Keyframe and Channel Issues

[Matoran]

Hi! I just recently got back in animating with Moho with the new Moho Pro 14 (I was using Anime Studio Debut 8 before this, some years ago), and so far I'm really liking it. There are just a couple of things that are bugging me.

First, it's this issue I'm having with imported PNG. images, whose keyframes will not appear in the timeline. I was fine up until this afternoon, when using "Transform Layer" stopped creating keyframes.

And the other thing is the lack of channels in the timeline. As far as I remember, the old software used to show every single channel that was being used in the animation, with every keyframe showing up. But it seems that now I have to go back and forth between the bones and things every time I need to animate something. Am I missing something?

Any help with these issues would be greatly appreciated!

[Panha]

Hi! I just recently got back in animating with Moho with the new Moho Pro 14 (I was using Anime Studio Debut 8 before this, some years ago), and so far I'm really liking it. There are just a couple of things that are bugging me.

First, it's this issue I'm having with imported PNG. images, whose keyframes will not appear in the timeline. I was fine up until this afternoon, when using "Transform Layer" stopped creating keyframes.

And the other thing is the lack of channels in the timeline. As far as I remember, the old software used to show every single channel that was being used in the animation, with every keyframe showing up. But it seems that now I have to go back and forth between the bones and things every time I need to animate something. Am I missing something?

Any help with these issues would be greatly appreciated!

Not sure about your first issue. If you import your PNG at frame Zero, there will be no keyframe of cause. If you import at the other frame, not at frame zero, There won't be any keyframes created too. In Moho 14, you can import your image at any frames without the application created the keyframe until you move or make adjustment such as transformation to the image. This make it easy to import our image even while we are in the middle of the animation.

In Moho 14, you have the options to show keyframes of layers you want to show or by default, it only show keyframes of the selected layer and the keyframe of the camera. In preference, you can go to timeline, in "Max selected layers", you can set how many layers you want to show keyframes on the timelines when you select those layer.

Check the consolidate layer channel is selected (it locates on the top of timeline, next to hide camera button). if it is selected or turned on, you only see one keyframe for all channels on the timeline.
Also go to View > Timeline channels, and turn on the channel that you want to show keyframes on the timeline.

[Matoran]

Hi! I just recently got back in animating with Moho with the new Moho Pro 14 (I was using Anime Studio Debut 8 before this, some years ago), and so far I'm really liking it. There are just a couple of things that are bugging me.

First, it's this issue I'm having with imported PNG. images, whose keyframes will not appear in the timeline. I was fine up until this afternoon, when using "Transform Layer" stopped creating keyframes.

And the other thing is the lack of channels in the timeline. As far as I remember, the old software used to show every single channel that was being used in the animation, with every keyframe showing up. But it seems that now I have to go back and forth between the bones and things every time I need to animate something. Am I missing something?

Any help with these issues would be greatly appreciated!

Not sure about your first issue. If you import your PNG at frame Zero, there will be no keyframe of cause. If you import at the other frame, not at frame zero, There won't be any keyframes created too. In Moho 14, you can import your image at any frames without the application created the keyframe until you move or make adjustment such as transformation to the image. This make it easy to import our image even while we are in the middle of the animation.

In Moho 14, you have the options to show keyframes of layers you want to show or by default, it only show keyframes of the selected layer and the keyframe of the camera. In preference, you can go to timeline, in "Max selected layers", you can set how many layers you want to show keyframes on the timelines when you select those layer.

Check the consolidate layer channel is selected (it locates on the top of timeline, next to hide camera button). if it is selected or turned on, you only see one keyframe for all channels on the timeline.
Also go to View > Timeline channels, and turn on the channel that you want to show keyframes on the timeline.

Thank you for the reply.

Sorry, I should have been clearer with the first question. Keyframes don't show up whenever I move a layer during the animating process (not frame 0). Bones are fine, and layers were fine up until recently, but now layers and their keyframes don't show up on the timeline when animating them.

I don't recall trying "max selected layers", so I'll definitely do that when I get home, and provide an update. Thanks!

[Greenlaw]

Hi Matoran,

First, it's this issue I'm having with imported PNG. images, whose keyframes will not appear in the timeline. I was fine up until this afternoon, when using "Transform Layer" stopped creating keyframes.

Hmm...I've never seen that one. Have you saved and restarted Moho? I've had to do this occasionally when Moho 14.1 misbehaves, and that usually fixes it. Fortunately, that's been rare for me. Being an early release, I'm guessing there may still be memory management issues causing random odd behavior, so save incremental versions often. (I do that all the time even with stable releases of any software.)

And the other thing is the lack of channels in the timeline. As far as I remember, the old software used to show every single channel that was being used in the animation, with every keyframe showing up. But it seems that now I have to go back and forth between the bones and things every time I need to animate something. Am I missing something?

I don't think Moho has ever done this by default because you normally don't want to clutter the timeline with excessive data. As a matter of fact, most of the time, I only animate in the Bones layer and will click on a Switch or Vector layer only when I need to edit it. I also prefer to hide all the color bone channels because that information is redundant and unnecessary to animate with. (I describe this in my Better Defaults for Moho video.)

Of course, there are times when I need to see channels of multiple layers simultaneously. To view the channels of multiple layers simultaneously, simply select those layers. If there are keyframes in them, the channels will appear. To keep the layers active persistently (i.e., stay visible even when the layers are not selected), enable Timeline Visibility for those channels. Here's an example showing the character's transform layer and bones layer at the same time...



To enable Timeline Visibllity for a layer, check the box under the 'stopwatch' column for that layer. The layer will appear in the Timeline even when it's not selected. To select the layer from within the Timeline, you can click on the layer's name (in this example, the name of the active layer is highlighted in aqua.)

If there are combinations of layers you use often with Timeline Visibility, you can create a layer comp preset for this. (Hmm...well, I think you can...I should check that.)

I hope this helps.

(Hmm...I just noticed I misspelled 'Scale' in the project. Better fix that.)

[Matoran]

Hi! I just recently got back in animating with Moho with the new Moho Pro 14 (I was using Anime Studio Debut 8 before this, some years ago), and so far I'm really liking it. There are just a couple of things that are bugging me.

First, it's this issue I'm having with imported PNG. images, whose keyframes will not appear in the timeline. I was fine up until this afternoon, when using "Transform Layer" stopped creating keyframes.

And the other thing is the lack of channels in the timeline. As far as I remember, the old software used to show every single channel that was being used in the animation, with every keyframe showing up. But it seems that now I have to go back and forth between the bones and things every time I need to animate something. Am I missing something?

Any help with these issues would be greatly appreciated!

Not sure about your first issue. If you import your PNG at frame Zero, there will be no keyframe of cause. If you import at the other frame, not at frame zero, There won't be any keyframes created too. In Moho 14, you can import your image at any frames without the application created the keyframe until you move or make adjustment such as transformation to the image. This make it easy to import our image even while we are in the middle of the animation.

In Moho 14, you have the options to show keyframes of layers you want to show or by default, it only show keyframes of the selected layer and the keyframe of the camera. In preference, you can go to timeline, in "Max selected layers", you can set how many layers you want to show keyframes on the timelines when you select those layer.

Check the consolidate layer channel is selected (it locates on the top of timeline, next to hide camera button). if it is selected or turned on, you only see one keyframe for all channels on the timeline.
Also go to View > Timeline channels, and turn on the channel that you want to show keyframes on the timeline.

Thank you for the reply.

Sorry, I should have been clearer with the first question. Keyframes don't show up whenever I move a layer during the animating process (not frame 0). Bones are fine, and layers were fine up until recently, but now layers and their keyframes don't show up on the timeline when animating them.

I don't recall trying "max selected layers", so I'll definitely do that when I get home, and provide an update. Thanks!

Alright, I just tried it out, and it worked! Turns out, my "max selected layers" was too low to show the most recent animated layers. Now that I've upped it, I can see them.

Thank you for the help!

[Matoran]

Hi Matoran,

First, it's this issue I'm having with imported PNG. images, whose keyframes will not appear in the timeline. I was fine up until this afternoon, when using "Transform Layer" stopped creating keyframes.

Hmm...I've never seen that one. Have you saved and restarted Moho? I've had to do this occasionally when Moho 14.1 misbehaves, and that usually fixes it. Fortunately, that's been rare for me. Being an early release, I'm guessing there may still be memory management issues causing random odd behavior, so save incremental versions often. (I do that all the time even with stable releases of any software.)

And the other thing is the lack of channels in the timeline. As far as I remember, the old software used to show every single channel that was being used in the animation, with every keyframe showing up. But it seems that now I have to go back and forth between the bones and things every time I need to animate something. Am I missing something?

I don't think Moho has ever done this by default because you normally don't want to clutter the timeline with excessive data. As a matter of fact, most of the time, I only animate in the Bones layer and will click on a Switch or Vector layer only when I need to edit it. I also prefer to hide all the color bone channels because that information is redundant and unnecessary to animate with. (I describe this in my Better Defaults for Moho video.)

Of course, there are times when I need to see channels of multiple layers simultaneously. To view the channels of multiple layers simultaneously, simply select those layers. If there are keyframes in them, the channels will appear. To keep the layers active persistently (i.e., stay visible even when the layers are not selected), enable Timeline Visibility for those channels. Here's an example showing the character's transform layer and bones layer at the same time...

To enable Timeline Visibllity for a layer, check the box under the 'stopwatch' column for that layer. The layer will appear in the Timeline even when it's not selected. To select the layer from within the Timeline, you can click on the layer's name (in this example, the name of the active layer is highlighted in aqua.)

If there are combinations of layers you use often with Timeline Visibility, you can create a layer comp preset for this. (Hmm...well, I think you can...I should check that.)

I hope this helps.

Thank you for reaching out.

The first issue has been solved, thanks to Panha. The "max selected layers" was too low, and increasing it in Preferences made my invisible layers visible!

As for the second issue, I had already checked off all the "Timeline Visibility" boxes. It does help in showing the keyframes of layers themselves, but not in showing me keyframes for bones. It's still just two channels in the timeline: "Bone Angle" and "Selected Bone Angle". I wish I could have multiple rows in the timeline, each one focusing on a different bone. That would help me keep track of every keyframe at once. I could have sworn the old software had this feature...

(Hmm...I just noticed I misspelled 'Scale' in the project. Better fix that.)

Lol

[mmmaarten]

It's still just two channels in the timeline: "Bone Angle" and "Selected Bone Angle". I wish I could have multiple rows in the timeline, each one focusing on a different bone. That would help me keep track of every keyframe at once. I could have sworn the old software had this feature...

You can show bones by their bone color:
Use the select bone tool to select a bone --> switch to a different color in the dropdown on top. All bones with the same color should show up in a new colored line in the timeline.

However, I have to say that when I first started using Moho I thought that I would like to see each and every bone as a seperate entity in the timeline too. And I'm still using it in the project I'm working on as a test. But I have to say that I'm already quite used to using the red lines (meaning the currently selected bones) in the timeline way better. It takes a little to get used to, but when using them more often they're actually quite handy. You need to make sure the right bones are selected though (or points when animating points), but that's a matter of dicipline and practise and getting used to. Also there's a limit in the amount of bone colors, so when having more bones than colors you still cannot see them all. Which to me was another reason to get used to the 'default behaviour' of the red timelines (= selected bones). Which keeps the timeline quite clean when not using bone colors there.

[Panha]

Thank you for reaching out.

The first issue has been solved, thanks to Panha. The "max selected layers" was too low, and increasing it in Preferences made my invisible layers visible!

As for the second issue, I had already checked off all the "Timeline Visibility" boxes. It does help in showing the keyframes of layers themselves, but not in showing me keyframes for bones. It's still just two channels in the timeline: "Bone Angle" and "Selected Bone Angle". I wish I could have multiple rows in the timeline, each one focusing on a different bone. That would help me keep track of every keyframe at once. I could have sworn the old software had this feature...

Moho Timeline only show keyframes that you have or added by yourselves, and that is good that it does so. It would help makes the performance of the software smooth since we don't have to add unwanted keyframes. However, while animating, we have ability to freeze all the keyframes, freeze visible keyframes, or freeze selected keyframes. While animating with bones, only channels of the added keyframes are shown. If you only rotate your bone, without transform or moving the bone, there will be two channel added to the timeline. The white channel of "Bone Angle" represents all the rotation keyframes of the bone group you are selected. The red channel of of "Bone Angle" represents only the rotation keyframes of your selected bone(s) only. It is great that Moho works this way. It is organized and very stand out from other softwares. It is very friendly interface. To see the bone keyframes, you first must add the keyframes you want show. You can add them manually, which I don't normally do, or you can add them by freeze them using of the freezing methods. Going to menu > Bone > then select one of the methods.
1- Freese Pose: This will add all keyframes of the bone group (layers) you are selected, even if you don't selected the bone. Note this will freeze even the bones that are invisible.
2- Freeze Selected Bones: This will only put keyframes of the bones that you are selected (by default, the color of the selected bones are red). The others that are not selected or visible will not be freezed.
3- Freeze Visible Bones: This will freeze only bones that are shown in your viewport (canvas) regardless of the selecting the bones or not.
Once you have your bones freezed, the timeline will show the channel accordingly.

[Matoran]

It's still just two channels in the timeline: "Bone Angle" and "Selected Bone Angle". I wish I could have multiple rows in the timeline, each one focusing on a different bone. That would help me keep track of every keyframe at once. I could have sworn the old software had this feature...

You can show bones by their bone color:
Use the select bone tool to select a bone --> switch to a different color in the dropdown on top. All bones with the same color should show up in a new colored line in the timeline.

However, I have to say that when I first started using Moho I thought that I would like to see each and every bone as a seperate entity in the timeline too. And I'm still using it in the project I'm working on as a test. But I have to say that I'm already quite used to using the red lines (meaning the currently selected bones) in the timeline way better. It takes a little to get used to, but when using them more often they're actually quite handy. You need to make sure the right bones are selected though (or points when animating points), but that's a matter of dicipline and practise and getting used to. Also there's a limit in the amount of bone colors, so when having more bones than colors you still cannot see them all. Which to me was another reason to get used to the 'default behaviour' of the red timelines (= selected bones). Which keeps the timeline quite clean when not using bone colors there.

That actually helps quite a bit. It's about 8 or so colours, so that allows me to work with 8 or so bones at a time (though I'll try to organize myself without needing to do this, like you mentioned). Thanks for the help!

[Matoran]

Thank you for reaching out.

The first issue has been solved, thanks to Panha. The "max selected layers" was too low, and increasing it in Preferences made my invisible layers visible!

As for the second issue, I had already checked off all the "Timeline Visibility" boxes. It does help in showing the keyframes of layers themselves, but not in showing me keyframes for bones. It's still just two channels in the timeline: "Bone Angle" and "Selected Bone Angle". I wish I could have multiple rows in the timeline, each one focusing on a different bone. That would help me keep track of every keyframe at once. I could have sworn the old software had this feature...

Moho Timeline only show keyframes that you have or added by yourselves, and that is good that it does so. It would help makes the performance of the software smooth since we don't have to add unwanted keyframes. However, while animating, we have ability to freeze all the keyframes, freeze visible keyframes, or freeze selected keyframes. While animating with bones, only channels of the added keyframes are shown. If you only rotate your bone, without transform or moving the bone, there will be two channel added to the timeline. The white channel of "Bone Angle" represents all the rotation keyframes of the bone group you are selected. The red channel of of "Bone Angle" represents only the rotation keyframes of your selected bone(s) only. It is great that Moho works this way. It is organized and very stand out from other softwares. It is very friendly interface. To see the bone keyframes, you first must add the keyframes you want show. You can add them manually, which I don't normally do, or you can add them by freeze them using of the freezing methods. Going to menu > Bone > then select one of the methods.
1- Freese Pose: This will add all keyframes of the bone group (layers) you are selected, even if you don't selected the bone. Note this will freeze even the bones that are invisible.
2- Freeze Selected Bones: This will only put keyframes of the bones that you are selected (by default, the color of the selected bones are red). The others that are not selected or visible will not be freezed.
3- Freeze Visible Bones: This will freeze only bones that are shown in your viewport (canvas) regardless of the selecting the bones or not.
Once you have your bones freezed, the timeline will show the channel accordingly.

That's very interesting! I don't find it pertains much to what I was dealing with (as I was just needing all keyframed layers visible in the timeline), but it's still something I'll likely need to use in the future, so thank you for that! Mmmaarten suggested using coloured bones, which so far is the closest thing I can get to viewing all active bones.

Anyway, thanks again!