Motion paths like in AE

[formxshape]

can we have please?

Want to move an object in a nice curve? want to fine tune curve? Currently no way to do it, other than lock yourself into a Follow Path thing.
It's great that you can see the motion path on the screen, but it'd be even more useable to be able to adjust that, like you can in After Effects.

Yes I know you can go into the Motion Graph editor and play around with the X / Y bezier curves, but seriously it's impossible to get a nice motion path curve that would take 2 seconds max in After Effects to make.

Clearly the easier UI/UX solution would be to simply allow us the ability adjust with bezier handles the motion path in the main screen.

It's a real shame smith micro can't put a strong team together and throw more resources at making Moho in what could potentially be the ultimate 2d animation software.

Maybe it's a few versions away, but we're now considering going back to AfterEffects as there's just a lack of basic features and too much fiddling around with Moho's unintuitive systems.

[synthsin75]

It's a real shame smith micro can't put a strong team together and throw more resources at making Moho in what could potentially be the ultimate 2d animation software.

Except that would mean the price, which many people already complain about, would have to increase even more.

[Greenlaw]

Maybe it's a few versions away, but we're now considering going back to AfterEffects as there's just a lack of basic features and too much fiddling around with Moho's unintuitive systems.

Why not use both? It's what I do in my personal work and at the studio where I work.

I mainly use Moho for all the character work and AE for compositing and effects. In recent years we've used both Moho and AE with DuIK for character animation, and we found Moho is faster and far more capable than AE for character rigging and animation, while AE is better for advanced VFX work (like particles and image displacement), post processing fx (lighting, DOF and motion blur,) and for rendering final composites in general. With Moho's Layer Comps system and Moho Exporter to output the passes, the two programs seem made for each other. For us anyway, there's been no reason to choose only one program over the other--they're both incredibly useful.

[formxshape]

We are using After Effects as part of our production process, just something simple like a two key framed, nicely eased curved motion path becomes a fiddly 3, 4+ key framed process. And isn't easy to tweak or amend later on...

I like Moho, but it just needs a bit more time spent on UI/UX, someone needs to refine the the user experience. Make it more professionally orientated and less a hobby toy.

As for cost, well they might sell more copies and take some of Adobe's customers if it has a better reputation and is more professionally orientated, and so no need to increase costs, more sales will cover the additional resources spent on refining the software.

Considering the shift over the past 25 years from TV's to the numerous computers, tablets, and smart phone screens - the demand for video content has increased a lot, so there's low risk in Smith Micro investing more in Moho. Go for it guys, we'd appreciate it. There's market demand for a rock solid 2D animation software, Moho is almost there...

[Greenlaw]

I hope I didn't sound like I was being dismissive because I actually agree. There's definitely room for improvement with how the GE curves currently work in Moho.

To be fair, a great deal of improvement was made to the Graph Editor and Timeline in just the last two versions of Moho, some of them putting the program more in line with how AE operates. The fairly recent 'Copy Previous Key' mode, for example, is just like AE's behavior and was a big game changer for me, especially for Switch Layers using SBD controls. Other recent improvements: the ability to split channels, the mute switch, multilayer selection, etc. These may have seemed like 'little' things but they made a big difference for efficiency and how much we used the program. And some of this, in my view, was a big improvement over how AE does things (for CA,) and it's only part of why I hardly ever use AE for animating characters anymore.

But, yeah, the GE is one area in Moho that could do well to be a little more like AE's.

I hope these kinds of workflow and GUI improvements continue into the next releases.