drawing in moho, details

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spasmodic_cheese
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drawing in moho, details

Post by spasmodic_cheese »

Hey

Ive just actually sat down and started drawing in moho, its actually really great tracing my scanned drawings, come out perfectly how i wanted..which is very suprising to me!

i thoguht i hated the drawnig tools

BUT i have a problem...

i did my overall shape, gave it a fill and outline... then i use my addpoints tool to do creases etc. they are lines that arn't closed and are welded attached to the main shape.

and i try to change their line widths but they dont change and i have to select the points and give them the same shape outline n stuff... is there any quick way of doing this???

so i can just draw, line width, draw line width.
Krilik
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Post by Krilik »

The line width actually does change but you can't see it because you have to make it a shape with a style for the line. So basically you have to draw your line, fill it with the shape tool, and then change the line width so you can see it.

If you are using the freehand tool there is a check box at the top that says "Auto outline" and it will apply the currect style to what ever you draw with it. That probably will get your desired effect, but I feel that the freehand tool adds too many points when you draw with it.
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spasmodic_cheese
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Post by spasmodic_cheese »

yeh ... thats what i meant...

which is annoying!

perhaps an auto Outline and auto fill on the add point tool is needed?? is there any reson why there isnt?
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Post by Krilik »

That would be a great addition.

If not I think the best way to do it is use the freehand tool, change the angel tolerance in the options up to 30(max). That way it won't create as many points.
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Lost Marble
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Post by Lost Marble »

Re: Auto-outline on the Add Points tool:

http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=371
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spasmodic_cheese
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Post by spasmodic_cheese »

so if there was a checkbox to extend outline, what uncertainties would the be left open ?
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7feet
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Post by 7feet »

Your dislike of the Freehand Tool is most likely due to the default settings. I find them way too point-heavy myself. For broad drawing, I use a pixel tolerance of 12, and an angle tolerance of 16 or 20. Most of the time for reasonable detail I use 8 and 12.

A few explanations of what these numbers mean wouldn't hurt.

The Pixel Tolerance is, as the name implies, related to your screen resolution. It also means that it is sensitive to how far you are zoomed in on the workspace. If you are in the default view, you will get a much less detailed result in the final piece than you would if you had used the Zoom Workspace tool a bunch to get really close to a particular part of a drawing you were trying to tweak. If you set it to 8, Moho will never put another point closer than 8 pixels (based on the screen resolution) to the previous point. 20 pixels, same deal. So you can cut down the raw number of pixels by increasing the pixel tolerance to where you like it.

The Angle Tolerance is to decide, when you get enough pixels away, if the relative angle between the 2 previous points and the proposed one is extreme enough to justify putting the proposed one in. Set the Angle Tolerance to 12. If the angle difference is 11 degrees at pixel distance 8 (with the Pixel Tolerance at 8 ), no new point. If the line you are drawing gets to pixel distance 9 and the degree is up to 12, new point. If you set the Angle tolerance to 30, you are going to get some pretty broad recognition of where you want points, but it works for roughing out shapes.

Hope that helps. I like the Freehand tool, but you do need to set it for the purpose. I suppose I'll add to my "to do" list a tweak of the tool to allow changing the settings on the fly with an <alt key> switch. Like <alt> 1 is really fine, <alt> 9 is really broad, and in between. Shouldn't be too hard, and I sure would find it handy.

This is one of those nut's and bolt's aspects that I never saw explained anywhere, and only figured out through hard trial and error, and (now) a good bit o' studying of the scripts of the tools. Hope thats of some assistance.

Hmm, "extend outline" for the Add Points? That might be do-able. I'll look into it. And if I'm wrong on any of the concept (from above), LM, lemme know.

--Brian
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spasmodic_cheese
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Post by spasmodic_cheese »

i never said i disliked the freehand tool, ive normally drawn in other programs and imported into moho.

I disliked drawing in moho in general. but i like tracing in moho.. i just find the add point tool perfect for how I work... lets me put points RIGHT where i want them.

Ive found freehand to not be that great when using tablet..but thats because i havent tweaked settings... i'll give it a shot .. :cry:
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7feet
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Post by 7feet »

I like drawing in Moho 'cuz I don't much like drawing in any program, and importing get's worse. If I could scribble on a pad and actually get any sort of auto-trace thang to give me what I wanted from a scan, I would prefer that. But I've played with a lot and haven't found it. Although it's been a while since I've had it on my machine, I remember Flash's autotrace to be somewhat useful.

I've been working on a cartoon based on one of my brother's comics. With the proper settings, I've found tracing the image in Moho to be way easier, especially when it comes to rigging time, way better than doing it anywhere else. Moho has such a particular way of doing things that I find most imports kinda annoying. And it looks exactly like his work. He was pretty amazed, actually. If I'd done it outside Moho, I'd probably have spent as much time tweaking things to look right as I had the draw tha damn thing in the first place. So I find it easier to stay in the prog.

I'm mostly drawing with my handy dandy new Graphire, but sometime I still resort to the mouse. I'll get over it, but I've been using it since Win 3.1 Paint, and it's burned into my brain.

--Brian

Oh, yeah, wasn't being specific to you (spasmodic_cheese), just heard that in general in a few spots. Thought some clarification was overdue.
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Lost Marble
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Post by Lost Marble »

spasmodic_cheese wrote:so if there was a checkbox to extend outline, what uncertainties would the be left open ?
One example would be if you joined two unconnected lines. When you click the mouse, you start out by extending one line, but then you drag the new point over to the second line and weld it.

Another problem is if you want to create a filled shape. Moho won't let you do this until the shape is closed. But, if you're creating an outline along the way, and then close the shape at the end, should Moho fill it for you, or do you need to delete the outline and create a fill/outline combined shape, or what? For a simple, single closed curve, it's easy to see how the fill should be, but fills can be made up of complex combinations of welded curves, so I'm not sure that it's a good thing for Moho to "jump to conclusions" and do that kind of thing automatically.

Because of the Lua scripting, someone else can make the Add Point tool do this, but my experience with Moho tells me that if we added this feature as a default, there would be lots of situations that would pop up where it wouldn't work as someone expected.

Here's a sort of workaround: Create a curve segment with just two points, the start and end points. Then, use the Create Shape tool to apply an outline. Finally, use the Add Point tool to add points mid-curve, dragging them around to shape the curve as you want it. Of course, this relies on you knowing at the beginning where you want the start and end points of the final curve.
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spasmodic_cheese
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Post by spasmodic_cheese »

hrmm nah i can do it quick enough to press ctrl + a , U, Space

since i havent coloured in anything and just doing line work.

I see what your saying now... I still think its worthwhile to look into by someone *puppy eyes*

I'll probably have a crack at it when the moho lua stuff has been documented (i dont really feel like working out the API myself)
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