Moho Forum

Hi all,

Working on a piece I need to use a gif as one of the elements. I ran a quick export animation early in the process and the results came out as expected, but the subsequent Gifs either come out as silhouettes or dithered black and white versions. MP4 renders correctly but unfortunately I need it in Gif for the project. Any ideas what might be causing the problem?

Using Anime Studio Pro 11

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Most recent export settings shown here but I have changed them around a bunch to try and solve the issue.
I think the image names speak for themselves but if there is any confusion let me know.

Thanks for the suggestion, but it didn't correct the issue. I bumped up the colors to the max and now it doesn't render at all. Will reset the comp again and double check my image transparencies next.

Did you ctrl+R and sample gif colors?

When I Ctrl- R it renders shows the image correctly.

When I run Export as Gif now, I don't even get a render window and no file is made. I am puzzled.

Thanks for the help, but the deadline is looming. I am going to cut my loses for now and redo my work in After Effects. I will come back to share a solution later if I figure out why its misbehaving.

Ctrl+R and look around the render window. Do you see the "Sample Gif Colors" button?

Yes, I pressed it and it didn't seem to make any change. The missing render window is really throwing me off as well.

I had some dinner and tried again. Still not a 100 percent better but now there are colors. Maybe the original SVGs had some transparency I didn't know about and that is causing issues? I will keep tweaking the settings and see if I can make it work. Thanks again for the help!


Kris

The way the Sample GIF Colors button works is that you go to a frame that has all the colors you wish to see in the GIF, press Ctrl-R and then click Sample GIF Colors. This will create an internal palette based on that frame, which Moho will use for the GIF animation render. If you use a frame that doesn't have all or most of the colors, the palette will not include the 'missing' colors. If you're not getting the result you expect, try sampling a different frame.

Note that the GIF format is limited in the number of colors it can display (256 max) and it's never going to faithfully reproduce a detailed or fully shaded animation.

The Dithering mode can help simulate the appearance more colors but the image will also look noisy.

Hope this helps.

Another option is to use a site/service like EZGif: https://ezgif.com (free)

I have used it a number of times, especially when Moho is faffing around with colors.

It has lots of interesting options, and you can upload/convert MP4s and Image sequences.

p.s. The Moho 'Sample Gif Colors' - has never resolved color issues that I have had.

The sampled colors don't have to be only from one frame of the animation either. If colors are missing, you can always add temporary shapes to the render for Moho to sample.

This is an old tutorial, but maybe can help you:

synthsin75 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 02, 2021 5:37 pm The sampled colors don't have to be only from one frame of the animation either. If colors are missing, you can always add temporary shapes to the render for Moho to sample.

Ah! Good tip...I think I've actually done that for troublesome clips.

Maybe I was a little harsh on Moho. It is normally quite good and makes small files, but when I do have problems ...

One GIF I recently had issue with was Clay Crocodile. I could not - and still can't get the sheen (shine) on the jacket and shadow on the floor correct.

The colors on the snout (nose) are not as good with EZGif, but the overall look is better.


(Moho 600x half-rate-render 256 colors non-dither 506KB)


(EZGif 600x half-rate-render MP4>GIF 10% opti 583KB)