Moho Forum

Holy bejeesus, why isn't this way simpler?

I'm going to animate some work of my daughter's. I asked her to turn her raster image into a vector thing so it would be easier and more versatile to animate. We've gone from Illustrator Draw, which can save as PDF, which apparently Moho won't import. Then we opened in real Illustrator and saved as .ai. Moho won't import since it's newer than version 8. Then we tried EPS and SVG, neither of which could import either. Also, when I went to import a Vector File, all options were grayed out. I tried General Import instead before I got the no-go errors.

So..... what CAN Moho import in terms of vectors?

Real vector stuff. Which, I'm afraid, what you did isn't.

- PDF doesn't mean anything, it's just a container which may include vectors as well as bitmaps. To save some bitmap as PDF doesn't magically turn it into vectors.

You have 2 options:
- Vectorize bitmap art. Can be done in Moho (never tried), can be done in Illustrator. Requires an artwork style which already looks as much as vector as possible, otherwise the result will be very poor.

- Cut up the bitmap in manageable pieces (like body, arm, head, hand, etc) and import these single bitmaps into Moho. This gives the most pleasing result IMO. To make this work, you need to be familiar with your bitmap program's way of making paper/background transparent, and save the pieces in a format with transparency, like PNG.

The best vectoriser I've used is Vector Magic. Obviously not all bitmap art will be suitable for vectorising, but if it's fairly 'graphic' (flat colours, bold shapes), then it works well. Unfortunately it's either an expensive desktop application, or (ptui!) a subscription service. I think you get a certain number of trial examples for free. Hope this helps.

Thanks. Fortunately we do understand the types of artwork that lend themselves to vectors, so we're good there, though splitting into body parts is probably going to be necessary. But even if I save a file as ai, svg or eps, those file types are all grayed out in Moho's Vector File Import submenu, even in a brand new project, and I don't understand what conditions need to be present for any of those to be available. I'm assuming that the fact a general import failed is directly related to why they are grayed out, but when and why are they not grayed out?