Moho slows down too much

[LeviEnton]

Hi there,
i have been using Anime Studio Pro 11.2 for some years now, usually on low end laptops. Now I am using it at a much better PC and the program is struggling at tasks where it really shouldn't. I have checked the Task Manager and the total CPU being used by Anime Studio is 30% and the computer still has 50% to work with. It doesn't use much RAM either. And now the weird thing: The GPU is at 0 - 7% and Anime Studio is not using much of it at all and likes to get overwhelmed at simple tasks. I am not sure why this is happening, i hope someone with a technical knowledge can help me with this. I am using Windows and a Nvidia Gforce GTX 750.

[Greenlaw]

Anime Studio 11 (or even the current Moho) doesn't take great advantage of the GPU except in a few specific situations. FWIW, I almost always leave GPU Acceleration disabled because masking usually looked better with it disabled, and I only enable it for those situations where I know it can improve my preview and/or speed up performance. The easiest way to see is to work with it disabled and enabled and see which one works better for your current project.

Also, Anime Studio/Moho doesn't use the GPU at all for final rendering.

However, as far as general performance goes, Anime Studio/Moho has been very responsive for me most of the time, and I've used it with some very 'low-powered' computers in the past. If you're seeing poor performance on a speedy machine, the problem might lie in a possible keyframing bug, or inefficient setups and/or assets. When I do run into performance issues with the program, these are the things I check...

1. Check for unintended negative keyframes. This random problem is thankfully rare but when it does happen, it can create a serious drag on interaction and animation. Use Synthsin75's Delete Negative Keyframes script to find them and delete them. Once deleted, the project should speed up significantly.

2. Make sure you're not using too many excessively large bitmaps. Use suitably lower res or cropped copies of images wherever you can. This is a case where the GPU should speed things up but it still has its limits.

3. Live physics calculations can bog down a system, so disable physics after you're done with the calculations. Since the keys are baked, it may be unnecessary to keep re-calculating the animation. (You can re-enable Physics and re-bake the keys when you want to change the animation.)

There are many many other ways to optimize Moho's performance but these should get you started. Hope this helps.

[LeviEnton]

Thanks for your detailed advise! Iv'e never heard of negative keyframes before so i will look into that.
Maybe my copy of anime studio is sort of bugged, but i tried many versions in the 11 line and all of them work about the same. Mostly decent, but bad at certain tasks like drawing detailed characters... Its sad that moho apparently does not make use of the gpu's power that much.... Do you think that the newer version is more optimized?

[LeviEnton]

I've recorded how slow anime studio gets only after drawing one character: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fazr7D ... sp=sharing

The pen isn't responding or only after seconds, when i try to delete some vectors the program stopps responding and almost crashes. The program ran better on my old 2010 Macbook so i am not sure why my decent PC can't handle simple stuff like that... Is it some form of bug or error?

[heyvern]

Not sure if this is your issue or not just guessing.

There is one very very very important consideration. Just like any other vector based drawing tool the more points and shapes and layers the slower it will run. Moho is freaking AWESOME at creating animations and characters with minimal points needed. Due to the unique way the points slide around to animate you don't need a bazillion points.

If you are having huge slow downs with complex files it might be due to having many layers with lots and lots of points. I have experienced slow downs to the point of crashing specifically caused by massive point counts and too many layers. When I first started using Moho I came from Adobe Illustrator and Flash. I had to relearn everything including keeping point counts to a minimum.

p.s. HEAVENS TO BETSY! I just noticed my freaking forum join date! Good lord. Has it really been that long? Why aren't I more rich? Where are all the women?

[Daxel]

To the three Greenlaw's points I would add a fourth common cause: Broken reference layers. You can try deleting them and creating them again.

But this time I have the feeling that the problem is in the FreeHand tool. I was using it the other day and experienced the same you did. I thought that maybe the freehand tool was creating too many points, but they werent actually that many compared to other proyects where the drawing was done with the Add Points tool, so I suspect that the FreeHand tool may be responsible for the slowdown somehow. I will do some testing tomorrow.

[Greenlaw]

Here's the link to the thread with the Delete negating Keyframe script.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=32714

You should read the thread so you have an understanding of what this script fixes.

[Greenlaw]

Regarding the use of Freehand, yeah, that can quickly cause problems if you're drawing everything with it and you're not actively optimizing the drawings. Generally speaking, you don't need a lot of points to get good linework in Moho, so if you've been using Freehand, I'd try cleaning up the work using Simplify and other point cleaning/reducing methods.

TBH, I almost never use Freehand for character shapes that will be deformed with Bones. IMO, the way get the most efficient and cleanly animation shapes in Moho is to use Add Points, Transform Points, and Magnet. When I do use Freehand, it's mainly for short FBF sequences, and occasional screen markups.

If you really need the tiny detail or that certain 'organic' quality offered by using Freehand, one alternative technique is to convert the vector art into image layers using Hayasidist's Bake2PNG tool, and rigging those layers instead. You will lose the ability to animate the points, like inside a Smart Bone Action and such, but if you really have that many points in the layer, point animation isn't going to be very efficient anyway.

All these suggestions so far have be very general because we can only guess at what you're dealing with. If you can share some screen caps of what you're working one, we might be able to offer more specific advice.

Hope this helps.

[LeviEnton]

@heyvern @daxel @Greenlaw

Thanks for your advise! I will try bake2png, i did that before manually. But the problem is that i really like to give my animations a very hand drawn look and not that clean, digital look most people want to achieve... therfore I will always require lots of points.

Maybe it is a problem with having too many vectors, it would be great if someone would try out if drawing and deleting vectors is also lagging for them on my file:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G9dlAX ... sp=sharing

[Greenlaw]

Thanks for your advise! I will try bake2png, i did that before manually. But the problem is that i really like to give my animations a very hand drawn look and not that clean, digital look most people want to achieve... therfore I will always require lots of points.

When I need that hand drawn look in Moho, I prefer to work in a paint program like Procreate and/or Photoshop or Krita, and then export PNG layers to Moho. (In PS use the free Export Layers From Photoshop Fast plugin, and in Krita use Tools/Scripts/Export Layers.) This is how a lot of the early DWTV stuff I worked on like The Croods, King Julien, and Puss-in-Boots was done. (Later shows I've worked on like Boss Baby) are usually done with vectors drawn in Moho, but we still do a mixture of both--it all depends on the style we're going for in a given show.)

Bitmap images give me the most organic 'hand drawn' look possible in Moho. But when I go with bitmap images, that doesn't mean I need to give up on vectors; most of the 'bitmap' rigs I create in Moho are actually a hybrid blending of bitmap and vector techniques. If you look at the Puss rig I made a few years ago (using ASP 10 or 11,) most of that rig is very simple vector paths stroked with bitmap brushes and filled with bitmap textures. Also, now that we have Smart Warp, a lot of the 'morphing' techniques we do with vector layers and Smart Bones can now be applied to bitmap images.

So, there are a lot of ways to work with Moho for getting almost infinite looks and animation styles.

Regarding Bake2PNG, yeah, it's fantastic! Sometimes, a vector graphic I've created doesn't lend itself to being deformed by bones at all, but baking it into a PNG with this tool solves the problem with a click. If you look at Dark Swatter in my second DW reel, the fly swatter on the character's head is a great example. This headdress was very easily created using only simple 2-point lines with Moho, but it deformed horribly. But once converted to bit-map, it looked great and deformed very smoothly in four different directions, plus limited rotation! Note: the tool actually generates a 2X image and then non-destructively scales the image to the original size, which minimizes and tearing that might otherwise occur.)

Hope this info helps!

If I have time today, I'll take a look at your file.

[Greenlaw]

Well, it looks like I had time.

I looked at your file and, yeah, that's a crazy number of points if you're intention is to deform them using bones. I would definitely use Bake To PNG for this...if you're using bones and maybe even if you're not using bones; it depends on why you need all this point data.

About the only reason to have this much point data in the art is if you need to preserve resolution independence because of extreme scaling in a single continuous shot. Otherwise, using a bitmap at the appropriate size and resolution should work fine.

IMO, if this is the style you're going for, it might be more efficient to do the art in a paint program and import the layers to Moho for rigging and animations, as described above. Note that Moho Pro is capable of importing layered PSD files from Photoshop, Krita, CSP, Procreate and other paint programs. I usually prefer using PNG for various technical reasons, but either method helps make using third party paint programs with Moho very convenient. Hopefully, native bitmap painting for Moho will return in the future, but using separate program really isn't bad.

Oh, almost forgot, Moho has another option for importing Photoshop files: there's a Photoshop script in the Custom Contents folder under Extras called Export Layers To Moho.jsx . This is an older script but it could save out a Moho project file from Photoshop. I'm not sure it works for Moho 13.5.1 but from what I recall, it worked fine for ASP 11 and I think Moho 12.5.

Very cool drawing, by the way! Thanks for sharing it.

[heyvern]

If you are looking for a sketchy look you should check out the sketchy effects for vectors in the layer settings. Lots of options. I've used it many times

The text on this is just regular text in Moho with changes to the vector settings to create multiple strokes and movement without adding a bazillion points.



The fur on the dog is just a custom brush image I created. So no extra points required.

[Greenlaw]

Nice doggy animation!

[SuperSGL]

I also have a similar pc as you and every once in awhile The computer itself starts to respond very slowly. This might not be what's happening to you but windows is always updating and if you have it set to download in the background if it's a large update it will slow some things down considerably. You could check your windows update section. Although it usually affects online stuff, it can interrupt other programs. Also, I have Norton for anti virus and it will perform tasks (although in my case only when I'm idle) Don't know if this will help at all but worth a try. Good luck.

[Greenlaw]

Ugh...that happens sometimes to me too. And sometimes the Windows update doesn't even need to be doing anything, and it may still interrupt some programs from working properly until I reboot the computer.

What really slowed things down for me a couple of months ago, and often at the worst moments, was Adobe Cloud. By default, CC would start downloading updates in the background automatically and hog all my internet/network bandwidth, and Adobe seemed to send out a new beta for Ae almost every other day. After I disabled the automatic downloading, my remote working situation was greatly improved.