My future with Moho

General Moho topics.

Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger

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CHIO
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by CHIO »

Hey,
I have been on board this community since 2001 in times of yahoogroups. I think I bought one of the first MOHO'S versions. I do not know Mike personally but I know this spectacular piece of software.
Thank you for everything and lots of luck in your new projects.
The work done by you, Victor and the entire development team has been extremely professional.
Sincerely thank you for MOHO.
MOHO for ever...
Chio
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gdub
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by gdub »

Thank you for the best drawing and animation software out there! I wish you the best of luck on future projects.
F.M.
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by F.M. »

CHIO, it's great to know that you are still around!
"and then Man created god!"
bruno
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by bruno »

hi there, I bought Moho long time ago. I was happy to use it with BeOs... until ver.2.5...
Do you have the rights on the old BeOs Code? I still use this version but there are problems to export animations now.
Any change to get Moho working on Haiku... at least the export functionality...
Sad you will leave us... dont know who is interested in doing something for the old BeOs and now Haiku user out there now.
have a good time and best wishes...
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Víctor Paredes
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by Víctor Paredes »

I also want to thank Mike for all these years of wonderful work. I'm using Moho since version 4, if I remember well, and immediately fell in love with the software.
Having the opportunity to work directly with Mike during this time has been great. He is a genius and also a humble, generous and interesting person. When you know him, it really makes sense that is the guy who created Moho.

I also want to thank some other people you probably haven't hear about them too often, but they were crucial for the Moho development and community support:
Fahim and Michi (which, along with Mike, I consider my family in the US), Uli, Jason, Eric, Erik, Mitch, James, Gerard, Denise, John, Matt and Vuk.
They worked very hard behind the curtains to make Moho the not perfect, but fantastic software it is.

Sincerely, I'm optimistic about the future. I know Moho will continue its road (and I will put all my energy on that). The software is strong, powerful and has a big community which cares about it. Also, and more important, there is a lot of room to improve on it and too many fantastic features to add yet! I'm not sure when it will be released, but I'm certain that Moho 13 will be awesome.
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Rigged animation supervisor in My father's dragon - Lead Moho artist in Wolfwalkers - Cartoon Saloon - My personal Youtube Channel
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funksmaname
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by funksmaname »

Good to hear from you Victor, I've not seen you post much lately and worried you might have turned your back on Moho and the community after learning that you were 'let go' by SM... glad this isn't the case, we need you - even if you're back in our ranks :)
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synthsin75
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by synthsin75 »

funksmaname wrote:... we need you - even if you're back in our ranks :)
Hear! Hear!
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jahnocli
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by jahnocli »

Victor, you've been a brilliant (and knowledgeable!) ambassador for Moho over the years, and it's great that you're still involved and positive about the future.
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
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hayasidist
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by hayasidist »

+1 to that! Let's hope we can get Moho back on the rails - and with Mike C in some advisory role too. A huge amount has been achieved - but there is always more to do! My worry is that SM really seem to have got into a hole with their "enterprise" business offerings and have, to my mind, taken it out on the "graphics" segment of their business -- let's hope that come to understand what a star product they've actually got!
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dueyftw
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by dueyftw »

I have been reading all this and wonder if Smith Micro is going away from their business model of selling Moho and it's upgraded versions.

Moho currently can compete with other animation software, but only if every year add new features are added that helps animators animate more faster and efficiently. Smith Micro will not make any money after awhile selling a product that doesn't grow.

Dale
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Droxon
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by Droxon »

It's really sad to hear about this... but I really hope you the best Mike and thanks for creating this amazing software!

But I'm a little worried about Moho's future... I just hope that Smith Micro doesn't ruin it by making it an animation toy for hobbyist, and forget about professionals... or even worst, that they stop updating it at all :shock:
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jupitor6
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by jupitor6 »

Droxon wrote:It's really sad to hear about this... but I really hope you the best Mike and thanks for creating this amazing software!

But I'm a little worried about Moho's future... I just hope that Smith Micro doesn't ruin it by making it an animation toy for hobbyist, and forget about professionals... or even worst, that they stop updating it at all :shock:
The worse thing that could happen is a rival such as Toon Boom buying Moho to 'put out to pasture' the way Adobe did to FreeHand (to rid Illustrator of its main rival) when they bought Macromedia. Maybe Lost Marble should buy back Moho before the apocalypse happen. Everything is up for sale these days. Disney bought Marvel. George Lucas sold Star Wars! :shock:
Still doing it.
JaMike
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by JaMike »

I'm not going to speculate on the future, I'll just say a big thanks to Mike for creating such great software.

LONG LIVE MOHO!!!
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SimplSam
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by SimplSam »

I came across some old screeshots of Moho (in the 1.x/2.x era), plus a Mike Popovic 'Be Dope' interview with Mike Clifton about the first release on BeOS:

Image
(Moho 1.1)

Image
(Moho 2.2)

"The BeOS does things correctly"

Be Dope was fortunate enough to talk a bit with Lost Marble's Mike Clifton, creator of the spectacular and feature-rich 2D animation and drawing program Moho.

How did you first hear of BeOS and what made you decide to develop for the BeOS platform?

I heard about Be back in 1995 when I was working at Apple. I was spending most of my time pacing the halls while my machine rebooted, so the idea of a stable AND friendly OS was very appealing. I went to a demo and soon had a BeBox of my own (with DR5 I think it was). The decision to develop Moho on BeOS was made for a couple reasons. First, Moho itself is faster and cleaner because of the good foundation the BeOS provides. Second, if Moho was a Windows product it would get lost in the crowd. As a BeOS product, especially a pretty early one, it will hopefully get a little more notice, which is a tough thing for a small company to get.

What is your animation background?

I've been writing and using 3D software for a long time, both for work and on the side. I even tried animation production for film for a while, but my skills really lie on the tool development side.

What made you decide to develop Moho?

3D animation is very popular these days, and while it looks great and all, sometimes a simpler-looking 2D animation can be very refreshing to see. It took me a while to realize why I wasn't ever really satisfied with 3D, and I think that while you can go to great effort to create a compelling 3D animation, the most appealing and enduring characters are essentially 2D. Most of the existing 2D animation programs out there are ink & paint systems. These require you to draw the frames by hand, and then help you paint in colors and do compositing. This is still a huge amount of work. There really wasn't an affordable product that would let an animator simply manipulate a character to create an animation without drawing every frame.

What is Moho's target audience?

Moho is targeted towards both professional and hobbyist animators. Video producers will also find Moho useful for compositing animated effects on top of video such as text and logos.

How does Moho stack up against comparable products on other operating systems (if any) when it comes to feature sets and price?

I would say the closest thing to Moho is Macromedia's Flash. They're both vector-based drawing and animation tools, but Moho has better tools for character animation. Moho's skeleton system uses inverse kinematics to let you drag a character's arms and legs around into new poses very easily. Moho is also more targeted toward producing a video, rather than an online streaming experience like Flash. As far as price, Moho is about one third the cost of Flash.

Why the name "Moho"?

Software names are difficult. Moho doesn't really mean anything as far as the product goes - it's just a name. It started out as a random search through a dictionary, looking for words that felt like software names. Moho doesn't have a very serious "ring" to it, and the product is meant to be a fun thing to use.

What can we look forward to in the next version of Moho, and what is the timeline for future releases?

Well, I can't give any definite answers on timeline, but the big upcoming feature is sound. Animators need to be able to drop in sounds and position them in time so that they can make things properly sync up.

What kind of effort/resources would it take to produce a full half-hour animated feature with Moho?

A full half-hour is a big project. Moho is up to it, but you're talking a lot of work, no matter what tools you use. The first thing to think about (even if you're only doing 1-2 minutes of animation) is organization. Don't try to do the whole thing as one Moho file. Break it up into different scenes and shots. Moho project files are very small, so disk space shouldn't be a big problem until you output the final result. Because Moho is vector-based, you can always change your output resolution when you go from test movies to final product. A video editing package to put all the pieces together would be a great companion tool, and there are a few showing up now on the BeOS.

Have any "big names" adopted Moho for their animation needs?

Not yet. Moho has only been out for about a month, but we're planning on sending evaluation copies out to some studios to see what they think.

Is Lost Marble working on any other titles?

There are lots of ideas, but nothing I can really announce...

What are the plusses and minuses of programming BeOS?

Be has been extremely supportive, both technically as well as on the marketing side - that's a huge plus. As far as coding, the BeOS kits are a joy to program with - the Be engineers must think the same way I do. On the downside, debugging on the BeOS is not nearly as nice as on Mac or Windows. Luckily, I seem to do a lot less of it on BeOS than the others.

What books (programming/animation and otherwise) do you consider a must- read?

Programming: I can't say I actually like reading these, although I always have a C++ book and BeBook handy for reference. Animation: The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston - a classic. Also, any cartoon book with pictures that you like the style of, just to generate ideas. Other: On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Ask the Dust by John Fante, 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Blood Lake by Jim Krusoe, Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, ...I could go on and on

If the BeOS was an animal, what kind would it be?

garlic

Who is your favorite muppet, if any, and why?

That guy who played the sax [Editor's note: Zoot]. He was very cool without screaming out "Hey look at me! I'm a muppet!"

Finish this sentence: "Developing for BeOS kicks ass because __________"

...the BeOS does things correctly.

(Ref: Be Dope http://www.bedope.com/int/int09mc.html)
Moho 14.1 » Win 11 Pro 64GB » NVIDIA GTX 1080ti 11GB
Moho 14.1 » Mac mini 2012 8GB » macOS 10.15 Catalina
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JoelMayer
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Re: My future with Moho

Post by JoelMayer »

All the best to your future!

I'm just worried, that now the development of Moho will slow down considerably since the lead developer leaves but i can completely understand that, after this much time, Mike might want to see something new :)
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