Moho Forum

I've been doing some research on different animation packages like Toon Boom, Adobe Anime, Moho, etc. and I understand that Toon Boom is used in the animation industry fairly extensively and it appears that some other packages are too for 2D animations like Family Guy, Simpsons, etc. I also noticed Moho is said to be used for one professional animation, but it doesn't seem to be used a lot or hardly at all in the animation industry. Am I wrong about that? Can anyone give me a list of animated TV shows that use Moho Pro primarily?

Maybe a moderator can make this a sticky thread as it is not an uncommon question for people new to Moho.
Here is a previous thread along the same lines
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=28120&p=159171&hilit=puffin#p159171

Moho is used by alot, alot of professional animators to produce professional work. But if you mean are there studios using it to produce shorts, tv series or features with it? that is a different question. Granted it doesnt have the industry wide reach that Toon Boom or Flash has but there are a good few studios that use it as part of there production softwares. Toon Boom and Flash tend to be used to solely on productions.
In terms of large tv series fully produced in Moho, I know of 5 that I worked on, such as Joe & Jack, Cartoon Saloon's Puffin Rock and their new series (the name is not yet released). They also used it on 3 feature films and a 30 min short for another company. There are other shows out there produced in moho but these are ones I know of personally.

another thread about a Cartoon Saloon feature using it
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30960

The animation team I'm with at DreamWorks Animation uses Moho in various TV productions. In the past, it's been used for Puss In Boots, The Croods, and All Hail King Julien. I have some examples on my 2017 demo reel. To be clear, the team I'm on uses a lot of different programs for animation production, but Moho is used more routinely in a lot of our recent work. IMO, the work we do in Moho nowadays is looking more sophisticated and I can't wait for the release.

Cartoon Saloon also uses Moho for their TV productions and also for parts of their feature films. Check out Puffin Rock on Netflix and The Breadwinner feature trailer for some recent examples.

I don't know about Moho at other major animation production studios. They may have pockets of artists using it. Moho is probably used more by smaller studios.

As for other software, Toon Boom Harmony and Adobe Animate (formerly Flash) are commonly used in American production. I think RETAS is used a lot in Japan, and TV Paint is popular in Europe.

I work with many animation programs myself (most of the above and then some,) and can say they all have their strengths and weaknesses. The program you choose should depend on your preferred style of animation and designs. And, certainly, there is no reason to limit yourself to a single program. Most of my 2D work at DWA is a combination of Moho, After Effects, and occasionally LightWave 3D. Last year, I did a segment of The Croods that also merged in characters I animated in Toon Boom Harmony. I also use Photoshop and Illustrator to create elements for animation.

I personally prefer Moho over Harmony for rigged/puppet style animation. Moho's rigging system is more capable with full IK and true targeting support, and it has Smart Bone Actions which are kinda like Set Driven Keys used in many 3D programs. The Layer Comp system is a huge timesaver for compositing, which I rely on heavily.

Moho's one arguable weakness is its drawing tools, which are designed for creating optimal shapes for deformation. Moho's drawing process can produce very high quality but it does take more time and thought to create the shapes than simply drawing what you need freehanded. I think this 'click and drag' method is what keep more traditional artists from immediately warming up to the program. Most artist just want to draw what they need without thinking too much about it. To me, drawing in Moho is similar to modeling objects in a 3D animation program, which is fine for generalists like me who also work in 3D, but for some elements I wish I could just draw quickly and be done with it. Moho does have two freehand drawing tools but they're a bit buggy and unreliable, making the program less suitable for FBF style animations. Hopefully, Moho's drawing tools will get a makeover in the next big release.

For freehand drawing, Toon Boom's are better, and the program is better suited for FBF style animations. Even for puppet style animations, it's nice to be able to draw directly in the program with vector or bitmap brushes, and not waste time fixing point and curve errors. (Besides better freehand vector tools, Moho really needs to get some basic bitmap painting tools too.)

At home, I recently upgraded my old TV Paint license and I"m really enjoying using this program for FBF. TV paint is mainly a bit map animation program but it's very fluid and intuitive. I'm also experimenting with a newer program called CACani, which is a vector based 2D animation program that has some unique interpolation capabilities. Neither of these are suitable for puppet style but the output can be combined with a program like Moho.

I haven't used RETAS but I do use ClipStudio Paint for my comics work, and that program has a tiny bit of RETAS' animation capabilities now. I haven't tried animating in CSP though.

Getting back to puppet style, After Effects is actually quite capable too. When you add the DuIK plugin, you get some similar capabilities to Moho, plus the use of AE's many excellent FX tools. My favorite AE features for animation is Liquify and Puppet, both of with I sometimes apply to Moho output I import to AE. For puppet animation, it's a bit clunky compared to Moho, but within limits, you can still do nice work with it. (Some of our early Croods animations were done using AE and DuIK.)

I wish I had the best of all of these programs in one package. Till then, I"m glad I"m not limited to using only just one.

The list I currently have looks like this:

Series:

• Me myself and the others (2007) - Motionworks (Germany)
• Hard Furry Pets - (2010) Pseudo cartoons
• Woezel & Pip - (2011) (Netherlands)
• Joe and Jack (2012) - Dancing Girl Productions (Ireland)
• Aga'b AlQassas (2014) - The wonders of the ancient stories (Egypt)
• Puffin Rock (2015-2016) - Cartoon Saloon (Ireland)
• Marshmallows and clouds Mothers - Hangzhou animation studio (China)
• Cuentame un cuento (2016) - Novasur (Chile)
• Beijin Opera Cats (2016) - Korea del Sur (China)
• Los Proceres mas Posers (2017~) - Productora Houston (Chile)

Films

• La Reine Soleil (2007) - Belokan Productions (Belgium | France | Hungary)
• To the Top of the world - (2008) - Cine-Clube de Avanca (Czech Republic)
• Technotise - Edit & I (2009) - (Serbia)
• Eve of October OVA1 - (2011) - Studio Mars (USA)
• L'arte della felicità (2013) - (Italy)
• Song of the Sea (2014) - Cartoon Saloon (Ireland)
• Eve of October: Sol Trinity (2014) - Studio Mars (USA)
• The Breadwinner (2017) - Cartoon Saloon (Ireland)

More here: https://www.animestudiotutor.com/links#films

Please say if I'm missing anything or have something wrong.

Just in:
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film ... 51563.html
Moho is used for the cut-out segments of The Breadwinner, some examples shown.

Greenlaw wrote:... IMO, the work we do in Moho nowadays is looking more sophisticated and I can't wait for the release. ...

Would you mind clarifying? Do you mean the release of a forthcoming version of Moho you have had access to or release of the animation you have been working on? Thanks.

Greenlaw wrote:...I wish I had the best of all of these programs in one package. Till then, I"m glad I"m not limited to using only just one...

I wish all of these programs were available as plugins similar to how there is Kontakt standalone and Kontakt as a plugin for digital audio workstations.

Something to keep in mind is that sometimes studios don't like to speak publicly about their workflow. Part of it may be to keep secret what show they're working on, or maybe whether part of the production is done overseas, or maybe big studio X is promoting a popular new show, but it's really produced by tiny studio Y. Studio X may get all the credit, and so Y can't really talk about it.

Toon Boom is a bigger product than Moho, but they've also always been better at talking with studios and working out ways to be public about where and how they're used.

I was really excited to talk to a studio in Glendale last November. I thought the idea was to introduce them to Moho and show them how they might try it out. But I was surprised to learn they were already using it in a number of productions, and the head of the studio is quite an advanced user. He's even written several custom Lua tools and I think is a member of the forum here. You all would instantly recognize some of the shows they animate. But we never agreed on a way to say "Moho has been used in show X".

Sadly, at the exact moment I was meeting with this studio in Glendale is when Smith Micro was laying off the entire graphics team. I left the meeting to find out that there was no more Moho team.

o0Ampy0o wrote:Would you mind clarifying? Do you mean the release of a forthcoming version of Moho you have had access to or release of the animation you have been working on? Thanks.

Sorry, can't talk about unreleased productions, but everything we have released is currently viewable on Netflix.

As for a future version of Moho: assuming I was involved with the beta program, I couldn't talk about that in public either.

And of course, thanks to Greenlaw and the folks at DreamWorks for talking about their use of Moho. I know for a while you couldn't really talk about it, especially for shows that hadn't been publicly announced yet. So I appreciate that you opened up when you were able to.

Greenlaw wrote:

o0Ampy0o wrote:Would you mind clarifying? Do you mean the release of a forthcoming version of Moho you have had access to or release of the animation you have been working on? Thanks.

Sorry, can't talk about unreleased productions, but everything we have released is currently viewable on Netflix.

As for a future version of Moho: assuming I was involved with the beta program, I couldn't talk about that in public either.

You already alluded to something. I just wanted to know whether you were speaking of the quality a current project or the quality attainable in software that was not available. A simple yes or no to either without pretense would have sufficed. I could not care less otherwise.

o0Ampy0o wrote:

Greenlaw wrote:

o0Ampy0o wrote:Would you mind clarifying? Do you mean the release of a forthcoming version of Moho you have had access to or release of the animation you have been working on? Thanks.

Sorry, can't talk about unreleased productions, but everything we have released is currently viewable on Netflix.

As for a future version of Moho: assuming I was involved with the beta program, I couldn't talk about that in public either.

You already alluded to something. I just wanted to know whether you were speaking of the quality a current project or the quality attainable in software that was not available. A simple yes or no to either without pretense would have sufficed. I could not care less otherwise.

These people are giving their time freely to answer your questions -- in some cases, going beyond a simple yes or no answer to give you some more information. A little less arrogance and a little more humility wouldn't go amiss.

jahnocli wrote: These people are giving their time freely to answer your questions -- in some cases, going beyond a simple yes or no answer to give you some more information. A little less arrogance and a little more humility wouldn't go amiss.

Greenlaw can speak for himself. No one needs to hear your personal opinion of the dialog. Had you paid more attention you would not be sticking your nose in this as I did ask for help only clarification of his statement.And frankly I don' t care whether Greenlaw works or is a hobbyist. I was addressing his specific words in one post.

o0Ampy0o wrote:

jahnocli wrote: These people are giving their time freely to answer your questions -- in some cases, going beyond a simple yes or no answer to give you some more information. A little less arrogance and a little more humility wouldn't go amiss.

Greenlaw can speak for himself. No one needs to hear your personal opinion of the dialog. Had you paid more attention you would not be sticking your nose in this as I did ask for help only clarification of his statement.And frankly I don' t care whether Greenlaw works or is a hobbyist. I was addressing his specific words in one post.

John is just pointing out that your question has already been asked and answered...and already explained why the answer must be limited. Harping on it is not likely to prompt more info from people who have signed nondisclosure agreements and whose jobs depend on abiding by them.

And you attitude of "I could not care less otherwise", opens you up to comment by others. If you don't like it, refrain from demanding answers from respected members here.

synthsin75 wrote:

o0Ampy0o wrote:

jahnocli wrote: These people are giving their time freely to answer your questions -- in some cases, going beyond a simple yes or no answer to give you some more information. A little less arrogance and a little more humility wouldn't go amiss.

Greenlaw can speak for himself. No one needs to hear your personal opinion of the dialog. Had you paid more attention you would not be sticking your nose in this as I did ask for help only clarification of his statement.And frankly I don' t care whether Greenlaw works or is a hobbyist. I was addressing his specific words in one post.

John is just pointing out that your question has already been asked and answered...and already explained why the answer must be limited. Harping on it is not likely to prompt more info from people who have signed nondisclosure agreements and whose jobs depend on abiding by them.

And you attitude of "I could not care less otherwise", opens you up to comment by others. If you don't like it, refrain from demanding answers from respected members here.

Of course you can read john's mind and speak for him. Greenlaw should not have said anything if he was treading on the line of an n d a. But it's me who is arrogant for calling him on it. Just butt out. Greenlaw is not here out of the goodness of his heart. He is here because he likes it here. Your need to lie about everything speaks for itself.

o0Ampy0o wrote:Of course you can read john's mind and speak for him. Greenlaw should not have said anything if he was treading on the line of an n d a. But it's me who is arrogant for calling him on it. Just butt out. Greenlaw is not here out of the goodness of his heart. He is here because he likes it here. Your need to lie about everything speaks for itself.

LOL! Telling you the limits of what can be said under an NDA is not "treading on the line", and the only thing you're "calling him on" is to get him to violate a LEGAL agreement. That could fall under tortious interference on your part.