix static textures with the movement for very expresive results, the problem is that this Shape texture Effects don't even be quiet all the time but they make extranges and incontrolable scalings, tremors and movements... I think that in this way is IMPOSIBLE do nothing that you really want... Sometime LM (when he was near us ) said that we must use masking effects for texturing because Shape Effects were a very old feature (from version -1.0) and cause of this it doesn't... works... fine...
... JA JA JA (I laught now that he can't heard me ).

Post Instructions: All of us must be listened track 8 of JFK soundtrack, THE CONSPIRATORS (like I do now) when write future replies for this evil post ...right?

...GLUP! LM has on line JUST now... ( GLUP )

The problem with the spots and image texture fill effects is that they date back to Moho 1.0, before there were image layers, masking, separate bone layers (in Moho 1, there was only one type of layer, and it combined vectors and bones) and lots of other good things. I wouldn't recommend using either of these effects except in ectremely simple scenes. They mostly exist for backwards compatibility.

Take a look at Tutorial 4.4 in the Moho manual. Using the method described in the tutorial is much more flexible and powerful. Even if the spot fill effect could move with the camera and warp with bones, it would still be very limited.

Another approach would be to set up your background scenery using spots if you want, then render out a single frame, import it as an image layer, and disable the original vector layers. Then you could zoom in however you want with the sports intact.

LM-

How difficult would it be to have image textures freeze on shapes and outlines, so when applied and positioned they wouldn't move when the shape is distorted? I realize we can use masks for this, but there are times it would be nice to just load it and position then freeze it for animating.

Brian

Lost Marble wrote:Another approach would be to set up your background scenery using spots if you want, then render out a single frame, import it as an image layer, and disable the original vector layers. Then you could zoom in however you want with the sports intact.

This is the silver bullet, guys.

Render the shape as a png (you can do this in Moho so your original work with all the fills isn't lost) then insert that image in your scene.

I made a giraffe about a year ago that made heavy use of the spots fill. Of course the spots slipped like gangbusters. But rendering each "filled" limb out individually and reimporting/attaching them to my existing bones worked like a charm.

Has anyone else tried this? I've used this repeatedly and with great success. Anyone? Ramon?

I've used something similar in a test animation I did a bit ago.

Brian