Where is the 13.0 frame-by-frame return we were promised?

[SimplSam]

...
But if stopping all progress on vector tools to focus on bitmap tools is your preference
...

Why do you assume that it is an Either-or-Either situation? In many / most cases there are parallel threads to development for operational, technical and commercial reasons.

I personally don't expect Moho to suddenly or ever compete head-to-head with dedicated drawing apps - like Photoshop, Krita, Affinity, Clip Studio, Procreate et al. Or even the drawing features in other mature animation apps. But rather gain some beneficial new features that can evolve over time.

We also should not discount the possibilities of utilising 3rd party development resources (libraries and/or developers) under good stewardship. If you look at the desktop & mobile world there are literally 101 other drawing apps. Which suggests that there must be a plethora of knowledge and skills out there. And yes ... that will probably require additional spending, but that is normal in a commercial business.

[synthsin75]

Just the reality of having only one or two developers. Choices have to be made on where to focus priorities. If you split the focus, you end up with neither as a fully polished feature, as we had in 13.0. And that was with a handful of developers.

But like I said, developing better vector drawing would likely benefit future bitmap development.

[Greenlaw]

Hi everyone,

AFAIK, this was the only official public statement on this topic...

We have also had to deprecate some features that were developed for Moho 13 that were causing major issues. They include some of the bitmap frame-by-frame capabilities, bitmap drawing/brush tools, 3D support and actions window. We will revisit and review these features in future versions of Moho where it makes sense and fits with Lost Marble's vision of Moho!

So the only promise was that the LM dev team would revisit these features and reevaluate them for possible inclusion in a future version of Moho. I believe the 13.x cycle is completed so this means version 14 or later...possibly.

Until Lost Marble feels the time is right to make another announcement, we just have to sit tight and enjoy all the cool stuff Moho can do right now.

You can read the full message here...

https://moho.lostmarble.com/blogs/news/ ... w-features

[Greenlaw]

My personal feeling is that while I'd love to see a reboot of bitmap tools in Moho eventually, first I'd rather see better working updates of the Freehand and Blob Brush vector tools. If Freehand can work just a little more reliably than it does now (i.e., at least as well as the vector brush in Adobe Animate,) then I'd use Moho's FBF workflow a whole lot more than I do now. (Instead of, well, Adobe Animate for FBF, I guess.)

Freehand, Blob Brush, and Moho's FBF workflow have been around a long time but they've always felt a bit unfinished to me. I think it's critical that these tools get the love they need before we start adding more tools to Moho.

In the meantime, for bitmap painting, Moho 13.5.5's interchange with programs that support layered PSD is a HUGE improvement over what we had previously, and it even works well with the powerful and free paint program Krita.

Anyway, that's my 4-cents (adjusted for inflation.)

[hayasidist]

My personal feeling is that while I'd love to see a reboot of bitmap tools in Moho eventually, first I'd rather see better working updates of the Freehand and Blob Brush vector tools. If Freehand can work just a little more reliably than it does now (i.e., at least as well as the vector brush in Adobe Animate,) then I'd use Moho's FBF workflow a whole lot more than I do now. (Instead of, well, Adobe Animate for FBF, I guess.)

Freehand, Blob Brush, and Moho's FBF workflow have been around a long time but they've always felt a bit unfinished to me. I think it's critical that these tools get the love they need before we start adding more tools to Moho.

In the meantime, for bitmap painting, Moho 13.5.5's interchange with programs that support layered PSD is a HUGE improvement over what we had previously, and it even works well with the powerful and free paint programs Krita.

Anyway, that's my 4-cents (adjusted for inflation.)

Indeed -- that's a view that I (also personally) share... improve vector first ... (and IMO) maybe even to the point that vector capability exceeds that available in bitmap!

[chucky]

Indeed -- that's a view that I (also personally) share... improve vector first ... (and IMO) maybe even to the point that vector capability exceeds that available in bitmap!

Realistically though, vectors are good at vector stuff, bitmaps at bitmap stuff.
I've have too much experience with both (and love them both equally to be clear) to kid myself otherwise.

[Lychee]

I didn't think my thread would become controversial, I just wanted to know where was this "promise" that I thought I had read, but here is my point of view.
What we are sure of is that there was a Moho 13.0 whose features were removed for stability reasons.
So they existed, a certain development time has been allocated to create them, and I would find it silly not to use them or to restart from scratch, whatever their quality with respect to the competition and of course once having ensured their stability.
Once reintroduced, improved their qualities over the versions of Moho, and of course do not forget to update the tools already present if necessary.
only improving existing tools would not be enough, only to retain current users but not to attract new ones.

[synthsin75]

The current tool set doesn't attract new users?

[Greenlaw]

I didn't think my thread would become controversial,

It isn't so no worries. We may have strong personal opinions around here but we all want Moho to become the best animation package on the market, and some of us are passionate about that.

What we are sure of is that there was a Moho 13.0 whose features were removed for stability reasons...

...and I would find it silly not to use them or to restart from scratch

I'm not a programmer but I don't think it's that simple. The bitmap tools code in Moho 13 was created by a different development team from the current LM dev team so, flawed or not, the approach and programming philosophy behind it may be at odds with the direction the current team wish to take Moho. Because the current team was responsible for the creation of Moho 12.5, it made sense for them to start from there rather than trying to pick up with 13.0 code that the current team probably would have created very differently first place. (Actually, I guess that's pretty much what they wrote above.)

And obviously, if creating a brand new bitmap painting system for Moho was an easy task, we would have it by now. I think the current team is well aware that if they're going to do it, they need to take sufficient time to get it absolutely right. IMO, this is being respectful to their users and supporters.

[BigBoiiiJones]

I just want vectors to be able to draw transparency and act as a eraser kind of similar to Clip Studio. I mean we could have transparency lowered but it'd be awesome if that transparency overwritten stuff that it was on top of in the shape order that'd make it so much easier to create cut outs and add even tapers to stokes through masking, etc... The possibilities of that could be huge in my opinion. I think I'd love for vector tools to get a overhaul then bitmap be added. I mean this IS a 2D Animation software and not having bitmap options is just silly. I'd say abandon the subpar sh*tty 3D stuff and add bitmaps. I'd like better coloring tools as well for vector and bitmap I kind of having to have full closed/connected shapes to color tbh.

[hayasidist]

I just want vectors to be able to draw transparency and act as a eraser ... it'd be awesome if that transparency overwritten stuff that it was on top of in the shape order that'd make it so much easier to create cut outs and add even tapers to stokes through masking, etc... The possibilities of that could be huge in my opinion.

yeah. this and all the other stuff that uses a "brush strokes" UI ... it's totally feasible to create vector shapes rather than scattering pixels in a bitmap. This is what is being said (by me and others) about the need to improve vector drawing as a higher priority than adding bitmap to moho (not least of all because bitmap drawing is already well served in other programs). Some vector-based improvements come with a performance hit, ofc, but with processing power going the way it is, more and more "we can't do that, the engines will nae take it, captain!" scenarios will become viable. [You don't need to delve too far into computing archaeology to discover analogue computers and vector graphic displays: silicon-based digital was the technology that revolutionised IT; look into the future at tech such as quantum computing (which kinda embraces some probabilistic [non-binary] principles, but on a massively parallel scale) and this will leave today's best digital looking as lame as the original analogue in comparison.]

For as long as there are raster devices (e.g. monitors and printers), we'll need to deal with pixel-based I/O and graphics file formats; but my opinion remains: vector drawing tools can be improved to the point that their capability exceeds that of bitmap drawing tools.

[pihms]

I'm happy with the way it works currently, a few minor changes could be fixed, but overall, a great program. I've said this before, but tying the program to another Photoshop editing program, such as Affinity Photo, or Clip Studio would be a big help. Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 does a nice job with this through the interchange format of DAM applications. Cartoon Animator is very limiting and not as robust as Moho, they do make it easy to have those programs used during the same time. The Affinity suite is fairly inexpensive, one-time fee, and works well when both programs are open and I want to make an edit in Affinity Photo, save the file and the changes appear instantly in Cartoon Animator. With a feature such as this in Moho, there would be no need to add additional bitmap tools to Moho.

With that said, Moho is my preferred and ultimate animation software. I’m not a programmer, so I don’t know if this is a feature that could be added. But, it is commonly used among other programs and could be a possible solution that wouldn’t need to add a bulking and change of the overall program by adding raster tools to it.