Moho Forum

Hello,

I am a new user of Moho. I have Cartoon Animator 4 which I haven't used much mainly because I spent way too much time designing and finalizing my characters in Affinity Designer than I did on any animation. I started trying to rig the characters but couldn't get a handle on it in CTA4. I've done bones and rigging in Toon Boom Studio as well as some 3D programs. I just couldn't get it figured out in CTA4. And then CTA5 was announced and I excitedly checked that out only to find they were dropping Mac support. Then I had to think about whether it was worth it to continue trying to learn CTA4 when that's pretty much a dead end because a future macOS update might break it. I ended up deciding it was probably better to invest time in learning something that still appeared to have a future on the Mac and wasn't a subscription. I eventually narrowed down the options to Synfig Studio and Moho.

I've been playing with the demo for a couple weeks, mainly the Moho Debut demo as that was what I had planned to start with, but then the sale came plus I wanted vector import, so I ended up with Moho Pro.

I've started going through the tutorials but have a couple questions. Maybe I am jumping the gun and these are addressed in a later tutorial but, for now, I'm finding a couple issues distracting.

First, I have noticed that if I draw an object, it looks good and smooth but once I run the animation, curves become straight lines and strokes seem to become unaligned with the actual edges of the objects. I am assuming there is something in the layer settings that causes this as I had managed to fix it once but then couldn’t repeat it despite checking (or unchecking) what I thought were the same settings. This only happens with items I draw or import. Assets already in Moho in the demo/test files look fine when animated.

Second, characters and items I draw or import are very jerky when animated. Characters and assets in the Moho demo/test files animate fine, even when I put them through ridiculous motions. For example, one of the demo files has a pilot and a plane. The plane remains in place throughout the animation. If a go to the last frame and move the plane all the way up and to the right, when the animation is played, the plane lifts up and flies across the screen in a very smooth motion. If I do the same with something I've drawn (I tested using a star shape), it doesn't seem to move smoothly. Seems jerky. I'm guessing this may be in the layer settings as well? But I haven’t been able to pinpoint differences in layer settings in the demo assets versus the layer settings on my artwork.

Also, any tips for exporting vector art from Affinity Designer (v1) and getting it into Moho would be appreciated. I saw a thread that suggested using SVG Tiny 1.2 (or something like that) but I don't see that as an option in AD. I also have VectorStyler if that helps for exporting to Moho.

Thanks!

Welcome aboard! Once you get past the learning curve I think you’ll find that Moho is an awesome animation. I’ve been using it for my personal projects and at my workplace for TV shows like Boss Baby, Puss-In-Boots, and The Croods. If you're curious, check out my 2017 and 2019 demo reels to see examples of how I use Moho there. I also use Toon Boom, Adobe Animate, and After Effects at my workplace but for rigged puppet animations, Moho has been top-notch and it’s my preferred way to animate 2D puppets.

dcr wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 8:58 am First, I have noticed that if I draw an object, it looks good and smooth but once I run the animation, curves become straight lines and strokes seem to become unaligned with the actual edges of the objects.

I think what you're seeing is a preview artifact, and it shouldn't affect the actual render quality. Try Ctrl-R to test the actual line quality.

Moho will sometimes use simplified geometry to improve performance when scrubbing or playing back directly with the controls. My guess is that you have a lot of points in your vector drawings. I think you can manage the quality by disabling or enabling GPU Acceleration from the Display Options. (It's probably disable, but this really depends on the type and complexity of the artwork in your project, and how you have that art rigged.) FWIW, I tend to keep GPU Acceleration disabled most of the time for better Masking previews. If you really need to see smoother previews at actual speed, use the Preview Animation command. This will 'quick render' the current viewport as a movie file and open it in your movie player.

Tip: Even though I generally keep GPU Acceleration disabled, GPU Acceleration is useful when you have many high-resolution bitmaps rigged and animated. A good example of this is the Crustacea project that comes with Moho. Try playing that with GPU Acceleration enabled and disabled to see the difference. In this case, GPU Acceleration down-rez'es the art and caches it in VRAM to improve UI performance. There are other situations where you may want to enable GPU Acceleration but I think that's the big one. But if you don't need it, it's usually better to keep it off. When in doubt, try it both on and off, and pick the one that works better for you.

BTW, if you want more tips for optimizing Moho's UI settings, go here: Better Default Settings for Moho Pro

Second, characters and items I draw or import are very jerky when animated.

My guess is that your graphics card is having trouble playing it at speed with your current workspace settings. First try disabling GPU Acceleration. If it's already disabled, try enabling it.

Also check that Allow Frame Skipping is disabled. When this is on, Moho may drop frames to make sure the animation is playing at its proper speed. When it's off, Moho will play every frame but the playback speed may be slower. Usually this isn't a problem (at least it hasn't been for me,) but when you absolutely need to see every frame played at actual speed, use the Preview Animation command.

Alternatively, try disabling any display preview features you don't need to see when reviewing animation, like Antialiasing or Texture for example.

Also, any tips for exporting vector art from Affinity Designer (v1) and getting it into Moho would be appreciated. I saw a thread that suggested using SVG Tiny 1.2 (or something like that) but I don't see that as an option in AD. I also have VectorStyler if that helps for exporting to Moho.

I don't typically use external programs to create vector art for Moho, at least not for character art. I can get much better deformation results and performance when I create my characters directly inside Moho. I do know that when I use Adobe Illustrator to export an SVG, yes, I need to use Tiny 1.2.

Hope this helps.

I almost forgot: SimplSam wrote a Moho script for importing SVG data from various vector drawing programs, including Affinity Designer...

https://lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35438

Hope this helps.

Greenlaw wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 11:57 pm Welcome aboard!

Thanks!

Greenlaw wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 11:57 pmI think what you're seeing is a preview artifact, and it shouldn't affect the actual render quality. Try Ctrl-R to test the actual line quality.

That made no difference.

But, what it turned out to be was a brush setting. The selected brush appears to be a smooth line, but in preview and final render, it had a chalky appearance. Once I changed the stroke, it looked much better.

Greenlaw wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 11:57 pm

Second, characters and items I draw or import are very jerky when animated.

My guess is that your graphics card is having trouble playing it at speed with your current workspace settings. First try disabling GPU Acceleration. If it's already disabled, try enabling it.

I tried all that and it made no difference. But it seems to have been related to the aforementioned brush that seemed to change from frame to frame, giving the animation a jerky feel to it. After I made that change, the animation was much smoother.

Greenlaw wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 1:12 am I almost forgot: SimplSam wrote a Moho script for importing SVG data from various vector drawing programs, including Affinity Designer...

https://lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35438

Hope this helps.

That helped a lot! Thank you. Still some weirdness. The character I am working with presently is all purple but once imported the neck becomes a different shade of purple than the rest of the body. Haven't figured that out yet. In Affinity Designer, I checked and all the colors were the same purple color. I had thought I had a gradient on the neck and that that was the problem but I was wrong and it was set as a solid color. So, haven't figured out the cause there but, for now, I simply adjusted the color in Moho to match.

My next steps are playing with the Affinity Designer file to see if I can get layers preserved better when exporting to SVG and then importing into Moho and then I need to adjust the bone strength on the character. Making some decent progress so far. Already farther along than I had gotten in CTA4.

Oh, and then I need to figure out color settings. The colors are much more vibrant in Affinity Designer than in Moho and then kind of drab when Moho builds the video.

Oh, so you're actually talking about the brushstroke chattering from frame to frame. To fix that make sure Minimize Frame-To-Frame Randomness is enabled for the selected Brush setting. This will work for any brush setting.

Oh, and then I need to figure out color settings. The colors are much more vibrant in Affinity Designer than in Moho and then kind of drab when Moho builds the video.

This probably has to do with the video codec. Try another codec and/or container and see that works better for you.

FWIW, I prefer to render to Image Sequence instead and then compile the result using a compositing or video editing program. This is basically what I do when working with working with any animation program, 2D or 3D, and it's the same at every studio I've worked at. (From Moho, I use PNG; from 3D programs, I use EXR.)