The New Power of Moho 5.2

[Toontoonz]

With the ability to export Photoshop layered .psd files from Moho, Moho gains some incredible new options and power to do new styles of animation.

Here is just a small snippet of what I experimented with today.
I took part of an animation I had done in Moho (illustrated in Adobe Illustrator - my favorite drawing program) and then I exported the animation as .psd layers.
There were 4 main upper layers.

In Photoshop:
-Blurred to Mountain layer better to my liking using one of the Photoshop blur filters.
-The sand layer, I used the blur tool and blurred the back (top) edge so it was not so sharp looking and gave it a bit of depth to it (it needs more work, but I was just experimenting).
-The sky layer I wanted a better graduated sky, so I added a new layer in Photoshop and created a gradient sky of dark blue, pink and yellow. Then I took the blue sky layer with clouds animated in Moho and put this above blue, pink,yellow sky layer and gave it a transparency of 50%.
-I then added the yellow glowing yellow ball into each frame of the animation.
-Then using the Photoshop filter "Lighting Effects" I created the glow/light on the boy´s face and body.

The difference in the before and after is quite dramatic.
(click for larger view)


Here is a very short video clip showing just 18 frames of the animation Before and After.
Toontoonz Before and After.mov 0.97Mb.

You will be amazed at what you can now do with Moho combined with Photoshop (and Adobe After Effects and....).
It puts Moho up a whole level or two as far as what one can do with it.
One is only limited by their imagination!

[Banterfield]

So do you just reload the psd file and all the new filter applied stuff shows up, or how does that work? I'm foggy on how the work flow works with export/importing the images before and after photoshop.

Great looking stuff, by the way!

[Toontoonz]

After one does whatever they want with layered files in Photoshop, I save them as .png files and import back into Moho to view as an animation.
(I would probably import them into Adobe After Effects or some other video editing program, but wanted to test the work flow via Moho. Because Moho can not import files except one at a time this makes Moho not really the best choice to put the re-worked animation back together again.)

Keep in mind that Moho cannot import .psd files. So to get the Moho exported .psd files back in Moho one has to save them in Photoshop as .png, .jpg or .targa type files.
But again, once one takes the files into Photoshop to do any additional work the best step is take those files into After Effects or Premier or other video editing program. (For example, in Adobe After Effects it is basically one click to get all 240 frames of a 10 second animation imported into that program. In Moho one has to import each frame one at a time. That´s 240 times of Import Image, find the frame file you want, click okay. A waste of time.)

My experiments now are trying to test the new Moho/Photoshop possibilities. And figuring out how to do things more efficiently and quicker and if there are any problems - such as file re-import to Moho.
Right now, it is looking very, very promising. This really opens Moho up to be used to make some very nice new styles of animation rather quickly. (One can even set up Photoshop so that it can automatically apply filters or anything else automatically to any number of files. It´s just "click" and Photoshop does its thing very quickly on 240 or whatever number of frames.)

I look forward to seeing others post animations using the Moho/Photoshop connection.

[jorgy]

After one does whatever they want with layered files in Photoshop, I save them as .png files and import back into Moho to view as an animation.
(I would probably import them into Adobe After Effects or some other video editing program, but wanted to test the work flow via Moho. Because Moho can not import files except one at a time this makes Moho not really the best choice to put the re-worked animation back together again.)

[ ... ]

(For example, in Adobe After Effects it is basically one click to get all 240 frames of a 10 second animation imported into that program. In Moho one has to import each frame one at a time. That´s 240 times of Import Image, find the frame file you want, click okay. A waste of time.)

Janimatic has written a script which will do this in one fell swoop:

http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1402

[MarkBorok]

This is one of the features I wanted to see most. Now it's possible to animate lighting effects with Moho in AfterEffects, using AE's own 3D settings. Toontoonz's example is great, but in AE you can cause lights to grow brighter or dimmer, change color over time, move in 3D space, etc. Plus, of course, you can do your own motion blur, DoF effects and all those other things you can get in Moho but can't export to Photoshop.

[Toontoonz]

MarkBrook - yes, you are correct. Great isn´t it what we will now be able to do.
My first tests were just confining it to the Moho/Photoshop environment.
(Testing for bugs or any other snags in doing things.)
I have done new tests with AE and the animations look great.
This really opens a new world of animation fun to lots of us and adds another reason to have Moho in their toolbox.

--------------
I hoping others will post some Moho animation .psd files taken into AE or other program so we can see what they are doing.

[Sevenmile]

Oh my! I really like the photoshop export
I haven't played with lua yet, but I have played with gimp-scripting, and I guess it wouldn't be too hard for me to make a gimp-script that takes a psd-file, exports it's frames as pngs and also saves the order and names of the layers... how hard would it then be to make a lua-script that imports the pngs and applies the correct names and get them in the right order?
/Smile

[Toontoonz]

Photoshop export is real nice!

I am drawing a blank with your idea though of bringing back individual layers of .png files back into Moho. Could you give me an example of two why one would want to bring the individual Photoshop layers back in Moho as .png files?
What could one now do in Moho with those Photoshop-enhanced .png layers that couldn´t have already been done before they left Moho? (I don´t have a problem bringing in the entire Photoshop file as a .png layer, but wonder what bringing in indivdual layers of .png layers would get one? And imagine the large number of layers one would have in Moho on a 4-layer, 240 frame animation! Over a 1,000 layers. Woohoo!)

I am sure there is a good idea in there, I just can´t see it yet.
Whenever there is something new, there is always a new way to use it that one doesn´t think of!

[Sevenmile]

Hm... it seemed to be a good idea, but then I started to think about it

I think my poor brain needs some sleep...
C ya in a hundred years or so...

[Sevenmile]

Oh... after an extremley short nap (so fast I didn't even managed to close my eyes ) I think I remember what I was thinking...

I've been using the image texture trick described in the... uh... tutorial somewhere... (sadly I'm not at a computer with moho - there are actualley some of these, even though they diminsh with every day that passes)) However, you know the one with the horsy thingy...

My idea was that you could use the photoshop export to bring a character into photoshop (or in my case - GIMP) and there texturize it... then you could use a gimp-script that exported the image to transparent pngs and then have a lua script which imports it to moho, places the layers in the right position in the workspace and inte the layers-box and sets the masking options... but I guess it wouldn't save that much time, so maybe we'd better just skip it
/Smile