Multiple Moho Openings

[Toontoonz]

This may be documented in the manual somewhere and I missed it.
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I don´t know what it is good for, but I noticed by mistake that one can open up multiple copies of Moho at one time.

When Moho is open one can have only file open at a time. But, with my Windows computer anyway, I can open up multiple versions of Moho at once - switching quickly between different animatons.

I can´t do that with Photoshop or Illustrator or any other program. (If that particular program is already open and I try to start it again it just goes to the open version. But then they can open up different files at one time, which Moho can´t.)

Like I said, I don´t know what good it is to be able to open up mulitple copies of Moho at one time - perhaps to view other parts of an animation one is working on as reference? But maybe somebody has some ideas.

[jorgy]

Like I said, I don´t know what good it is to be able to open up mulitple copies of Moho at one time - perhaps to view other parts of an animation one is working on as reference? But maybe somebody has some ideas.

I would be concerned about corrupting my moho file by doing this.

[Toontoonz]

How?

Then why does Moho allow this to happen?
I have not noticed any problems.

[7feet]

I use this all the time, especially if I'm tweaking things I'm going to be importing as Moho objects into another project anyway. Especially if the main project has gotten so big that the main window renders times are getting slow. Or if you are working on multiple scenes from one project and want to flip back and forth between them to see how thay are working together without rendering them out, or constantly closing and reopening files. Having multiple instances of the same file open at the same time does seem like a recipe for disaster, but otherwise I find it pretty handy.

--Brian

[jorgy]

How?

Then why does Moho allow this to happen?
I have not noticed any problems.

If you are editing two different moho files, then there shouldn't be a problem. But if the two different sessions are editing the same file, I expect there could be problems. I don't think that moho has any idea of opening a file read-only, so that whichever session saved the file last would overwrite any changes from the first session. This is a best case scenario, where possibly the file could be corrupted, or even made null.

I'm not sure moho allows this to happen because it Is A Good Thing, more probably because it never checks to see if a file is already open by another session (which can actually be very tricky to implement).

[Toontoonz]

Yes, I thought it would not be wise to have to multiple Mohos running with the same file open - it would confuse things a bit.

But having mulitple Mohos running with different files works for me. Great for comparing different scenes of an animation. Ecspecially since Moho can only use one sound file at a time.

[jorgy]

Yeah. Sorry, I wasn't clearer - my concern was only opening the same file.

[Lost Marble]

This is sort of a "behavior by default" kind of situation. On Windows and Linux, by default, more than one instance of a program can be run at a time. Programs that don't let you run them more than once (like Photoshop) do this with a conscious effort. Moho, on the other hand doesn't do anything to stop you.

There's nothing harmful about running more than one copy of Moho - just don't open the same file in multiple copies, because you might end up saving different versions of the file on top of itself. You'll end up confused about which version was actually saved.

On the Mac, by the way, only one copy of a program can be run by default, including Moho. You can actually run more than one copy of Moho, but not from the Finder - you have to do it from the command-line. To run Moho from the Mac command line, type "/Applications/Moho/Moho.app/Contents/MacOS/Moho" (without the quotes). You can type this in more than once to run multiple copies of Moho.

[JCook]

Actually on the Mac (OS 10.3. you don't need to use the commandline to run another copy of Moho. If you choose the Moho application in the Finder and then choose Duplicate from the File menu it will make a duplicate called Moho copy that you can open and run a different file in at the same time as the main application. I do this when I need to refer back and forth between the file I'm working on and a different file.

Jack

[mooncaine]

Trying that now with Anime Studio Pro to see if I can get a file re-rendered while the rest of the batch cooks along. That file rendered without audio, so I copied the ASP .app file, pasted it, started it, went to batch export, and started it going.

[jhbmw007]

Ya know what other windows program can do this? Calculator. And there's a calculator button on my keyboard. I can't tell you how many times I've ending up with like 10 open calculators in my taskbar.

[Mikdog]

I often have multiple Moho instances running at the same time. This is so I can see what elements to import into my other open fil, from another file.

So far it's been alright. Hasn't corrupted files.

[mooncaine]

Sounds like another good reason, Mik. I got that render done with no probs. I changed the copy's icon so I wouldn't get them mixed up.

[cribble]

DAWWWWNMMMM, i totally forgot about how useful this can be. Gonna have to start multiple openings again me thinks.

[Banterfield]

I've run multiple version of the batch render on my dual core desktop, under the assumption that it would run one instance of the program on one core, and one on the other... hopefully doubling the render speeds.