Brushes in Moho - Will we be able to create vector brushes?

[lucasfranca]

Hello everybody! Today I was looking at my Moho content folder and I came across the following folders that generated a doubt:



What does Vector brushes mean? I looked in the Moho root folder and didn't find anything (because normally these folders are mirrors of the root). Is it something that is obsolete, that comes from old versions?

It would be really nice if we could add contour gaps, flicker and other attributes in a vector brush.

Does anyone know anything about this?

[hayasidist]

What does Vector brushes mean? ... Is it something that is obsolete, that comes from old versions?

yep - obsolete -- it's a 13.0 folder -- and we all know what happened to 13.0 ..............

[Greenlaw]

This is my Custom Content folder...



As you can see, I don't have these folders (Bitmap Brushes, Vector Brushes,) in my directory. I think you might have some leftover folders from Moho 13.0.

In 13.5.5's default Custom Content folder, Brushes would hold any bitmap images you created for texturing vector strokes, and Scatter Brush would contain any Moho vector art used by the Scatter Brush tool. To see formatting examples for each, look at the files located here...

C:\Program Files\Moho\Moho 13.5.5\Resources\Support\Common\Brushes and \Scatter Brushes

(Note #1: Your path may be slightly different from mine because I like to install each release of Moho in version specific folders. This allows me to run different versions of Moho on the same computer. If you don't do this, just drop '\Moho 13.5.5' from the pathname.)

(Note #2: DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING IN THIS FOLDER. Changing files in the program's Resources folder is not recommended because it can potentially cause Moho to malfunction. Any file changes you wish to make to Moho should always be done in the Custom Content Folder.)

IMO, you should create a clean Custom Content folder for 13.5.x and build it up from there. To create a clean Custom Content folder, first quit Moho and rename your current Custom Content folder. When you relaunch Moho, it will ask you to select or create a new folder. Select the location where the 'old' folder was and Moho create a new folder there. Now you can update it by copying over any custom scripts or tools you may have added to the old folder.

Tip: Before you do that, make a duplicate of the default Custom Content folder and add '_BU' or '_default' at the end of its name. This will serve as a backup in case you mess up the folder your editing.

Hope this helps.

[Greenlaw]

One more note: In the Custom Content folder, some folders are created by Moho when you activate a feature for the first time. For example, the Keyboard Shortcuts folder does not exist until you create a custom keyboard shortcut.

[lucasfranca]

Thanks for all this information. In short then, vector brush is our current brush, right? Needed to differentiate from paint brush, apparently.

OK then! I was hoping to see gaps, automatic narrowing and flickering in the brush, as we see in animate or the recent Adobe Fresco.

Thank you anyway!

[Greenlaw]

...In short then, vector brush is our current brush, right? Needed to differentiate from paint brush, apparently.

OK then! I was hoping to see gaps, automatic narrowing and flickering in the brush, as we see in animate or the recent Adobe Fresco.

Brushes is where you can store images used for Vector Brushes. These are in addition to the stock brushes you see in the Styles window when you click the Brush Settings button.

(The stock brushes are the ones found in the Resources > Support > Pro folder > Brushes; you don't want to mess with these. Your custom brushes are the ones you put in the Brushes folder your chosen Custom Content Folder's Brushes folder.)

We don't have paint brushes in Moho 13.5.5; these existed only for Moho 13.0.x and they don't exist for Moho 13.5.x since this feature was deprecated.

Moho has some options for adjusting Brush presets. For example...



The first column's options do what you might expect from brush settings. The most important one for me is Minimize Frame To Frame Randomness. If this isn't enabled, the brush will chatter on every frame, which is displeasing to look at.

If you need to control the rate of the flickering, you may consider animating on frame intervals of 2 or higher. BTW, the new Timeline option for adjusting the markers works well for this when you set it to Start On Frame 1.

I'm not sure what Automatic Narrowing is. Is this like Scale Compensation?

[Greenlaw]

Side note: One problem I ran into with Moho's brushes was that some presets appeared to render with no anti-aliasing. In actuality, I think AA was being applied but the brush's alpha was apparently not being applied correctly. This was a long time ago (back when I was working on The Adventures Of Puss In Boots so 2015-2016) and I think it was addressed by adding the Merge Alpha option. But, TBH, I can't remember if that fixed it. I guess it's been that long since I used a brush texture.*

Ok, now I want to make a quick project just so I can test this.

*The way I solved this back then was to render the project double-size and then scaled it down in After Effects. In effect this applied more anti-aliasing to the brush strokes and smoothed out the hard edges. Hopefully, that's not necessary nowadays. Will post here again when I know for sure.

[hayasidist]

... vector brush is our current brush ...

Just to be clear: the Brushes in Moho (all versions except 13.0) are bitmap not vector based. Typically .png with a 1:1 aspect ratio, 128, 256 or 512 px square - although other dimensions are not precluded. The bitmap image is propagated along a segment of a curve; the number of images will change if the segment length changes (because the points are animated).

[Greenlaw]

Scatter Brushes is the other brush folder relevant to Moho 13.5.5. The files you place here are Moho vector art and used only by the Scatter Brush tool. The Scatter Brush is essentially a freehand particle brush that sprays vector art. You can sort of apply this as a stroke 'texture' by using the Follow Path tool in deformation mode. You can see an example of this in that Nachos example I made a few months ago here...

https://lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 60#p202960

The crumbs shooting of from Skelly's rib cage are painted with Scatter Brush and applied to paths using Follow Path. In this case, however, the custom brush was created and applied directly inside Moho using the Use Clipboard option, so the Scatter Brushes folder wasn't used.

Two notable difference between this and using a Brush Stroke...

1. The crumbs are more easily animatable using this method.
2. The crumbs are vector based so completely scalable. (Not really relevant here but worth mentioning.)

[chucky]

I have opinions about this, they can wait though

[ggoblin]

I have not yet used brushes in Moho, so this is a very useful tutorial/discussion for me. Thank you.

[Greenlaw]

I have opinions about this, they can wait though

Ha ha! I wondered when we'd hear from you Chucky!

I'm still hopeful that we'll get bitmap painting (and its folder) back before too long.

Even though I personally rather see improvements made to the freehand vector tools first, Moho really needs bitmap painting tools too.

[hayasidist]

I have opinions about this, they can wait though

yeah --- the bitmap brush management / controls that were in 13.0 were amazing - a real shame they couldn't get carried over in some form.

[chucky]

I have opinions about this, they can wait though

yeah --- the bitmap brush management / controls that were in 13.0 were amazing - a real shame they couldn't get carried over in some form.

It had potential but most certainly lacked a couple of crucial features that (besides the aliasing and speed issues) crippled the tools.