Is There a Styles Feature in Clip Studio Similar to Moho's

A place to discuss non-Moho software for use in animation. Video editors, audio editors, 3D modelers, etc.

Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger

Post Reply
User avatar
drumlug13
Posts: 537
Joined: Sun May 22, 2011 9:16 pm
Location: Beautiful St. Louis, MO

Is There a Styles Feature in Clip Studio Similar to Moho's

Post by drumlug13 »

Are there any Clip Studio Paint users here?

Specifically regarding the line-work. Is there a feature in CSP that allows us to draw with an assigned style? I would like to draw some old school, sketchy lines & watercolor backgrounds in CSP and then import them into Moho. But too many times the line weights are just too different if you zoom in. So I would like to go back to CSP, adjust lines, and bring it back into Moho. Is it possible?

If that's not possible in CSP, do you know of another drawing program that can draw with an assigned and changeable style? Hopefully open source programs like Krita or Inkcape?
Adam
User avatar
Greenlaw
Posts: 9191
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: Is There a Styles Feature in Clip Studio Similar to Moho

Post by Greenlaw »

So you want to be able to adjust the line weights to artwork that is already drawn?

If you painted the artwork in CSP using bitmap brushes, you can't...you'll need to redraw your art with thicker or thinner lines. But if you used CSP's vector brushes, the lines have many properties you can change much like how Styles works in Moho.

Just be aware that you can't export vector art from CSP, and that the export is going to be a bitmap image, so any changes will have to be made in CSP and exported again. TBH, it's been a while since I last used CSP (all my comics are drawn in CSP but it's been a while since I last drew a comic,) and there have been a few updates since then but I don't think the program has changed that much.

If it's critical to have scalable/animateable strokes in Moho, I recommend creating the art in Moho using Styles and Custom Styles. You'll actually gain a lot more animation choices and flexibility using Moho's vectors. If the concern is that the art won't look like 'painted' art, the Cartoon Saloon's Puffin Rock and Pete The Cat TV shows are great examples of using Moho's vectors tools to simulate painted looks. Some of the stuff I've worked on, like certain 2D segments from All Hail King Julien, Puss In Boots and The Croods TV shows use vectors with textured strokes and fills applied. One of my earliest Moho projects, the Hearts Like Fists title sequence is entirely vectors with textured strokes and fills. By using vectors in Moho, you can make adjustments to properties like Stroke Size any time. If you use Custom Styles, it's possible to make global changes to the character when you need to (i.e., use the same Style for just the Stroke size.)

Moho even has the option to make the line weights constant regardless of camera movement or layer scaling, but only if you use vectors.

Hope this helps.
User avatar
Greenlaw
Posts: 9191
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: Is There a Styles Feature in Clip Studio Similar to Moho

Post by Greenlaw »

drumlug13 wrote:If that's not possible in CSP, do you know of another drawing program that can draw with an assigned and changeable style? Hopefully open source programs like Krita or Inkcape?
I don't have a lot of experience with SVG but have seen some example of SVG exported from Illustrator to Moho, and it looked pretty good to me. I believe Krita can export SVG but I haven't tried that feature yet so I'm not sure how accurately it converts over.

One of the downsides I've observed with drawing vectors in an outside program is that the point placement won't necessarily be optimal for deforming in Moho. Point placement is often critical in the rigs I have to make, which is why I tend not to avoid using another program for creating vector art for Moho. But if the art is mostly 'non-deforming' in Moho, point placement really doesn't matter.
User avatar
drumlug13
Posts: 537
Joined: Sun May 22, 2011 9:16 pm
Location: Beautiful St. Louis, MO

Re: Is There a Styles Feature in Clip Studio Similar to Moho

Post by drumlug13 »

Greenlaw wrote:Hope this helps.
You are always helpful. Every single time :D

This is the first time I've thought about going outside of Moho for anything. There won't be anything animated in the background, I just get a better watercolor effect in CSP. It still blows me away seeing what guys like you and Chucky can do with the freehand and blob brush tools. My results are usually pretty disastrous.

The look I'm going for is the mid-70's Depatie Freleng stuff like Hoot Kloot & The Dogfather
Adam
User avatar
Greenlaw
Posts: 9191
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: Is There a Styles Feature in Clip Studio Similar to Moho

Post by Greenlaw »

Cool! I've always loved the DePatie-Freleng look.

Yeah, if I was trying to re-create it for Moho, I'd use textures painted in another program (like CSP,) but make the shapes in Moho. Then I would fill the shapes with the textures using Image Texture or masking. Either method works but there different advantages with each. I could go into more detail but will hold off until you're farther along. For backgrounds and props, I'd probably just paint them in the paint program and save them as PNG, unless they really have to be scaleable or deformable.

Tip: In the HLF stuff, one trick was to use a textured brush in Moho and fill the shape Strokes with the same texture map I used for the shape Fills. This helped sell a ragged 'crayon' look but since it was otherwise all vector, the artwork was fully deformable. With Image Texture, the stroke and fill textures share the same widget, so keeping the position and scale of the fills locked together isn't an issue.

BTW, this hybrid approach was also faster to animate and render too, which was important to me because I animated the project mostly on a low-powered laptop.
User avatar
Greenlaw
Posts: 9191
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: Is There a Styles Feature in Clip Studio Similar to Moho

Post by Greenlaw »

Some more tips: be aware that with the hybrid approach, point animation in a shape by itself doesn't deform textures. You'll need to use bones, mesh warping or layer transforms to make the textures deform. Also, if you're using Image Textures, you can animate the widget in an action. This can be useful for setting up turnarounds. Almost all of Puss' textures were set up this way.
User avatar
drumlug13
Posts: 537
Joined: Sun May 22, 2011 9:16 pm
Location: Beautiful St. Louis, MO

Re: Is There a Styles Feature in Clip Studio Similar to Moho

Post by drumlug13 »

Greenlaw wrote:Yeah, if I was trying to re-create it for Moho, I'd use textures painted in another program (like CSP,) but make the shapes in Moho.
Cool idea. I haven't used textures before because I couldn't ever find exactly what I was looking for. I never thought of making my own for some reason.

I was messing around with this workflow to mimic the DePatie Freleng look. I used the Sheriff's jail from Hoot Kloot as reference because I was being lazy and unoriginal yesterday.

-I drew the lines with the Freehand tool in Moho (using my favorite Chucky pencil as the Line Style). No filled shapes. Just lines.
-Rendered a 4K PNG.
-Imported that PNG into CSP and painted the background there.
-Rendered and exported a PNG of just those underlying layers painted in CSP.
-Imported that PNG back into Moho.
-Then I imported this weird Ace Frehley looking thing because he's 100% Moho, and I used the same pencil/brush to draw him BUT the line weights between him and the background were drastically different. But now, since the lines are drawn in Moho I can tweak the line style of a watercolor & acrylic background.
-Then I just rendered a new 4K PNG of the background with the adjusted line weight and used that as the new background.

A couple of extra steps but I like the results so far. I tried using PNG backgrounds before but by the time I would import foreground characters and shrink or enlarge objects or zoom the camera, the differences in line width were obnoxiously clashing. I did a quick zoom test and I think it turned out pretty good.

Adam
User avatar
Greenlaw
Posts: 9191
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: Is There a Styles Feature in Clip Studio Similar to Moho

Post by Greenlaw »

Looks good! I don't see any difference in line quality. :)
Post Reply