Transitioning from Cartoon Animator to Moho

[wsterdan]

Hi;

After decades of working in 3D doing stills and almost zero animation, now that I'm retired I'm *finally* starting to get into animation.

Earlier this year I did a couple of small 3D animations using DAZ Studio as a proof-of-concept and a couple of months ago I did my first 2D animations using Cartoon Animator, a four-part cartoon called "Starship Hrimfaxi: The Janus Jump".

[youtube]https://youtu.be/cMkuNLCvais[/youtube]

With Reallusion no longer supporting Macs, I'm hoping to be able to jump to Moho and version 14 looks fantastic.

I have a few questions before I purchase, and I'm hoping that the forumites might help me out a bit, especially anyone who has used both, such as the very talented Dennis Greenlaw.

I know Moho is a much higher-ended, more fully-featured software than Cartoon Animator, but for the type of animation I'm focusing on Cartoon Animator was quick to get up and running and because most of my work so far is dialogue-driven, their face-animation tools worked really well for me.

If you peek at one of my 2D Youtube episodes you'll see what I'm after. The animation itself isn't the greatest, but I'm looking more at quantity over quality for now, where "quality" is simply "good enough". The 40+ minutes of 2D animation took just over 65 hours to do; my goal is to keep doing 10-15 minutes of this style of animation in a 40-hour work week, with the hopes that my quality will slowly improve with practise.

The features I use most in Cartoon Animator is the automatic lip sync and the facial puppeteering. For my initial 2D test videos, I used scenes and bodies of my own and used the heads from Reallusion's content store (in the meantime I'm converting some of my custom 3D characters to 2D versions).

How does Moho's auto lip sync compare to Cartoon Animators? I know "auto" isn't the way to go for professionals, but I'm happy with it for now in Cartoon Animator and if I can at least get the same results with Moho, that'll do.

Cartoon Animator's 360° head feature made a huge difference when using their puppeteering and was quick and good enough for what my simple animations; I was able to apply the audio file to do the lip syncing, then on playback add the facial animation by choosing a style (male, female, goofy, etc., then grumpy, smiley, and so on) and turning or angling the head by having it follow the mouse cursor while the audio played.

How hard is it to match that type of head rotation, how much extra work would it be to set up the rigged model to do something similar?

How hard will it be to convert my Cartoon Animator characters via Photoshop into Moho and re-rig?

Finally, the spec sheet says that Moho 14 fully supports Apple's M1 and M2 chips, but is that via Rosetta2 or is it Apple Silicon native, and does it use the Apple Silicon GPUs?

Thanks,
Walt

[slowtiger]

Short answer:

It's possible to automate lipsync in 2 ways. One reads the sound file plus a text transcript and outputs the standard phoneme keys. This needs preparation and, depending on sound quality, a certain amount of adjustment.

The other just reacts on sound dynamics and opens the mouths accordingly, without distinguishing phonemes. This is truly automatic and very fast. (I think I made a post about this.)

For both methods it's possible to tweak keys afte the automatic part is done.

Now having additional emotion with this ... this needs a complex setup for each head, including turns, bobbing, eye brows, eyes, mouth shapes etc. This is the most time consuming part and definitely not easy, but worth it if you use a character for a longer time. It's only working this well with completely vector characters though, so no Photoshop here.

Animating this in Moho is a bit different from what you know: you'll place and tweak your keys while the project stays still, then play back to check. Repeat often.

Re-do your characters in Moho will take you weeks. Faster if you can re-use parts: body, clothing, heads etc.

[wsterdan]

Thanks for the detailed reply, much appreciated. The audio-plus-text method sounds like it should work well enough for what I need, thanks.

I'm checking tutorials on head turns, it looks like setting that up for multiple characters might take a fair bit of time.

Importing the basic character artwork looks like it should be fairly quick; the Photoshop characters are already layered for different body parts and some parts (eyes, mouth, hands) are present in the form of grouped layers which should translate into switch layers fairly quickly. That should at least give me a decent head start on the conversion, I think. I'll know better once I try it.

I'll search for your other post on the auto lip sync.

Again, thanks very much for the detailed reply.

[Karl Toon]

Having used both Cartoon Animator (since Crazytalk 3 thru Cartoon Animator 5) and Moho (12 thru 14), Moho is not only more capable but also much more fun. Cartoon Animator can knock out a quick and easy animation but it always looks "samey" and it is far too easy to fall into the habit of using all the ready-made movements, characters, etc. If you just need or want to knock out a quick animation or an explainer video it is great. My main problem with it is that if you want to delve a bit deeper into the inner workings and get more serious with your animation, it is quite hard to do so. As a hobbyist, Moho wins every time.

In Cartoon Animator, I got quite fed up of the auto-lipsync and instead always used to go through it manually anyway. It really doesn't take that long. I find it just as easy to do this in Moho.

The best software I've found for auto-lipsync and facial puppeteering is Adobe software, although it does come at a financial cost. However, if you are wanting to knock out fast and furious animations with the minimum of fuss, then it may be worth a peek. I believe you can get a freebie trial of 7 days (I think). But, also, do look at the free Adobe Express, and in particular https://new.express.adobe.com/tools/animate-from-audio .

It's still Moho for me though!

[wsterdan]

Thanks for the reply and for your suggestions.

It's not a matter of *if* I transition to Moho, it's *when*.

Regarding Cartoon Animator, I was actually surprised that a first-timer like me was able to produce 40+ minutes of multiple animated, talking characters in an average of 10 minutes of animation in a 20-hour week. It's definitely not professional-level nor super-high quality, but again, someone with no experience with four or five people in every scene, most of them talking, was doable. With a little practice, I'm sure I could output 15-20 minutes of animation during a 40-hour week and, with practice, have it look a little better.

As far as library animations, in the 40 minutes of animation I only used one short walk cycle and one sit-to-stand canned pose. I think any "sameness" would be a result of using the Reallusion heads for this one (bodies and all other scene assets are mine) and I'm starting a new short using more customized heads. There will tend to be a sameness for my stuff since I'll be using the same sets of characters for the varies projects on the same starship bridges (mostly).

I've looked at some of the 2D animation software that supports lip synching, like Adobe Express and even some iPad apps like ToonSquid and Callipeg (I assume that if the upcoming ProCreate Dreams doesn't have lip sync on release, it won't take long) but most seem geared towards working with one or two characters at a time.

During the 2020 lockdown, I even created an Adobe Character Animator avatar to attend my online meetings for me:

https://sterdan.com/2023/08/animated-me ... -lockdown/

I'm okay with the Cartoon Animator lip syncing when combined with the live puppeteering feature and my main goal is to simulate what I've done in Cartoon Animator in Moho. I'll continue going through the tutorials, but I think the main roadblock will be setting up my characters to do head and body turns, especially heads. If anyone has any shortcuts or quick tips, I'd be grateful.

In the meantime, I'll keep watching tutorials and look at staring the character transitions from Cartoon Animator to Moho. I do see that Moho is my future.

Thanks again,
Walt

[sang820]

If you only want to quickly create simple dialogue animations, then CA is a good choice. Currently, Moho does not provide convenient facial expression capture functionality. If you plan to do more detailed animation production in the future, such as turning around, performing body movements, and more expressive camera movements, then I suggest you learn Moho. Moho is more professional in the animation field and can provide you with more choices. I have been using Moho for 25 years, I have tried many software, and now I am still a loyal user of Moho. I only use Moho for animation.

Alternatively, you can use both CA and Moho to create animations, output PNG sequences for each shot, and comprehensively process the generated materials in post production software (such as Pr). I think this can leverage strengths and avoid weaknesses. Each software has its own strengths and weaknesses, but they are all great software.

Wishing you success in your Moho exploration~!

[wsterdan]

Thanks for replying; your assessment matches my own. For the simple, dialogue-driven Star Trekkish projects I'm working on, Cartoon Animator appears to be the best option for me, but because they're no longer supporting the Mac, I know I need to start transitioning to other software and Moho looks like the best 2D option for me, hands down. It's possible that Cartoon Animator might continue to function for me for another decade, but based on my usual luck it may stop working on the next operating system upgrade or with the next computer.

I am still curious if Moho supports Apple Silicon natively or via Rosetta2, and if it can use the M1/M2 GPUs. Cartoon Animator doesn't, sadly.

My other option is 3D, and I've been peeking at Maya, but I haven't found any Mac lip sync plug-ins for it that would allow me to do the lip syncing inside Maya. I'd look more seriously at Blender but the interface and I just don't "click".

Thanks again for your response, much appreciated.

[Karl Toon]

Just thinking laterally.
1) 3d. Does iClone not work on Mac? Similar interface to Cartoon Animator.
2) Have you considered a mini-pc to run alongside your Mac? Just for Cartoon Animator? Earlier this year I switched from a big gaming PC to a small, and I really do mean small, mini-pc and it performs as well as, if not better than, the gaming PC. I use a Geekom Mini IT11.

[wsterdan]

Lateral thinking is always welcome, thanks for the suggestions.

1. No, iClone isn't available for Mac.

2. If I were doing this professionally, I wouldn't hesitate to pick up a decent Windows PC and upgrade to Cartoon Animator 5. The update is quite significant, returning to Vector art, additive free-form object deformation, dynamic effect and more, for example

As I'm only doing this for my own enjoyment, I plan on sticking with Mac as long as I can (it'll be 40 years in January).

To be clear, I don't hate Windows. There are quite a few things about Windows I actually like. Before I retired last year, I'd been working via Windows for 35-40 hours a week for 15 years, and 10-20 hours a week for a few years before that.

The best way to describe my feelings towards Windows would be to see it as a solid, well-made pair of sneakers that are 1/2 a size too small. I can wear them, walk around and even run in them but no matter how long I wear them, they're never going to fit comfortably. Now that I'm retired, I'm all about the comfort.

[Karl Toon]

<snip> The best way to describe my feelings towards Windows would be to see it as a solid, well-made pair of sneakers that are 1/2 a size too small. I can wear them, walk around and even run in them but no matter how long I wear them, they're never going to fit comfortably. Now that I'm retired, I'm all about the comfort.

That almost encourages me to buy a Mac!

[wsterdan]

If you did, you'd probably find it was like a well-made pair of sneakers a full size-and-a-half too small, and not available in your colour.

To clarify (my “humour” often clouds my meaning), anyone moving from Windows to Mac, even if they might find the overall feel of the OS as more pleasant, the reduction of available options – especially in the 2D and 3D modelling/animation arenas – would feel very confining. Personally, in all seriousness, it's not something I'd recommend to a happy Windows user.

[Greenlaw]

Walt! I know you, don't I? From Ray Dream Designer/Studio days?

I'll ping you privately to be sure.

[Karl Toon]

Just a little addition to this thread. I thought I'd fire up Cartoon Animator 5 today and have a play around with it. I haven't used it for a few months, but I always install it from the Reallusion Hub. Upon loading Cartoon Animation 5, my anti-virus immediately deleted the Cartoon Animater .exe file . Looking into the lAV og files it said CA contained a trojan virus!!! I re-installed the program and the problem had gone. Hmmm... Think I'll stick with Moho.

[Greenlaw]

Hey Walt!

It was nice chatting with you offline and catching up on things!

Re: Transitioning from Cartoon Animator to Moho, I dabble with Cartoon Animator occasionally, and I will say that Moho and Cartoon Animator have very different workflows. They're both good programs, but they are tailored to different styles of animation. (I know that’s a vague statement, but it gets clearer below.)

Simply put: Animating characters with Cartoon Animator is akin to traditional puppeteering while animating with Moho is more like stop-motion. Both programs use bones to pose and animate 2D images, but that’s about where the similarities end.

Before we continue, full disclosure: I've created very little animation using Cartoon Animator, and my comments are based on brief personal experiments. I basically got Cartoon Animator to enhance my training videos, which I haven't done much of yet. So, if I make any incorrect or outdated statements about Cartoon Animator, please let me know.

On with the comparison…

Cartoon Animator
As you already know, Cartoon Animator's strength is performance capture animation, aka mocap. Once I set up my character in Cartoon Animator, it's ready to receive real-time puppetry for the body and face using devices like webcam, iPhone, and Leap Motion, and it can generate lip sync animation based on live or pre-recorded audio. Cartoon Animator’s workflow is also built around reusing and mixing existing motion data imported from a library.

Rigging is mostly template-based, which has its pros and cons. On the pro side, it makes rigging a fairly straightforward process, and there’s consistency in the setups, so characters using the same template can share data and performances. The con is that the system is less open for rigging and animating non-standard character types. (Cartoon Animator does offer systems for quadrupeds and wings, so it's not strictly for biped characters.)

One complaint I have about Cartoon Animator is that hand-keyframing a character can be awkward (compared to Moho, anyway.) For example, in the version of Cartoon Animator I was working with a few years ago, every keyframe defaulted to linear, and I was constantly changing the interpolation mode manually. I know hand-keyframing character animation isn’t the focus of Cartoon Animator, but this is one reason I haven’t used it very much. (I don’t know if this has been addressed in the current version.)

Cartoon Animator’s live motion capture workflow is a lot of fun, though, and I think it is ideal for recording digital avatar performances (i.e., VTuber videos,) training presentations, and any production with chatty characters acting within limited physical situations. The productions tend to look more puppeteered than traditionally animated because that’s exactly what it is. And that can be a good thing because I love puppetry when it’s skillfully performed.

Moho Pro
Moho is better for animators who want to hand-keyframe their animations, and I will also say it’s better for building rigs for more advanced posing and animation. This can mean more work up-front, but I have the flexibility to rig more unusual character designs and work with more different animation styles with Moho. (That's a lot of 'mores'. Where's my thesaurus when I need it?)

Another notable difference is that I can create my artwork directly inside Moho. Moho has robust vector drawing tools, and the vector art is fully animatable using bones, point animation, mesh warping with custom meshes, Curver (the new spline deformer,) and even frame-by-frame animation.

Like Cartoon Animator, Moho can import layered bitmap art from programs like Photoshop, Krita, and Procreate, which can be animated using many of the same rigging features described above. Bitmap images can even be combined with vector artwork as textured fills and strokes. (My early DWA animations for Puss In Boots, All Hail King Julien, and Dawn Of The Croods, used such hybrid setups.)

Performance capture, on the other hand, isn't really Moho's thing. Moho has basic motion tracking and automated lip-syncing, but these features are minor compared to Cartoon Animator's equivalents.

This isn't to say that animation with Moho can't be ‘automated,’ just in a different sense. Moho has a presets system that allows me to create a library of key poses and motions that can be applied to a character with a click of a button. This library can be imported to different projects for the character, and, with careful planning and consistent rigging practices, the library can be shared by other characters.

(Hmm...I just remembered an unfinished personal project from a few years ago. I was working on a library of Regular and Morph Actions (pose and animation presets in Moho) to help me crank out quick YouTube videos using the same character. I shelved the project when it looked like Smith Micro was abandoning Moho--which prompted me to take a closer look at Cartoon Animator. But now that Moho is thriving again under Lost Marble, maybe it’s time to revisit this project. I'll let you know when I have something to show.)

Regarding Moho's auto-lipsync feature: I know the latest version can do more than basic lip-flapping. However, the feature doesn't do anything for face animation. Some users will use Papagayo for auto-lipsync with Moho, but I'm not sure this is better than the latest built-in lip-sync system. (Okay, now I'm intrigued and want to experiment with this feature. Will let you know what I find.)

Personally, I find it easy to hand-animate lip-sync in Moho:

1. import the audio file to the timeline
2. notate the dialog with Markers, and then
3. use the Switch Selection window to pick mouth shapes as I step through the scene.

With this workflow, I can lip-sync an entire scene in a couple of minutes. It’s really not hard to do, and it can go quickly with a little practice. Tip: When starting out, it helps to keep a small mirror on your desk so you can see what your own mouth does when you speak.

Of course, assigning mouth-shapes is only a part of the character’s performance. You still need to hand-keyframe the face and body animation to give it life.

Moho's greatest strength is its rigging system, which features bones with multiple binding modes, mixed FK/IK and a keyframeable constraints system, Vitruvian Bones (swappable sub-rigs,) a variety of warping tools, and the Smart Bones system, where you can assign sets of keyframes to a bone, and control the playback by rotating that bone like a dial. The applications are almost limitless because anything keyframeable can be controlled by a Smart Bone. (In 3D animation programs, this system is called Set Driven Key. Among 2D animation programs, I think it's unique to Moho.)

Moho has the ability to create and use rigging templates, but it doesn't have pre-made rigging templates like Cartoon Animator. (Note: I tend to use the same basic skeleton for my characters and have variations of it saved as templates. There are more like 'starter kits' than full rigs, but they do save me time. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'll release these templates when I've updated them for Moho 14.)

Moho is great for effects animation, too. By now, you've probably seen the cool new stuff in Moho 14, like Liquid Shapes and Curver. If you haven't, be sure to watch Victor's tutorial videos on these subjects on Lost Marble's YouTube channel.

For me, Moho’s Layer Comps and Moho Exporter are essential features. With Layer Comps, I can break out my animation into separate layer passes and special utility passes and then use Moho Exporter to break out these passes with a single mouse click. If you composite your animations in After Effects, Nuke, or Fusion, these two are VERY powerful features.

If I had to choose between Moho and Cartoon Animator, I’d go with Moho because I love hand keyframing my animations, and my work demands a lot of flexibility and adaptability.

But I also want to create personal productions where Cartoon Animator's workflow probably makes more sense, like the training videos I have been working on (lately, this seems more off than on…sigh!) In that situation, I just want to insert an appealing talking character, but I don't want to spend a lot of time with it. So, for that, I'll keep both programs.

One more thing: One of the reasons I connected so well with Moho is because, as a 3D artist, I see a lot of similarity in its workflow to working in 3D animation programs. For example, I create a lot of my vector drawings using Moho's Add Points tool, which is a lot like modeling with polygons and meshes, and animating in Moho is a lot like animating in a 3D program. I know you're also a 3D guy, so you might find that appealing.

Adobe Character Animator
If you’re committed to 2D performance capture, have you looked into Adobe Character Animator? I haven't used Character Animator enough to be able to draw a fair comparison with Cartoon Animator, but it does run on Mac. (Someday, I'll look into comparing Character Animator and Cartoon Animator.)

Wow, that was a big information dump. I may have to repurpose this post as a blog entry or YouTube video. Anyway, I hope this info helps. Feel free to ask questions. If I don't get to it right away, someone else will.

[wsterdan]

Thanks for taking the time for the detailed breakdown, much appreciated. It did explain a few things I was wondering about and solidifies my decision to start moving my characters into Moho sooner rather than later.

To clarify what I meant by the Cartoon Animator's "puppeteering" that I'm using, I'm lazy and as I'm currently testing Star Trekkish animation most of the character animation is the crew sitting on the bridge talking. It's very dialogue-driven. My current (laaaazy) method for doing a scene is:

Open template scene with characters; apply audio/auto lip sync for multiple characters; for each character play full scene while puppeteering character from start to finish; add any secondary animation (body/arm/hand movements); render out scene full-view, then medium close-ups as necessary, rendering the whole scene for each character's MCUs. Rendering a minute of animation takes roughly 1-2 minutes, depending on which computer I'm using.

For the "puppeteering", I select the character and as the scene plays, I use the mouse to direct the eyes and head to look at the character talking or being talked to, or down at their controls or glancing at the main view screen in front of them.

I've posted a quick 1-minute example to show what I'm talking about (again, simple and lazy and not overly-professional the clip took 95 minutes to set up and render twice, then cut and paste the full-view and medium close-up together in iMovie):

https://sterdan.com/2023/10/new-2d-char ... egasus-x5/

After reading the responses here and watching a number of tutorials, I'm sure I can move most of my characters over as layered Photoshop images that I can then rig in Moho; I've narrowed things down to a question or two:

1. The number one thing I'd find most useful for the way I'm working now is to be able to record the head turns and eye focus by following the mouse. Blinking with a mouse click would also be helpful. I've seen a number of tutorials on setting up the eyes to follow the mouse, is there any that also turn the head at the same time?

2. I thought I might purchase the Debut version for now and start moving things over before investing in the Pro version, that way I can be sure it'll work the way I'm expecting. If it goes well, I will update to Pro once I've got a few characters moved over. My question is how are the numbers of Photoshop layers that can be imported calculated? My characters head, for example, has a single "mouth" layer with 15 grouped sub-layers. Would the mouth count as one layer or 16? If so, would it be possible to split a character into multiple PhotoShop files and import them one file at a time and build a character with more layers that way?

Thanks for all the help.