Moho Forum

Character Wizard Update Request for version 8
These things should have been in the last release and need to come as an update to make it work correct.


Simple adjustments For Clarity mainly the word Usage
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On Body Tab

Proportions Height Should be scale Because it adjusts more than height

Torso Height is more of a Waistline height adjust

Head height is more of a head scale tool but also affects rest of body should not be this way. Feels weird to use.

Hand Length Should Hand scale or become a length tool

Foot Length again is a scale tool needs to be labeled correct or modify behavior
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More Complex but needed
On Face tabs
Each part mouth, Nose , Eyes need individual sliders for X and Y and master X,Y sliders should be there for all individual angles
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I also think there should be a way to add our own Torso and legs. I know those will take more time due to the way this was coded but it is power your users should have. I understand sometimes a user may add a part that will not work correctly but that will come with practice.

Thank You for the time hope to see an update for these.

Here's a simple improvement I noticed -- remember the directory last rendered to separately from the directory last opened from. I keep assets in a separate directory from final renders, so every time I render, I need to navigate to a different directory. It only takes around 10 - 30 seconds, but it's 10 - 30 seconds each time. For an entire film (120 shots avg.), that's an extra half-hour to hour of work wasted.

I would purchase an upgrade in an instant if it were 64-bit native.

Hi, sorry I couldn't answer this thread before. I'm really interested on this, but I was pretty busy this weeks. Anyway, thank you very much for open this thread.
I have been working with AS for around six years, I have animated for many companies and teach Anime Studio in an academy. I truly love AS and from my experience and what people and students have asked me, I think there are five things Anime Studio would improve AS to make it the perfect 2d animation software. Really.


Frame by frame raster layers
Anime Studio really needs a good frame by frame support. In my opinion, the best way should be to have a new type of raster layer.
It should: Work with freehand and paint bucket, supporting pen pressure. Support brushes and onionskins.
I don't agree with a "sketch layer only". The biggest limitation of AS is you aren't able to do frame by frame, with a good inclusion of this kind of animation AS will become in the best 2d animation software by far.

Clone layers
The ability of clone an entire layer. It would be awesome to have the ability to clone layers, so you have duplicated layers which change when the original change. This would be as an improved meshinstance script (have you tried it? it's fantastic).
The cloned layer should have a tab on layer proprieties with all the animated channels to check or uncheck the channels you want to be cloned.
If a group/bone/switch/particle is cloned, all its children should be cloned too.
Believe me, for complex animations, it would be a really huge timesaver.

Ability to edit several selected layers at the same time
It would be awesome that, if you select two or more layers, you be able to see the points of both layers and their keyframes in the timeline.
If you select two different layers, for example, vector and bone, you would see all the keyframes for bones and all the keyframes for vectors.
This would eliminate all the blindness we have when working with many layers and edit animations with several layers won't be a nightmare anymore.

Improve the timeline, specially the graph mode
- Ability to pan and zoom just like in workspace (with right click and shift+right click)
- Handles to control curves on graph mode
- Ability to scale, flip, rotate or move several selected keyframes on graph mode (just like you can edit vector points)
- Constant autozoom check box on graph mode

Better art for the box and the content
It's an important point. Many pro people I met never took in count ASpro for their projects because it looks like a software for kids.
Box, splash and premade content is generally ugly and doesn’t point the “pro” target. It’s an awesome software, you all know my opinion about it, but the art is weakest part.
Even the startup rig doesn't show how awesome is AS, that rig should cover many of the best features of AS, like premade actions, blendmorph, drawing effects, brushes, blend modes, etc. That character should let people with the mouth open for several minutes. (I don't know if this is pertinent to say here, but I can offer my help on this topic).


Well, that's all. Thank you very much for open this topic and for your attention.
I send you a big hug.

selgin wrote: Better art for the box and the content
It's an important point. Many pro people I met never took in count ASpro for their projects because it looks like a software for kids.
Box, splash and premade content is generally ugly and doesn’t point the “pro” target. It’s an awesome software, you all know my opinion about it, but the art is weakest part.
Even the startup rig doesn't show how awesome is AS, that rig should cover many of the best features of AS, like premade actions, blendmorph, drawing effects, brushes, blend modes, etc. That character should let people with the mouth open for several minutes.

I think this is a major point. Prospective customers need to see what the software is capable of before laying down their money. They need to be inspired. Speaking from personal experience, when I originally looked at Moho years ago I didn't take it seriously because, as you said, it looks like kids' software and I winced when I looked at the horrible art. I eventually downloaded a demo and realized that it was quite a powerful program. But I still hated the art.

Combine this with the more affordable price as compared to programs like Toon Boom Animate, Flipbook, and TVPaint, and the consumer can easily get the impression that this is not a professional application. Improving the art would definitely help remedy this.

I would also add that training materials are also a very important part of marketing a software application. As an example, Toon Boom is releasing a series of free video tutorials for Animate that are extremely helpful. If people get frustrated trying to learn how to use an application they may just give up trying and you've lost a customer. Help them learn the program and you may have a customer for life.

I would like to have basic Hue/Saturation/Lightness tools to adjust image layers. This would help with altering background layer colors, multiplane effects, color matching, etc.

Better integration with flash. Exporting animations in swf format is hit and miss. It is the reason I purchased Anime Studio. If I known there were compatibility issues, I would not have made this purchase. I wanted to be able to import animations in swf format to then integrate into eLearning courses either in flash or captivate. I could import as a video file into captivate but that was not the effect I was looking for.

I rarely use bone influence, instead I use bind points and layers, as it gives much better control.

It would make a big difference for rigging if We had a way to map points to bones.

What I mean is, the ability to bind a point to two or more bones and choose how much each bones influence that point.

Would make for really smooth rigs.

GCharb wrote:I rarely use bone influence, instead I use bind points and layers, as it gives much better control.

It would make a big difference for rigging if We had a way to map points to bones.

What I mean is, the ability to bind a point to two or more bones and choose how much each bones influence that point.

Would make for really smooth rigs.

I've been saying this for years. Being able to assign multiple points to a bone would get rid of the need to break apart a character on frame 0, which I've always disliked doing. In 3D, all sorts of tools exist for assigning weights to vertices. Surely, we can have a small subset of that functionality in AS.

I do not break characters apart, always repelled me for some reasons, but I use bind point and layer almost all the time.

I find bone influence is good for things like a pony-tales and few other occasions.

I am not asking for a full weight map system where you paint the influence and the such, but just a way to set the influence of bones over a single or a selection of points would be great!

I'm with selgin on this.
A reasonable frame by frame solution..I would have thought this would be pretty straight forward to implement given the availability of image laters already? Of course advanced features like colouring multiple frames could be in a pro version.

The mesh instance.. I would add that it would be extremely useful to be able to offset the start frame for individual instances/clones. This would allow a less automated look to crowds etc, legs on a millipede etc.

FAHIM. DUDE.

GET BETTER DIGITAL PEN DRAWING / FILL TOOLS AND I'LL CONTINUE TO SUPPORT ANIME STUDIO. I've been saying this for years but its largely gone unheeded. I get a bunch of people emailing me asking which is better - AS or TOON BOOM. I explain that although the animation tools in AS are great, there's no freaking good way to draw freehand and colour the images easily, so I end up suggesting they go with Toon Boom if they ever want to do hand-drawn (digital) frame-by-frame animation.

I haven't used Anime Studio for months on end now. I used it last night for the first time in a long time to put a simple animatic together (that I first drew in Photoshop). Its become a dead tool to me for the meantime and I end up doing almost all my work in Toon Boom Animate 2. I'd much rather be doing it in Anime Studio, but without proper freehand drawing tools and possibly some good onion-skinning tools to go with that, I don't suggest potential buyers pick up Anime Studio because they'll likely run into the same problem I ran into and start looking elsewhere for a better solution.

Sure, if they only want to do puppet-style animation, that's fine, but the all-in-one solution that's touted ... not so much. I used to hack fbf in Anime Studio and thought it was pretty good, until I used TB more and realized my AS / FBF roundabout ways were crazy.

Mikdog wrote:FAHIM. DUDE.

GET BETTER DIGITAL PEN DRAWING / FILL TOOLS AND I'LL CONTINUE TO SUPPORT ANIME STUDIO. I've been saying this for years but its largely gone unheeded. I get a bunch of people emailing me asking which is better - AS or TOON BOOM. I explain that although the animation tools in AS are great, there's no freaking good way to draw freehand and colour the images easily, so I end up suggesting they go with Toon Boom if they ever want to do hand-drawn (digital) frame-by-frame animation.

I haven't used Anime Studio for months on end now. I used it last night for the first time in a long time to put a simple animatic together (that I first drew in Photoshop). Its become a dead tool to me for the meantime and I end up doing almost all my work in Toon Boom Animate 2. I'd much rather be doing it in Anime Studio, but without proper freehand drawing tools and possibly some good onion-skinning tools to go with that, I don't suggest potential buyers pick up Anime Studio because they'll likely run into the same problem I ran into and start looking elsewhere for a better solution.

Sure, if they only want to do puppet-style animation, that's fine, but the all-in-one solution that's touted ... not so much. I used to hack fbf in Anime Studio and thought it was pretty good, until I used TB more and realized my AS / FBF roundabout ways were crazy.

You took the words right out of my mouth, Mik.

Thanks for feedback folks, keep it coming...

Fahim

A simple one -- control to constrain the direction layers/points are moved. That is, move only up/down or move only left/right.