moho particles loop

[AHMED003ADALAT]

i wonder if there's a way to loop moho particles across the timeline so the first and last frames would be equal for a good loop

[slowtiger]

By the very nature of the particle generator this is impossible.
If you really need this, I recommend to render a video of the particle layer and loop this by means of fading in/out.

[Víctor Paredes]

As Markus pointed, by nature, particles are chaotic, so you will need to be very lucky to get a loop from them.
Now, there are some ways you can limit the particles' chaotic nature and make them work in a loop.
Check this loop. It's 48 frames:


To 'forbid' the particles to create any randomness, most of the values of the particles are set to zero:


This way, the only thing the particle is doing is multiplying the layer it has inside.
So the movement doesn't come from the particles' values, but from the vector layer itself:



Part of the limitation is this works with one layer per particle layer. So to create the full effect, I created 3 particle layers with the same values, but different animation inside.

You can download the file from here

I hope this helps!

[AHMED003ADALAT]

By the very nature of the particle generator this is impossible.
If you really need this, I recommend to render a video of the particle layer and loop this by means of fading in/out.

mm, thanks bro for your reply but it'd be usefull to add a loop option in moho particles

[AHMED003ADALAT]

thanks vector, love you man, you have been great help with moho

[ggoblin]

Thank you Victor for a very useful tutorial.

When using Moho for motion graphics work its useful to be able to use particles to 'multiply the layer' it has inside whilst 'forbiding the particles to create any randomness'.

I tried using your method to 'forbid' randomness but came across some unpredictable behaviour which I can't explain.

I created a simple circle in a particle layer (particle) set so that it would generate concentric circles with no randomness. It worked greate:



Then I duplicated the particle layer (particle 2) but replaced the circle with a uneven star shape, again it worked fine:



Next I again duplicated the particle layer (particle 3), but this time included both circle and star layers inside it. Now the result was not as expected - randomness seems to have crept in:



Even when I disabled the star layer (by making it not visible) leaving only the circle layer visible inside the particle (particle 3) I still get random uneven results:




I do not understand, can you help?

Thank you


particle layers:




particle settings:




The project file is here:

https://we.tl/t-k3FW5B1qlb

[ggoblin]

I don't know how I missed this bit: "Part of the limitation is this works with one layer per particle layer. So to create the full effect, I created 3 particle layers with the same values, but different animation inside." . Well that explains why my particle layer was not working with 2 layers inside it.

Apologies for the reduntant question.

[ggoblin]

Is it possible to rotate (over time) all the particles in a Particle Layer? So for example I want to rotate the star particles canvas shown in my above post so the whole pattern rotates over time. When I try rotating the particle layer over time it just rotates the particle emitter so only new particles are rotated. Rotating the star vector layer inside the particle layer, or encaspulating the particle layer in a group and rotating that, all produce similar results. The results look pretty. but not what I want:

[SimplSam]

For the rotation - worst case scenario - do it in 2 stages. 1. Create & Export animation. 2. Import & Rotate.

Some interesting results. Overall looks good, but not sure about centers which can be a little jarring.

[Arthritic]

Very cool stuff, yet I'm wondering if there should be a seizure warning in the title of the thread? lol

[ggoblin]

Thank you SimpSam, I was afraid that might be the advice. To re-import it as a mp4 kinda looses all the advantages of having created it in Moho.

Also I noticed Moho struggles with video so I wouldn't feel comfortable doing too much with it once its imported into Moho. I don't know if others also find Moho struggles with video, or maybe its just my system - I will investigate further.

Thank you Arthritic, yes I find it gives me a headache if I stare at it too long.

Yes I Agree about the centre, I see animators use bit of opacity /blending /blurring etc at the centre of starburst type animations to take the edge of it.

As a Moho beginner I was looking at learning motion design type of graphics and I came across a tutorial on animating graffiti / street art. It started by created the expanding star effect. Like most youtube tutorials on motion design it was using After Effects - they used a built in AE effect called "Radiowaves" to achieve it. Remembering Victors tutorial on using particles to multiply layers I paused the tutorial and opened up Moho to see if I could do the same in Moho using particles. I didn't get around to doing the other effects mentioned in the tutorial but in case anyone is interested in the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfea5F3jLQ0



Although all the youtube motion design tutorials are in AE I find its a great learning exercise to watch what they do ( just one simple effect at a time) and then see if I can do it in Moho. Learning is fun.

[SimplSam]

Thank you SimpSam, I was afraid that might be the advice. To re-import it as a mp4 kinda looses all the advantages of having created it in Moho.
Also I noticed Moho struggles with video so I wouldn't feel comfortable doing too much with it once its imported into Moho. I don't know if others also find Moho struggles with video, or maybe its just my system - I will investigate further.

Yes Moho does not really like working with video. I should have said - export/import as an image sequence, which you can then loop.

[slowtiger]

Funny, I've never had any trouble with importing videos, even multiple ones, into Moho. Codecs I use are PNG and Apple Prores.

[Greenlaw]

I imagine it has to do with codec compression which requires more processing than a single image, and it gets more complicated when there are several movies files all using a codec with heavy compression (like H264 for example.)

A PNG image sequence should be easier to process since you're literally loading a single whole frame at a time, and a movie file using PNG is basically a PNG image sequence packaged in a video file. PNG should look better too since its compression quality is lossless. The downside may be that it can stream slower if the program isn't caching the files and you have a slow network.

Personally, I prefer using image sequences for sprites and compositing. Single whole frames are easier manage, edit and update, and when something is wrong, it's easier to troubleshoot.

[ggoblin]

Thank you SimplSam, I've not tried image sequences in Moho. Will give it a try.

I did further investiagte Moho's video performance on my system.. some intersting results.

In another thread on GPUs I think it was Wes that pointed out that by default Moho doesn't use the dedicated GPU, but that you can request it by the windows settings. Other programs like photoshop during install request windows to assign it the dedicated GPU by themselves. Following this advice I manually ensured Moho was using the NVIDIA GPU on my system rather than default to the integrated gpu. After this I have no problem whatsoever in playing videos in Moho, and when I open task manager / resource monitor I can see it is using the NVIDIA gpu '3d'.

On one video I did have the same problem as before - unusably unresponsive in Moho. I thought it might be the codec but it was using the same codec (h.264 mp4)as the other videos. I checked resource monitor again and instead of saying Moho was using Nivda GPU 3d is said Moho was using gpu 'copy' . So I just closed the Moho file and then reopened it again (without closing Moho)and loaded the same video again and this time it was assigned Nvida GPU 3D and it played very smoothly. So I think the problem is Moho losing control of the dedicated gpu and being assigned the 'copy' gpu whatever that means.

Running under the Nvidia gpu, I put Moho through a proper test. I imported two disney trailers (720p, h264 mp4) into a 1080p project and then transitioned between one another a couple of times using masks and smoothing. Put the whole thing into a group and then animated the group - rotating it in 3 dimensions, etc. in cycle. No problem editing or previewing it. So then I put the clip group in a particle layer preview particles set to 100 - each one showing the two video clips transitioning between each other whilst rotating in 3 dimensions. The system still handled this fine so then I duplicted the clip group and swapped the transitions between the two clips, so now the particle group had 200 particles. Still Moho performed reasonably well. When scrubbing through the timeline with 200 playing video particles there was some lag between the mouse and the moho timeline cursor but it was perfectly usable and when I checked the resource monitor during preview playback it showed Moho was using no more than 15% cpu and around 10-13% GPU during preview play.

With that sort of performance I really cannot fault Moho, and take back what I said about video performnance. Also issues with sound playback in videos also disappeared



click to magnify





I've included screen capture video of me scrubbing the timeline with visible lag, and a video of preview playback which also shows cpu / gpu usuage (the video capture itself was only at 20fps so bear that in mind when viewing Moho previewing a 24 fps project). I've also included a render of one of the video group that was placed in the particle group, and a render of the particles raining down.

video of scrubbing timeline:
https://we.tl/t-2k3Y3OsgVe

video of preview with cpu / gpu usage:
https://we.tl/t-6O7WjidBdN


render of video group:
https://we.tl/t-HvsXITwL3w


render of particles:
https://we.tl/t-I4IAJH0GmU


Of course its not really a good test as I am sure OpenGL / GPU pipeline will be optimised to decifer I'm really only playing the same two 720p video clips with different transforms applied to them multiple times (hence so little gpu usage). Notice Mohos' power usage is very high on my laptop.