There are a few re relatively simple inclusions/changes will make large productions managable more economical.
Batch renderer:
If you have 5 animatosrs working on a film, the last thing to do at night is to get the renderer going, using the machinery to paint up overnight so everyone can view the rushes first thing next day.
As such, having a batch renderer is neccessary - one where you can select scenes 2, 5, 5a, 7.3 and 21, point the renderer to the right output bin, set the avi settings to whatever (a setable default is desirable) then hitting the go button and go home.
The script for this should be too tricky.
Dedicated pathnames:
In a big production, the location of the files are different to that of the source material, and different to the output render bins etc.
At present, if you collect a file from the BG folder, the renderer tries to output to BG bin. Change the bin to the render area and Moho thinks the next scene you want to load is in the render bin.
Its a small issue but if you are working commercially, this is a real pain. Having the pathes set-able in some preset file or dialogue box, would be a big help.
Save/load Layer folders:
This I hope will not be a difficult one to do. When working on any scene, I always group the character into a dedicatred folder layer - all the lip sync, the body parts, blink cycles etc. I then scale the layer and position. The same with backgrounds and its graduated filters, mattes etc. What would be good is to be able to save the entire layer to disc, ready for reuse later.
The best way from a user point of view would be to have a right-click option on a layer so you can "save as ...". The layer diaologue box could also have a load layer button option (there is currently sufficient realestate on the bar to have one/two new option buttons.
For series work, this would be invaluable. It would be possilbe to inport an character layer and just change the lip-synce file, adjust scene length then output fast. My boss would like that economy
Lost files.
when you open a scene on a different machine to the one the scene was originally build, you nearly always get lost files. If you open the dialogue box to find the missing BG or whatever, there is no indication to the name of the orginal file. This is a real pain since often you know where the orginal folder was but not which file. Even if the name was included in the filename box (as Dreamweaver does), it would help.
The oother option is to have a full resources dialogue box, where lost file data is displayed and theoption to manually replace then. This is better since any compostior/animatior can at a glance see if there is any missing material (a lost graduated filer which is turned off in edit , is not obviously lost until the rendered image is viewed.
Okay thats it.
As commented else where, 5.3 is damn good - its crossed that point where it might be classed as a serious hobbiest/freelancer tool to one which a studio can use in a busy series environment. The coders should be proud of what they have achieved this time.
Rhoel
