A sample of what input sound would look like.

Postality · Post by **Postality** » Sun Oct 17, 2004 6:52 pm

I put together a pic of what it might look like if Lost Marble decided to add a sound layer option.

It would work somewhat the same way as add image layer. where you pick the sound you want to use when you add a sound layer.

Here's the pic

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 6:25 pm

you must be bored!

But i like the idea... but i still think flashes sound control is better.

kdiddy13 · Post by **kdiddy13** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 6:55 pm

It looks nice and clean. Are you envisioning that all you would do is create sound layers and choose when it starts and stops?

Beyond that, my vote is with Moho staying away from dealing with sound mixing too much. There are plenty of other softwares out there specifically for that. I'd rather they focus their energies on continuing development of the animation engine and its tools.

This is my simplified workflow:
Storyboard
Character design and asset creation
Dialogue and Rough sound mix
Animatic
Rough edit - using storyboards and animatics, I'll swap out shots in the edit as they're rendered
Animation
Fine tune edit
Sound mix (adding sound FX, music, balance, levels, etc.)
Final Cut
Final Output

Rather than trying to do everything in one big shot, I find it much easier to split the work up in to managable chunks, and do alot of pre-production work. I can understand how more audio in Moho could be useful for some, I just think there's a better (efficiency and quality) way of working than that, especially considering that if you have more than one shot, you'll probably being using some editing software to put your animation together anyway. Why not just add sound there or pre-mix the multiple audio tracks and import them into Moho as one?

Postality · Post by **Postality** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:45 pm

basically that layout would work like this.

you press the new layer button
and click sound layer
it will popup a dialog that ask you to select a sound file (just like the image layer would)
then it would add that layer and put in a new timeline entry like the one in the pick sound 1
then in the timeline when you added a keyframe at whichever point in time on that entry, it would play the sound you specified.

It's a very simple approach and that's all I was aiming for.

any heavy duty tweaking of sounds could obviously be done in better programs, but the input of sound effects in the timeline like that would be simple fast and very nice.

I visioned it like this because most of the code is already there for the image layer. it would just have to be copied and alterered for a sound. and a timeline entry being inserted when you added a sound.

kdiddy13 · Post by **kdiddy13** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 8:01 pm

Sounds nice and simple. Much more reasonable than the multi-track audio editing program I was envisioning at first.

Postality · Post by **Postality** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:47 pm

well in a way it would be multi-track, But the editing can be done outside moho. As I explained before, there's many programs that are free out there that you can tweak sounds and such if they seem to loud or too low etc. All I'm requesting is the ability to put those sounds into moho and export them with the animation. I believe this would truely make moho a more complete package, and would definately benefit those that are new to animation and compliment moho's ease of use.

The reason why I was pointing my point out so strongly about this is because I think those opposing it misunderstood me on what I was talking about. I agree moho is an animation program, and audio editing should be left to audio software, but the editing side isn't what I'm after. I'm interested in adding in sounds, music etc to my animations inside moho that I've created with other programs. And let's not forget audio is a part of animation. It's like saying TV is to watch and radio is to listen to, so mute your tv and turn on the radio, doesn't sound very synced. =)

and yes there are some pro's out there using moho and you do it a certain way, but for those that aren't pro's (at least for me) this is the easiest (and probably the most cost efficient) way for an amateur animator to get a complete movie... Buy 300 dollars in a software package to add sound to an animation that was made for fun isn't very benificial. Nor does that attract the younger people wanting to step into the animation field. I can see parents buying an animation program for thier kids at 100 dollars, but kids trying to get thier parents to buy an animation program and anything else to make a little movie (400-500+) I can't see that happening. I'd advertise moho myself to people / schools you name it if it was a more complete package. it's easy, affordable, and fun. It's just missing a few things to be a complete animation package.

I'm a very business oriented individual, and if you can attract a croud of people to something interesting then it will sell. moho is one of those things. Cheap enough that anyone interested in animation young or old can buy it.

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:57 pm

The problem is still that you would need true editing features. If you want to adjust levels, stereo balance, etc., you would either need Moho to have those features, or you would have to use an outside editor. If you go to an outside editor, you would need to re-insert all those sounds at the correct frames - this would make your work harder not easier if you had set up all your sounds in Moho, and then had to do it all over again in a true audio editor.

If you say that you don't need those extra audio editing features, I think you're not being realistic. Ten minutes after Moho allowed you to insert sounds at different times, the forum would be get feature requests to allow proper editing features. (And I wouldn't blame people - it would just the natural progression.)

Sound is an absolutely critical part of animation, I agree. But there's really nothing wrong with using multiple programs for different purposes. Hand-painted backgrounds are really nice in animation too, but no one has (yet) asked for a painting feature in Moho.

Postality · Post by **Postality** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:05 pm

but if it was playing say a wav file (we'll say happy.wav for case arguement)

and you had that sound on the timeline 32 times. but it just didn't sound right. it's a bit too low.

You go into your audio editor and modify the volume a bit so it's louder.

since moho is essentially playing a wav file in the timeline, it would then play the updated wav file after you've modified it.

Hope I'm making some sense here, haha.

Postality · Post by **Postality** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:24 pm

And if it DIDN'T update dynamically like that, you could save you project, and reload it.

just like the image layer, any changes wouldn't take effect untill you reloaded the project file, but it would definately load the updated image if it was edited outside of moho.

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:26 pm

Yeah, but what if you're adding a stepping sound each time a character takes a step. It's not at all unreasonable to think you might want the sound to start on the left channel, then get louder as the character gets closer, then fade over to the right channel as the characetr passes mid-screen, and finally fade away again as the character walks away.

Now, if you added the steps sounds in Moho in sync with the footsteps, you would then need to re-add them in a proper audio editor so that you could adjust the gain and pan. What a waste. Since you're talking about using an audio editor anyway, just use the one program for audio. Pick an audio editor that lets you preview a video (to sync the sound to), and you're good to go.

Postality · Post by **Postality** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:56 pm

Sounds like it's a dead issue so I'll just leave it alone.

I'm looking at it from a totally diffrent point of view.

I'm more in-tune with audio apps then I am with animation apps. I guess that's the reason why doing it this way would make it easier. If I needed a walking sound from left to right of the screen I would just make a loop and pan it from left to right and import it into moho.

But it's your show, and your program.

BTW that image texturing sample mov was great!

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 11:07 am

Lost Marble wrote: Since you're talking about using an audio editor anyway, just use the one program for audio. Pick an audio editor that lets you preview a video (to sync the sound to), and you're good to go.

Cubase SX (and onwards) is great for this, incase anyone wants to know. But it all depend whever you want the hassle of converting midi to audio and the rest of midis flaws

PicaroMT · Post by **PicaroMT** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 12:25 am

I just did a quick google search for "freeware multitrack audio editor" and found several good choices.

interfector · Post by **interfector** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:22 am

Not freeware, but Sony's Vegas is an excellent choice for simple video and audio multitracking.