Moho Forum

Sorry newbie questions.

1. How do I access bezier handles in motion graph for 'Layer Scale' (for example) without seperating the dimensions in to individual channels so that my bezier changes will effect all three x,z,y channels at the same time? The bezier handles only seem to appear when the channels are seperated into individual x,y,z dimension channels.

2. Is there a way to horizontally zoom in to motion graph beyond the articifial limit set by the timeline zoom buttons (which dont zoom in much). The unlimited vertical zoom (via scroll wheel) works fine, but without similar horizontal functionality its very difficult to accurately adjust bezier points (especially if you are trying to manually align 3 channels).

3. Is there a way to copy and paste bezier adjustments? So for example if I want to use same custom easing for multiple objects/channels.

Thank you.

4. I wanted to change the easing of a Stroke Exposure channel using bezier curves but it doesn't seem to have a motion graph. Am I doing something wrong or do only certain channels have motion graphs?





click to animate

1. All three axes of layer scale are available without splitting dimensions (they're just stacked initially), but you can only ever grab one handle at a time.
2. You might try undocking the timeline and going full screen with it.
3. No.
4. IFAIK, stroke exposure has never had motion graph accessibility. Since it's a single dimension, you should be able to accomplish any easing with keyframe interpolation and placement. For example, with your three keyframe example, you can easily make an ease-in by making a new keyframe near the first one and dragging it closer to the middle keyframe.

Thank you Wes for the helpful suggestions.

1. When dealing with properties like scale it would be useful to be able to effect all three x,y,z channels at the same time equally to ensure consistent scaling, rather than it being left to eye balling each channel seperately in the hope of aligning them perfectly. I'm guessing it would not be too difficult to implement a lock for the channels.. hopefully in the next release?

2. The problem is not screen space. When the timeline is docked ( with the layer pallet docked to its side) and set to maximum zoom I can still see 126 frames on the timeline, so its difficult to fine tune a bezier effect which may only last a few frames.

3.Thats a pity, perhaps a script?

4. Thats a good workaround, but you know the programmers have done all the hard work and under the bonnet the Stroke Exposure fully supports all keyframe interpolation modes - even the more complex ones like bounce (see below) and elastic. It's just that they have forgotten to give us access to its motion graph so we can't fine tune it to our requirements. Fingers crossed, this must be an easy fix for a future release?





BTW The bounce and elastic preset interpolations are really good. We could not have hoped to create them with just 4 bezier handles to play with. Does the Moho API open up this section for us to be able to provide our own expressions for expanding the keyframe interpolations available?

ggoblin wrote: ↑Wed May 18, 2022 2:32 pm 2. The problem is not screen space. When the timeline is docked ( with the layer pallet docked to its side) and set to maximum zoom I can still see 126 frames on the timeline, so its difficult to fine tune a bezier effect which may only last a few frames.

If it only lasts a few frames, it likely won't be readable by the viewer. Same goes for aligning the bezier handles perfectly.
Try to keep in mind that the final product is all that really matters, so you don't get bogged down in perfecting the irrelevant.

3.Thats a pity, perhaps a script?

Maybe.

synthsin75 wrote: ↑Wed May 18, 2022 11:46 pm If it only lasts a few frames, it likely won't be readable by the viewer. Same goes for aligning the bezier handles perfectly.
Try to keep in mind that the final product is all that really matters, so you don't get bogged down in perfecting the irrelevant.

I agree with Wes. When I'm working in 3D animation I have to fuss the curves a lot and get motions precisely right because when they're not right, it really shows. But when I'm animating 2D puppets in Moho, I find it's a lot more forgiving and I almost never need to look at the graph editor.

About the only time I need to pop open Moho's graph editor is when I'm animating something moving very slowly...which really doesn't happen that often.

Try animating a character using only the standard interpolation keys, save a copy, and then refine the copy using Bezier curves in the Graph Editor. If you see much of a difference in quality, decide if the extra time it took to achieve that difference was worth it. You might also ask a third party to look at the animations and see if they notice the difference.

Depending on the situation and goal, the extra effort could be worth it, but for me personally it's better to get the work done at an acceptable-and-still-good quality in as short a time as possible.

I fully agree that for character animation fussing over fine details on the motion graph is a waste of time, especially for a beginner like me who is not looking for perfection.

But I was trying to learn using Moho for motion graphics where precision is needed. A text being revealed, an object bouncing, lines meeting, etc. For such animations a good motion graph is essential, as timing is everything. The interactions happen very quickly so having a timeline which wont zoom in closer than 5 seconds when the longest transitions only take half a second at the most, is not very helpful. I am confined to using less than one tenth of my screen width when editing the motion graph.

Perhaps as Moho is focused on character animation, this simple fix of allowing us to horizontally zoom in closer has been overlooked?

Update:

4. @Presto 's neat idea of using a smart bone dial to animate Stroke Exposure in the motion graph allows us to work around this issue (see thread http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35076 ).

A test I did:



Thank you Presto!

Another suggestion I would humbly make for future update would be to enable the SHIFT horizontal / vertical lock option when moving bezier points (also please make them brighter / bigger as I sometimes loose them )