I've already described this on https://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36226, but this one in the feature request part; It would be a lot easier to google and search stuff on the forum and to talk with one another about something if techniques are having consistant names everywhere. It would by nice if Moho could streamline things like this on the next version to keep things simple:
MESH WARPING
There's a lot of old, deprecated info around making it difficult to even know what methods are around in 13.5.5 for mesh warping, making it way more complicated than it actually is. In the end there seem to be only two methods to warp with meshes; manual and smart. But one time it's called warp, the other time mesh. Than one time it's called 'Smart Warp' and another time the same thing is called 'Live Mesh'. This is all confusing while I think it shouldn't be. Let alone to know if you need to run a script after drawing a mesh or not. That's not clear by the UI and even confusing.
I would suggest to call these two workflows with their respective naming and have different layer types for the manual and smart workflows:
1) Smart Warp Mesh workflow.
You use a Smart Warp Mesh on a Smart Warp Layer. And the 'Triangulate Manual Warp Mesh' menuitem is disabled when on a Smart Warp Layer, because in this mode it's not needed and would even destroy the mesh. It's confusing for the user to have this enabled, as it's confusing and makes a new user wonder if this method should be used (like I did, by watching older tutorials).
To create a Smart Warp Layer you just hit Create Smart Warp Layer from the Draw menu which is only enabled when on an image or vector layer, like it is now.
2) Manual Warp Mesh workflow.
You use a Manual Warp Mesh on a Manual Warp Layer.
To create a Manual Warp Layer and generate a Manual Warp Mesh you add a Vector layer like you do now, draw the mesh curves for the mesh as a blue print (still a vector layer) and than use the new 'Create Manual Warp Layer from Vector Layer as blue print' menuitem in the Draw menu which is only enabled when on a Vector layer. This runs the current 'Fill Quad Mesh' script under water (removed from the scripts menu because not needed there anymore) to create a NEW Manual Warp Layer with a generated Manual Warp Mesh. The original Vector layer used to create this is made invisible by the script, but remains in the list for the user to make changes later in case needed. On the same Vector layer, with the same tools as usual. And run the same create menuitem when needing an update from the blue print vector layer.
When on the generated Manual Warp Mesh layer the 'Triangulate Manual Warp Mesh' function (new name) gets enabled in the menu. This menu item is only enabled when a Manual Mesh Warp layer is selected to prevent issues and confusion.
To change the Manual Warp Mesh in the Manual Warp Layer later you could just select the original vector layer with the blueprint for the manual warp mesh, make changes there on the curves and re-run the Create Manual Warp Layer from Vector Layer function. If this function was run before Moho is clever enought to ask the user to either update the already generated Manual Warp Layer or create a new Manual Warp Layer and let the user decide what he wants.
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CURVES AND SHAPES
Now there are a DRAW and FILL sections in the tools panel. But this is confusing to me and doesn't cover the tools inside of them. For one there's way more than fill tools inside the FILL section. I would opt in to rename these to:
o CURVES Section --> Only tools for creating points and curves (with edges), which seem to be 'only' the building blocks for creating shapes and meshes and can be used as a definition for follow path animations.
o SHAPES Section --> Only tools for selecting and creating shapes and the styles they get
Because that makes way more sense to get a grasp of the inner workings of how Moho works IMO and I think makes it easier to have documentation with consistant terms used everywhere and to really get to learn how Moho functions and why. Than there's a clear distinction between Curves and Shapes.
I would rename 'Draw Shape' into 'Draw Primitive', because this tool isn't creating shapes, it's creating curves. It COULD automatically create a shape from them as a service, but it doesn't have to do that. By leaving the 'shape' out of the name I think we remove the unnecesary confusion and make new users understand way quicker that there's a clear distinction between 'curves' and 'shapes'. Especially when that's also consistantly named that way everywhere in the manual, on forum, discord, google, youtube etc. And if there is just a small chapter in the Moho documentation explaining the building blocks of Moho, including curves and shapes and how they relate (like some bullet points and a visual schema with relations), in the beginning of the manual somewhere, that, I think, would really make things way easier to learn for new users and cause less confusion.
I think these changes are not the hardest to implement in a new version, wouldn't disrupt the workflow too much for people already used to the current way of doing things but would help new users to get to understand Moho much quicker and get to focus on the animation sooner. Causing less questions on the forum (and are easier to answer because we're using the same terms) and prevent confusion and issues by older documentation around if used consistantly in documentation and tutorials from now on.
Hope this makes sense!
There's probably more, but I think these are the most important ones, so I'll leave it here for now.
Thanks for considering!
