Moho is extremely logical and easy to learn and Flash isn't

General Moho topics.

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gavi dvan
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Moho is extremely logical and easy to learn and Flash isn't

Post by gavi dvan »

I have recently started tertiary studies doing digital animation, the course mainly concerns 3D animation but we have begun using Flash.
It's a pain in the arse.

When I first downloaded Moho I had it figured out that night. The tutorials were well written, well explained, well pictured and covered a nice broad range of things to do. On top of this the tools and everything just seemed to make sense and did what I expected them to do.

When I first started playing with Flash. AAAAAAAAAAAARRGGHHGHKSADFHA!!!!
The tutorials cover hardly anything, the help thing is hard to use, the way it thinks just confuses me and drives me to tears. I've only been using it a few days and I've got most of it figured out now but I still think it's damn silly.

I know Flash isn't designed to be a 2D cartoonist's dream program or anything but by golly, it makes me wonder why Flash is the big world-renowned 2D program and Moho isn't anywhere near as heard-of.


In my opinion these are the only areas where Flash has the heads up over Moho (bearing in mind I have only played with it for a few days):

* Library/Instances: I don't know how to word this... Being able to make an object, and have it relate back to its source. Such as designing a streetlight, and then inserting multiple copies of that, all of which would update if you were to edit your original streetlight. Also how you can keep this library through different projects.
* The curve editor motion layer thing, so you can draw a path for objects. I know there's the Crashcore script written for this in Moho but I'm yet to master it.
* Tween editor - graph you can play with instead of the Moho defaults such as "ease in" "smooth" etc.
* Oh colour pickers are cool

Oh and contrary to most people's belief, I DON'T think that Flash's drawing tools are all that and a bag of potato chips - they're practically the same as Moho. I actually prefer Moho's, because changing colours of things in Flash led to all sorts of problems.

I think nearly anything that can be done in Flash, animation-wise, can probably be done with Moho.

So anyway, I'm not sure what the point of this post is. But props to Lost Marble and Moho.




The views expressed here are my own and in no way represent the views of Lost Marble, Macromedia, Microsoft, The Trade Federation, Bill Clinton, or any of the Spice Girls.
Gavi Dvan is in no way sponsored, funded, bribed or even shouted drinks by Lost Marble.
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heyvern
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Post by heyvern »

I know EXACTLY the point of your post.

I felt the same way when I discovered Moho. It almost seemed too good to be true.

I will confess some of the process could be streamlined with certain features... but heck...

I have produced a bazillion times more animation in a fraction of the time with Moho than I ever produced with Flash.

I have been knee deep in Moho now for weeks... everyday I just look at what I produce and am amazed. I am involved in a 7 minute pitch for an animated series. Neither of us have any experience with this type of thing and I don't honestly expect our target network to actually buy it... but it won't be for the lack of quality or "expensive" software. It is turning out better than I expected.

I even dumped AE for the story board/animatic. I am doing the whole darn thing in Moho because it is faster and easier.

This is the most fun I have had with a new program in ages.

Welcome to the club!

-Vern
Lost girl
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Post by Lost girl »

That's good to hear! I'm a traditional animator, trying to drag myself out of the dark ages. I studied flash for a few days, and it's a bastard IMO! Just looking into this Moho thing now, so I'm expecting great things! :D
gavi dvan
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Post by gavi dvan »

After over a week's constant use of Flash, I have decided to re-issue my statement on Flash's drawing tools.

They're shit.

Image

I drew this simple character in Moho the other night in about 10 minutes. This morning I attempted to do it in Flash, and I seriously think I am traumatised for life.
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heyvern
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Post by heyvern »

Lost Girl!

I love your avatar! That is me during web site development... writing javascript... or emailing stupid clients.
(I am actually an artist... I made a wrong turn a few years back and have to do JS programming on occasion now)
--------------
gavi,

It is funny how perspective gives you a different opinion about something.

I have been animating like a demon for weeks and seriously getting jazzed every moment... I did almost the same thing you did. I "recreated" some old artwork I had done originally in Illustrator in Moho....

... I like Moho more than Illustrator now (can't animate in Illustrator).

I am so confused by some people on this forum complaining about this feature or that feature is missing... or that Moho's drawing tools are crap etc ...

I guess it comes down to "the glass is half full not half empty".

"Sometimes if you need to put a nail into a piece of wood... you don't need anything fancy... you just pound it with a hammer until it's in."

I have stopped looking for Hammer CSMX Pro Deluxe SE v7.0®
Now I use the Moho hammer to pound in my animation nails.

$99... good lord. I don't expect Moho to rub my shoulders and make me coffee in the morning for that price... although... sometimes at night I dream it is doing just that... I'll save that one for my therapist.

-vern
gavi dvan
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Post by gavi dvan »

heyvern wrote:"Sometimes if you need to put a nail into a piece of wood... you don't need anything fancy... you just pound it with a hammer until it's in."
Bingo!
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Rai López
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Post by Rai López »

gavi dvan wrote:
heyvern wrote:"Sometimes if you need to put a nail into a piece of wood... you don't need anything fancy... you just pound it with a hammer until it's in."
Bingo!
...Then you could use too a hammer made of... plasticine (i.e.) as long as it be a hammer? :roll: Hmmm, interesting... :lol:
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MarkBorok
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Post by MarkBorok »

he documentation in Flash was pretty good when I started using it, back at version 2 or 3, but since then they've ruined it. Likewise they've ruined the drawing tools after version 4. I could get smooth lines with the brush tool in v.4 and from v.5 onwards the lines come out very uneven. I'm holding out some hope for v.8, which I haven't really explored yet, but I greatly prefer the Moho/Illustrator model for drawing lines with the brush tool.

I hate it when they take a perfectly good tool and ruin it like they did with Flash. Not to mention all the bugs in both the Mac and PC version. It was pretty much bug-free before v.6. I don't know what kind of idiots they've got over there at Macromedia.
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heyvern
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Post by heyvern »

MarkBorok wrote:I don't know what kind of idiots they've got over there at Macromedia.
Well now the idiots at Adobe can try to fix it. Maybe they will replace it with Live Picture or whatever that Adobe Flash thing was called.

;)

-Vern
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jorgy
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Post by jorgy »

heyvern wrote:Well now the idiots at Adobe can try to fix it. Maybe they will replace it with Live Picture or whatever that Adobe Flash thing was called.
Live Motion.

I really liked that piece of software, much moreso than Flash.
gavi dvan
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Post by gavi dvan »

MarkBorok wrote:he documentation in Flash was pretty good when I started using it, back at version 2 or 3, but since then they've ruined it. Likewise they've ruined the drawing tools after version 4. I could get smooth lines with the brush tool in v.4 and from v.5 onwards the lines come out very uneven. I'm holding out some hope for v.8, which I haven't really explored yet, but I greatly prefer the Moho/Illustrator model for drawing lines with the brush tool.
I just prefer how Moho "thinks"... Flash's "vector" drawing tools remind me more of MS Paint! I like Moho's method that allows you to rearrange the order of shapes and move points around and make mistakes that don't screw up everything you've already done.

I don't know which version I've been using, I'm pretty sure it's either 7 or 8
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MarkBorok
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Post by MarkBorok »

Flash's "vector" drawing tools remind me more of MS Paint!
That's the whole point. Flash was originally a vector "painting" program so that working with vectors could be as easy as painting. It was originally called "Future Splash", had no animation features and was intended to be a companion program to Illustrator.
rearrange the order of shapes
They have added a feature in the current release that allows you to treat every stroke as a separate shape, just like in other vector drawing programs. So you can move them up and down to your heart's content.
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Rhoel
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Post by Rhoel »

I remember doing a project two/three years ago with flash: We decided to use libraries for some sequences. We replayed the whole things as a swf file and it looked okay: We then output it in a png still sequence so we could import it into Debabaliser to make the avi output file.

We didcovered that swf movieclips when reused do not advance the framecount - all the frames using the swf movieclip stayed at frame 1. I emailed the techies at Macromedia - their reply was Flash as not designed to be used to TV animation and basically, your own stupid fault for using it to do something it was never designed to do. And no, they had no intention of fixing the problem.

Never used it for animation again.

Maybe this bug has been fixed, maybe it hasn't - I reported it when Flash 4 was one month old. It would be interesting to see if its still a problem if anyone want to try it.

The studio reverted to Animo 1.8 (on the NeXT unix platform) for all vector animation - it used pins and bones in much the same way as Moho. It had a very good layering system too and its matting was superb: Cambridge Animation then messed it up by going to Animo 3 on Windows and the vector animation was effectively dropped.
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slowtiger
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Post by slowtiger »

Uhm, I beg to differ: Animo didn't drop the vector animation, but after, I believe, some marketing decisions this ability was moved into the special effects module. So it is still there (completely with output to .swf), but you have to buy the complete package to take advantage of it. I'd like to work with Animo again (started in 1994 with it), but I can't affort the license.
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MarkBorok
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Post by MarkBorok »

Rhoel -

I think your problem was that your Movie Clip should have been set to Graphic Symbol insead of Movie Clip.

I just made an animation of a Graphic symbol moving across the screen, said graphic symbol consisting of two frames of a red circle and a green square. I chose "export as PNG sequence" and then re-imported the PNG sequence into a new Flash document. It worked fine. Every frame within the original animation exported precisely. I'm not sure why you needed to use Debabilizer to combine the PNG's into an avi sequence, unless the Windows version of Flash 4 does not allow export to avi format (I'm on a Mac).

Currently there are several TV shows being made with Flash, but Macromedia's clever business strategy has been to ignore this user base completely. Which is why I'm switching to ToonBoom eventually and staying with that and Moho.
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