Moho Animation Forum

I must be too impatient but I've been trying to animate an image or a drawing without inexplicably winding up easily distorting the image upon attempting to manipulate it. Or not able to even get the skeleton properly 'parented'. I've looked at the tutorials again and again but they've not been very helpful at all. I've tried every method of animation but they all wind up a disaster. I'm sure there is something I'm overlooking or I am expecting too much with what images and animation I am trying to use.
Does someone have a the patience to give me a quick list of what to do?
I can email you my characters and breakdown of what I would like to do.
I'll even pay for tutoring (ha ha ha).
Please advise.
Thank you

You should post the anme file for the specific problem you're having. In that way we could help you more easily.
I think mediafire is one of the most popular free upload services by now.

I'll even pay for tutoring (ha ha ha).

You're really desperate!!
-G

There really is no other way than to work through the tutorial step by step (I hated this ...). At least you should discipline yourself to tackle only one problem at a time.

Divide your project into separate tasks. Then you could train drawing and colouring, setting up body parts, setting up a skeleton, connect the body parts to it, then animate the skeleton. Each step needs some training. Think of it as successive classes or courses: you will not understand the higher ones if you still have failed the first one.

I know this sounds a bit discouraging, but I've been through this myself. Only when I put aside any ambition to create complex scenes from scratch I was making progress. I made test files for colouring, for styles, for different ways to do joints, for bone riggings, and so on. By playing a lot within the boundaries of a single task I finally was able to integrate all that knowledge into complete scenes.

Thank you so much. Here is a link to how the character moves:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 2857362545

and the link to the file my son has created:
http://www.mediafire.com/?d2yhs2yf4to

I realize it's not 3d but so far we've not been successful with a simple 2d model. The goal for right now is to get it moving and keeping the character unwarped and in correct proportion.

Oh yes, I would pay for tutorials. It would be worth the money to see my son quickly advance in his pursuit of his chosen profession.

You can even start very very simple.

For instance when doing bone rigs for characters I often just place the bones and don't even use a vector layer. Then I only have to worry about one thing at a time. I recently started using simple stick figures when fiddling with complex bone rigs so I don't have to worry about anything else till I get to that point in the process.

When I first started learning Moho I did that with bones. All I did was draw a bunch of bones and played with all the constraints and how the parenting worked etc etc.

Then I moved into how bones effected the mesh. I only used a simple simple shape and experimented with point binding, flexible and region binding etc.

Often when designing characters and need a certain "effect" or look for the filled shapes, I just use simple shapes for "practice" or experimenting.

I find working with one specific thing at a time in the learning process can make things easier. For instance if you have 10 different things that can go wrong, you have to figure out which one of those 10 things might be causing your frustration.

Just my 2 cents anyway.

-vern

That's probably how he got that far, I've been trying to get him through this part. Do you think selecting points and creating groups, then manipulating them could be a quick solution? I'm trying it now, I'm on IM at the moment too.

I'm sorry but the sample file down's have an skeleton on it.
I could not go far away from the advices form slowtiger and heyvern if you don't post an specific problematic anme file.
-G

Ok, I've uploaded the one with the skeleton. Pls advise if you can, we've been working on working this one self created character for about 2.5 weeks. No, the software is not is as easy as it's marketed to be it seems.
http://www.mediafire.com/?2wy5etx2tet

The vector layer is not in the bone layer, so no wonder moving the bones gives you no result ...

Grab the vector layer and drag it over the bone layer until this turns red, then release. Now it's inside, just like a file in a folder.

I'll advise to erase all those bones and start from scratch.
(Edit: I just did it myself and noticed that the file is seriously fucked up. I don't know how you did it, but it's better to start again with a completely new file.

Anyway, here are two screenshots to give you an idea how your character could be rigged. The first shows how you should arrange all parts apart from each other, the second is after assembly.)