Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

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Greenlaw
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by Greenlaw »

Greenlaw wrote:Just curious but what's your setup? I tried recreating the project and I'm not seeing this problem.
Ah! Sorry, I was running a little slow this morning but I re-read your post and I see what you mean now. That is pretty weird...it happens even when the layers are clearly separated in z-space. (I guess I don't normally have depth sorting enabled.)
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Greenlaw
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by Greenlaw »

I'm not 100% sure this is correct but I think I know what's going on. When my 'snowman' or your character leans backward, the head is technically farther away from the camera than the body, so Moho sorts it to be behind the body. This is probably normal behavior and not a bug, but I'll have to confirm that with the developers.

Normally, I don't have Depth Sorting enabled for this type of animation, and I rely on the fixed layer sorting order from the Layers Windows. This way, you get the results seen in my renders.
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synthsin75
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by synthsin75 »

Greenlaw wrote:I'm not 100% sure this is correct but I think I know what's going on. When my 'snowman' or your character leans backward, the head is technically farther away from the camera than the body, so Moho sorts it to be behind the body. This is probably normal behavior and not a bug, but I'll have to confirm that with the developers.
That is expected behavior, not a bug.
Moho manual, pg. 391 wrote:• Sort Layers by Depth: The “Sort layers by depth” checkbox allows top-level
layers in Moho to move in front of and behind each other during an animation.
Normally, layers are drawn in the order they appear in the Layers Window.
However, with this option turned on, layers are displayed according to how far
they are from the camera
.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by Greenlaw »

mrc wrote:I'd really love to watch a making-of with that workflow. The 2D bits are great.
Thanks! Yeah, the show was super challenging because every episode featured new costumes and unusual creatures, which often mean developing completely new rigs. But these characters were super fun to animate too.

I would love to demo BB's 2D production workflow but I'd need to get permission from the studio, which I'm not even going to try to do.

That said, you might like a series of 'how-to' videos I'm developing using my own personal creations. Here's a teaser pic of what I'm rigging right now:

Image

I'll let everybody know when I start releasing stuff.

Image
synthsin75 wrote:That is expected behavior, not a bug.
Thanks for confirming that Wes! :)
yueda
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by yueda »

synthsin75 wrote:
That is expected behavior, not a bug.
Sorry I didn't mean to crowd this thread with the topic. All I wanted to say is Moho lacks an easy way to order/animate layers by using a value
that is immune to 3D camera/object rotation (like Harmony does). Animated layer order method is only suitable for simple characters or scenes with very few character interaction/view changes. You can imagine how cumbersome it is to animate and keep track of so many layers moving around in layer view depends on frame.
Greenlaw wrote:
I don't think it has to be a choice between one or the other, nothing says you can't use both programs together.
You have a good point, although I'm aware that Moho has been used only to animate segments where it is suitable, such as the dream sequences in Breadwinner. It's frustrating that even with 12 release, Moho still feels like a secondary software. My studio produces low budget shows with tight deadlines. You can imagine that studios like mine has so many excuses not to adopt a new software that is not largely used in the industry.

As a rigger, Moho series has a lot of potential. Although it will bring so much troubles if I try to replicate my Harmony rigs on Moho 12 because of the lack of Node view, parenting system and also an easy way to animate layer orders on 30+ elements.

With that said, I have a big hope that Moho 13 will be a solid-rock software that is capable of handling a production more complicated than Puffin Rock.
ruscular3d
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by ruscular3d »

The tracking ability of Moho is pretty good, and if they can do multiple tracking for facial animation, the possibility of using it to assign multiple bones in order to export the FBX to another 3d program could be use to drive the facial animation of many characters in any 3D program.

I use Moho for simple composition of projects. Its faster, and I can fake highlights and rain particle in Moho much faster. To me its easier to do than Adobe AE in sorting layers and music in Moho. Most of the time I dont need bloated solutions.
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hayasidist
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by hayasidist »

Greenlaw wrote:Just curious but what's your setup? I tried recreating the project and I'm not seeing this problem.
the "problem" is most likely to do with layer origin; and the fix is to design the rig so that things that are meant to stay ordered as stacked don't have their relative z changed by x/y rotation https://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewto ... 55#p185772 - and a group is one good way to achieve that.

That said …
yueda wrote:Although it will bring so much troubles if I try to replicate my Harmony rigs on Moho 12 because of the lack of Node view, parenting system and also an easy way to animate layer orders on 30+ elements.
Without actually seeing the full rig it's a bit of guesswork here - but it sounds as though that's a full 360 / 180 turn rig that uses depth sort to shuffle layers. IMO, it will always create difficulties when trying to use methods / approaches that work in one program in a different one - the challenge is, IMO, to adapt to exploit the strengths of the new software -- there are probably Moho solutions based on "copy by reference" layers in switchable groups where the groups have a different layer order / subgroup composition -- but if I understand correctly, one request here is for layer membership of group to be animatable - and I'd be happy to see that.
yueda
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by yueda »

It's amazing to get reply from all talented people I see frequently in this community.
Thank you Greenlaw and hayasidist for testing the issue.

I originally brought up this topic because this is one of fundamental issue in Moho that preventing me from doing sophisticated rigging.
I therefore wanted to let internal development people know.

I know there are multiple workaround but we must always sacrifice a convenience
(of stacking layer with a value), or freedom (of choosing placement of origin or using 3D camera/rotation).

I didn't mean to make Moho look bad. It has so many positive things we can talk about.
I'm just hoping that Moho 13 Pro will be a software that suits for my purpose.
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alanthebox
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by alanthebox »

Any updates on the new release? Are BETA testers sworn to secrecy?
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synthsin75
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by synthsin75 »

alanthebox wrote:Any updates on the new release? Are BETA testers sworn to secrecy?
Yes, beta testers sign nondisclosure agreements that are legally actionable. But even then, the developers do not tell them specific target release dates.
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synthsin75
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by synthsin75 »

yueda wrote:Hopefully they fixed the bug where layer stacking order gets messed up when orienting camera/layer in 3D while using "Sort Layer by Depth" option.
Image
https://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewto ... =3&t=31155

I'm glad to hear that they are working to stabilize the program.
I really hope that Moho 13 pro will feature Node View since its really daunting to rig/animate complex character rigs with the layer view we have.
Having a better drawing interface will also be a huge plus.

At some point, hopefully I can suggest my boss to switch over from Harmony to Moho for character animation in my studio.
This layerscript solves this issue: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=32579
EHEBrandon
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by EHEBrandon »

I cant believe there is still no word not even a tease for a possible release date.. Its been almost two years and I'm getting a tad bit tired of waiting. I love Moho and its truly the best animation software however this long of a wait for a new version is kind of ridiculous. However I understand its a whole new development team I just wish we have more communication from Smith Micro and the Moho team.
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byron
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by byron »

EHEBrandon wrote:I cant believe there is still no word not even a tease for a possible release date.. Its been almost two years and I'm getting a tad bit tired of waiting. I love Moho and its truly the best animation software however this long of a wait for a new version is kind of ridiculous. However I understand its a whole new development team I just wish we have more communication from Smith Micro and the Moho team.
I've had the same feeling, BUT I can only hope they're just doing a lot of polishing/bug fixing and making sure they release a rock-solid product instead of rushing out a half-finished release because people are tired of waiting. I know some of the people in this forum currently have the beta, and are actively working with it, so that's good at least, but unfortunately the beta testers can't really tell us anything about it due to NDA agreements. So we just have to wait, and wait, and wait. *sigh* You're right though, I wish they would at least tease something or give us an idea of what to expect, a date, a new feature, anything!
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synthsin75
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by synthsin75 »

byron wrote:
EHEBrandon wrote:I cant believe there is still no word not even a tease for a possible release date.. Its been almost two years and I'm getting a tad bit tired of waiting. I love Moho and its truly the best animation software however this long of a wait for a new version is kind of ridiculous. However I understand its a whole new development team I just wish we have more communication from Smith Micro and the Moho team.
I've had the same feeling, BUT I can only hope they're just doing a lot of polishing/bug fixing and making sure they release a rock-solid product instead of rushing out a half-finished release because people are tired of waiting. I know some of the people in this forum currently have the beta, and are actively working with it, so that's good at least, but unfortunately the beta testers can't really tell us anything about it due to NDA agreements. So we just have to wait, and wait, and wait. *sigh* You're right though, I wish they would at least tease something or give us an idea of what to expect, a date, a new feature, anything!
Oh, you can definitely expect a new feature. :wink:
chucky
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Re: Any rumblings of a date for Moho 13 yet?

Post by chucky »

We would LOVE to tell you things... :D
I hope EHEBrandon that you didn't start counting the days till V13 the day V12 was released.
Surely take a year and a half off that two year wait, to be fair? :mrgreen:

Yes, it is better to let the new dev's really make V13 as good as it can be rather than rushing it to market without that polish they want to give it.
Better for all.
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