early user basic questions..

[DaleG]

Ok.. Ive read the tutorials and manual.. now I'm playing with the program and discovering how many things I dont know. Is this the best place to ask basic questions?

For example, I find that when I make drawing changes, the old things seem to still be there. I changed the fill color of the background and did gradient, looks right on screen, but when I render it .. the original blue color shows up. It seems everything I try to do brings up some basic question. Is there another manual to read? I dont want to flood the message board with beginner questions Ive taken screen shots of results of things Ive tried that didnt do what I was expecting, can I post those?

I'm sure the more I play with it, the more it will all make sense.. but I'm at the earliest phase of the learning curve!

Thanks

[Regul8R]

when you make changes to your objects, are you at Frame 0?
all permenant changes must be made at this frame otherwise its treated as an animated change eg at frame 25, you change the fill, this will not show until frame 25 of the animation.

im not to good at explaining stuff so i hope you can find something in there to help

jay b

[Rasheed]

@DaleG: I think the best way to learn Moho is to use it and if you get stuck on a particular item, ask for help. The tutorial and manual should be enough to give you some idea what's possible with Moho. And no, there isn't any other manual available (or a book), however, you might have a look at some of the links LM has placed on its website.

If you don't want to bother people with beginner's questions, you can always check with a forum search if your question has already been answered.

And please don't worry if you don't understand everything in Moho right away. The most important thing is to use it for character animation. And although I almost always forget to practice it myself:

KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid

Why try to complicate matters if it can be done by simple means? Start with simple stuff that's easy to do and if you're comfortable with that, try harder, more challenging stuff, maybe even an animated short.

I've posted some 20-30 frame animations when I started with Moho a few months ago. Got response and tips how to do things differently in Moho ("Think outside the box").

I hope this helps.

[nobudget]

I suggest you read the tutorials again. But do not just read them, perform the operations and understand WHY you should do it that way. Do not go to the next tutorial before you understand the reason for performing those steps and the order in which they are performed. It's natural to want to get started and create great animations but prepare to really absorb all the supplied information. Work with Moho every day for one hour, just one or two tutorials. The next day see if you can recreate the projects without looking at the tutorial. If you can proceed to the next tutorial, if not...read again and try again.

Moho has a very good tutorial based manual. This will give you the foundation of knowledge you can then work from. Don't just read them, understand them! If you get stuck don't be afraid to ask, but I agree asking every single step is not the way to go, not for you, and not for the forum.

Good luck,

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

[DaleG]

Thanks for the encouragement and advice.

Everyone has been very helpful. I know I'll be spending a lot of time learning to animate, and I feel confident that Moho software (and the Moho community online) is the right place to accomplish my goals.

[DaleG]

I really am starting to get the hang of some things... but I've made what I'm sure is a classic beginner mistake. I'm working on a 3-d cube and I have even figured out how to make one side of the cube contain a photo, another side contain a skeleton.. etc.. I havent gotten to animating it yet, but I made the mistake of drawing a couple of the elements in the wrong frame (not frame 0). What is the best way to correct this? If I havent done any animating yet, can I just delete all keyframes from all layers? Any advice?
thanks!

[Rai López]

Try to go to the frame were you have make all the work (if you have several you can do it, but the thing is a little more complicated) and go to the Copy Current Frame comand in Animation menu, then you can check the channels that you want to copy or check the box Copy Entire Document to copy all the current keyframes of the entire document (...), althougt in some cases you can do this too manually, selecting only the keyframes that you want and going to frame 0 to paste it... Well, I hope that I have known how to explain me... BYE!

[myles]

Hello Dale,

Deleting all animation (keyframes) may make your elements invisible all through the animation.

Either:

Ramón's solution:
Using the timeline, copy the fill and outline keyframes for your rogue elements from the frame they were created to frame 0.

or, a little more work , but this second option will still work after you have deleted all animation, if you have already done so:

Go to frame 0, use the Select Shape tool (not the normal selection tool) to select each of your rogue elements, and change the alpha value of the fill and outline colours from 0 to 255.

Regards, Myles.

[WillBellJr]

Make sure you turn on the setting "Highlight frame 0" - this will put a red border around the window when you're on frame 0.

This will be a simple reminder if you start to make a change, you'll immediately know if you're not on frame 0!

-Will