Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

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kimandreasjohansson
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by kimandreasjohansson »

Really good screen shots you have there, it shows the problem perfectly! Looks like this could be affecting all or at least lots of mac users so good to let the developers know that it is a wide spread problem. I´ll do this as well.
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Reindeer
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by Reindeer »

kimandreasjohansson wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 4:31 pm Really good screen shots you have there, it shows the problem perfectly! Looks like this could be affecting all or at least lots of mac users so good to let the developers know that it is a wide spread problem. I´ll do this as well.
Thanks :)
I hope there's a fix, I can't wait to start using Moho 13 and finally try the new bitmap brushes (with their true quality). For the time being it's parked, and I continue with 12.5
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Reindeer
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by Reindeer »

I enquired with Support about this. They acknowledge the problem. It's apparently due to changes in the Mac OS support for OpenGL. I asked if there'll be a fix, they say it will be addressed but can't say when. I don't know how much this affects other Mac users or how many find this problem an obstacle. To me, it makes the v. 13 upgrade completely unusable. I can't animate or take on any serious project if graphics are previewed in such poor quality, and rendering often just for the sake of seeing what I'm doing is not a serious option.
Quite an anticlimax, as I was actually thrilled at the idea of using the new bitmap features. Luckily, I still have good old 12.5.
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by Reindeer »

Over a year after my first post on this subject, unfortunately nothing has changed. I guess the OpenGL thing is still unresolved.
Just to say that owing to this, MOHO13 is a brick, I paid it but never used it. I'm now wondering whether Big Sur will change anything.
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hayasidist
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by hayasidist »

Reindeer wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 12:46 pm ...
Just to say that owing to this, MOHO13 is a brick, I paid it but never used it. I'm now wondering whether Big Sur will change anything.
If you were hoping the new O/S would lead to a fix, sadly the only thing that Big Sur will change is in the wrong direction : viewtopic.php?f=5&t=33600&p=191953
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Reindeer
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by Reindeer »

Really sorry to hear that. Now I'm hoping for the renewed ownership (glad to hear it!) to fix both the OS preview problem and the new (much more dramatic) Big Sur problem.
hayasidist wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 1:50 pm
Reindeer wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 12:46 pm ...
Just to say that owing to this, MOHO13 is a brick, I paid it but never used it. I'm now wondering whether Big Sur will change anything.
If you were hoping the new O/S would lead to a fix, sadly the only thing that Big Sur will change is in the wrong direction : http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtop ... 0&p=191953
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by arglborps »

A long time ago I was talking to the product manager of Moho and he told me that version 13 basically doesn't do any GPU acceleration on macOS whatsoever. That checkbox only works on (some) Windows machines. Also v13 is overall slower especially when playing back animations, so I eventually went back to 12.5 and I'm sticking with it for the time being.

Here's hope with the new/old developers that version 14 some time in 2021 (?) will not introduce any new features, but really cleans up the code, and brings just stability and performance improvements for Moho, especially on macOS…
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by Greenlaw »

I agree...I'd much rather see fixes and improvements done to tools that exist in Moho 12.5 right now. I liked the ideas behind some of the new tools in 13 (notably paint tools and the new Actions window,) but they need more development work to be really useful.

BTW, I regressed to Moho 12.5 too, and this is the version we still use at my workplace. IMO, Moho 12.5 is currently the most solid and stable release of Moho.
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by synthsin75 »

arglborps wrote: Wed Dec 23, 2020 5:50 pm A long time ago I was talking to the product manager of Moho and he told me that version 13 basically doesn't do any GPU acceleration on macOS whatsoever. That checkbox only works on (some) Windows machines. Also v13 is overall slower especially when playing back animations, so I eventually went back to 12.5 and I'm sticking with it for the time being.
Part of the problem there is that most Macs (and some Windows) do not have dedicated GPUs, so you're always splitting the load with other tasks.
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by arglborps »

I posted this elsewhere, but any Mac that an animator, or designer would normally use does have a dedicated graphic card (15", 16" MBPros and/or iMacs). But those GPUs don't help, because Moho isn't really using them. Rendering is also done entirely on the CPU and as far as I can tell only with 4 threads / on 4 cores, so Moho's rendering performance is a joke right now on macOS.

I mean I can render composited scenes that are way more complex and use particle generators up the ying yang with Apple Motion, and still do it in real time – as a matter of fact that's what I do most of the time. I just animate the characters in Moho, output every character separately as an image sequence, do the 3D placement and compositing and 3D camera moves in Motion (which has real lights and shadows as a bonus), in Motion rendering takes seconds or sometimes a few minutes max.
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by synthsin75 »

arglborps wrote: Sat Dec 26, 2020 4:07 pm I posted this elsewhere, but any Mac that an animator, or designer would normally use does have a dedicated graphic card (15", 16" MBPros and/or iMacs). But those GPUs don't help, because Moho isn't really using them. Rendering is also done entirely on the CPU and as far as I can tell only with 4 threads / on 4 cores, so Moho's rendering performance is a joke right now on macOS.

I mean I can render composited scenes that are way more complex and use particle generators up the ying yang with Apple Motion, and still do it in real time – as a matter of fact that's what I do most of the time. I just animate the characters in Moho, output every character separately as an image sequence, do the 3D placement and compositing and 3D camera moves in Motion (which has real lights and shadows as a bonus), in Motion rendering takes seconds or sometimes a few minutes max.
Moho has never used GPU for rendering. Many people don't know that you have to tell the computer to run a program using dedicated graphics. So even machines that have one often goes underutilized.
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by Reindeer »

My problem with v. 13 is much more basic, so to speak. On 13 I don't ever get 'round to rendering, because of how coarse and rough the simplest of strokes looks (as in the examples at the top of this topic).
All I know is that MOHO 12.5 still works fine. Images are crips at any zoom value, and rendering seems pretty fast, as well (in relative terms I always found it faster to export movies than, say, Adobe Animate). Whatever changed, changed for the very worse, and all of a sudden.
Over a year has gone by (as has the money it cost to upgrade), so this has to be the longest wait for a software fix I've ever experienced.
Sigh...
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by Greenlaw »

Reindeer wrote: Sat Dec 26, 2020 6:49 pm Over a year has gone by (as has the money it cost to upgrade), so this has to be the longest wait for a software fix I've ever experienced.
Hopefully not too much longer since Smith-Micro is no longer involved with Moho, and Moho is back under Mike and Victor's care.

Hang in there. After things settle down with Moho's new owners, good things will follow.
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by arglborps »

Yeah, really, I was close to getting depressed looking at the state Moho was in, I looked into alternatives, but there wasn't any even remotely appealing.

ToonBoom Harmony – rental software so I won't go there anyway – and from what I've seen in YouTube tutorials some of the IK chain is just plain retarded there.

Adobe Animate - rental software, slow performance, crashy - nope.

Blender Grease Pencil → looks appealing, also the development pace is pretty insane with major improvements in "minor" updates, also the crazy awesome output quality some people can achieve with this is amazing (https://www.youtube.com/user/PepeSchoolLand man if I had this level of knowledge I'd be on Blender 100%), but I tried so many times over to learn it and version 2.8+ everybody calls such a UI improvement is still a hot mess for me. It's zero intuitive.

Cartoon Animator 4 (was Crazy Talk Animator) Looked promising, but when you use it you find that making custom rigs and custom animations is super cumbersome (also have to use bitmap images for custom rigs, can't do it with vector data – WTF), and most of the animation feels crappy, because they use motion capture data which for 2D animation just doesn't cut it. Actually "unnatural" emphasized animation and squash & stretch makes it appear more natural – humans are weird.

So, I really thought if ever Moho 12.5 stopped running on the latest macOS I'd be screwed and it would be game over for my project. And then we got this Christmas present, where the original creator – of all people! – and an Oscar w̶i̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ nominated studio buy back the software! I can't tell you how hyped and excited I am now about the future of Moho. At this point I'd even donate a chunk of money just to keep the developers going and secure Moho's future.
Last edited by arglborps on Mon Dec 28, 2020 4:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Moho 13 vs 12.5, preview quality loss?

Post by Greenlaw »

arglborps wrote: Sun Dec 27, 2020 3:54 am Yeah, really, I was close to getting depressed looking at the state Moho was in, I looked into alternatives, but there wasn't any even remotely appealing.
Hi,

I know exactly how you felt. Since you brought up these 'alternatives', a few comments based on my experience...

Except for Cartoon Animator 4, we use all of these animation programs at my workplace. IMO, they all have their strengths and unique features, but for puppet style animation, none of them come close to the ease and flexibility Moho offers. Moho's greatest strengths are with its advanced Bones and IK system, Sketch Bones tool, custom Mesh Warping, and of course Smart Bone Actions. My typical workflow is to rig and animate characters in Moho, use Moho's Layer Comps to output render passes, and then composite, light, and add effects using After Effects. Most of the work on my last two demo reels had been done this way.

IMO, Toon Boom Harmony's puppet rigging tools are just okay (compared to Moho's puppet rigging tools,) but its strength is drawing frame-by-frame animation and nodal compositing (which is Moho's weakness.) We used to use Harmony for puppets, but switched to Moho a few years ago. Sometimes, however, I'll use Harmony to draw an FBF sequence and import that into Moho as a 'bridge' animation. (Moho is capable of FBF, but it's easier and more precise to draw this in Harmony.)

We have Adobe Animate, and some of the studios we work with use Animate for our TV shows. I don't personally have a lot of experience with Animate, but from what I can tell, the freehand vector tools in Animate work better than Moho's. However, Animate's rigging system is primitive compared to Moho.

So, nothing is perfect but depending on what you need to do, some programs are better suited than others. For the type of cartoon animation I'm typically asked to create these days, Moho rises to the task

Last spring, when I thought Moho had reached EOL and could be going away, I purchased Cartoon Animator 4 Pipeline for personal use at home. There are a lot of interesting features in this program, but there are odd timeline and output limitations that keep me from embracing it. Specifically, editing keyframes and interpolation modes (called Transition Curves in CA4P) is clunky (compared to Moho,) and there is no curve editor, no drawing tools, and not being able to animate explicitly at 24 fps is a bit of a non-starter for me. (CA4P seems to default at 30 fps and allows you export at different framerates, but of course that's not the same as animating at a preferred framerate.)

That said, CA4P's emphasis is on performance capture, or animating characters by using a webcam for face/head, and a Leap Motion for hands and fingers. Since CA has been developed with motion capture in mind, this also means they have standardized rigs, which simplifies rigging for certain types of characters, and makes it super easy to re-use and mix animations between characters. Besides, this aspect of CA4P is a lot of fun to play with. :)

TBH, I can't see this style of animation being used for the TV shows we make at work, but I see enough potential in CA4P to try it on a personal project. In brief: if mocap is your thing, CA4P is definitely worth a look; but if you prefer to hand-keyframe your puppets, Moho is much better. (I mostly hand-keyframe my animations, but sometimes use mocap when I think its appropriate.)

Since I own CA4P, I'm going to keep an eye on its development, but right now, with the recent announcements from Mike and Victor, my attention has shifted back to Moho.

Besides, lately, I'm using Moho at work again. Man, I really love using this program! :D
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