Features we'd love to see after 3 projects in Moho 14

[Stef Armchair Prod]

If any of these are already possible please feel free to tell me I'm being foolish.

ANIMATION & RIGGING
Things it would be great to add:
- marking/context menus linked to the cursor. Maybe on alt + click?
- more control over bone scale transform tool (e.g control over both axis, and keyable squash and stretch scaling)
- link vitruvian setups to actions, or vice versa
- 2.5d options for bones (e.g rotate xy like with layers)
- scale keys in the graph editor y axis (value), and display channels with multiple objects selected
- selection sets, or even just a quick way to select all child bones underneath the hierachy of any given bone.
- hotkeys to set keys individually on rotate, translate and scale on selected bones
- render layers and/or AOVs
- combination actions (The combined animation of two or more smart bones drives an action)
- change layer colour on multiple layers at once
- connect/constrain/parent bones across different bone layers

Things it would be great to fix:
- have scale transforms inherit properly down a bone hierachy
- better deformation on images. Currently we can't get a nice curve on rigged images, and the smart warp gives a worse deformation than regular skinning (it's noticeably more jagged)
- More distinctive playhead so it doesn't blend in with the timeline so much
- sometimes layers come in at different sizes when updating psds. Rigs usually break when updating layer reference
- select and manipulate multiple points on a motion path
- trim imported video/audio
- skin individual points to bones
- crop 'show path' to a time frame, or have the path a different colour for before/after the current key
- audio slips out of sync when animating
- better masking. The current options are very confusing and limiting
- bone targeting breaks regularly
- copy and paste keys regularly stops working. Fixed with a restart of Moho, but very annoying.
- 'show path' only works on some bones

Drawing in Moho
- the quality of layers i'm not working on is slightly blurry
- the program slows down quite a lot when i start adding gradients, and different brush qualities to stroke lines. It speeds up again when i turn off the preview of these in the display window but would be great to keep them on to see the art clearly
- is it possible to lock layers? if i have my sketch later on low opacity or set to multiply on top of the vector shapes i'm drawing, it would be good to lock it so i can use the 'Layer Selector' tool on vector layers beneath
- you can weld strokes and shapes, can you unweld them?
- to draw a stroke that is not a closed shape using the Add Point tool (because it has better control over adding points than the Freehand tool), i've been drawing a closed shape so that it will generate the stroke, then deleting or hiding the extra edges to make it an open shape. Is it possible for paths have a stroke anyway, even before they become closed shapes?
- there's a 'layer selection' tool, could this be integrated into the 'select points' and/or 'transform points' tools to avoid going between tools? in photoshop there's a check box to be able to auto select layers, so this could be turned on or off
- i accidentally animated some shape points while drawing, i'm guessing because i was pressing arrow keys and forgot to hold down ctrl, and it moved to the next frame in the timeline without me realising before i made my shape edits. it there a way to lock the timeline while i'm drawing to ensure i stay on frame 0? Relatedly, is there a quick way to delete all keyframes from multiple layers without going through each layer individually?
- if i rotate a layer, it remembers how much it has been rotated away from the default, so then if i paste in a shape from a different layer it doesn't quite paste in place but it reorients to the new layer rotation. Is there a way to set the new layer rotation as the default, so that objects from other layers will paste into the same place as the layer they come from? Maya has 'freeze transforms', is there similar in moho 14?
-is it possible to draw with symmetry?
-can i undock windows or rearrange window sizes, would be useful to expand the layers panel to see more layers without scrolling

[Stef Armchair Prod]

Reading the above, I should also say that we absolutely love Moho 14 and 13! It's made our lives a lot easier and anything we've listed above is there to make a great program better. I can't see us not using Moho on pretty much every project.

[Daxel]

Hi! Welcome to the forum.

I feel you may be not getting many comments because your post is a little bit overwhelming with so many points to talk at the same time. I don't have much time to adress all right now so I will do my best with the first part about animation and rigging.

I also find these proposals useful and important

- more control over bone scale transform tool (e.g control over both axis, and keyable squash and stretch scaling)
- selection sets, or even just a quick way to select all child bones underneath the hierachy of any given bone.


And these are the ones I think we already have:

- link vitruvian setups to actions, or vice versa: If you mean to change a limb or a head inside an action, I think that works. I'm not totally sure though.

- hotkeys to set keys individually on rotate, translate and scale on selected bones: Not hotkeys, but you can easily set keys only on rotation, translation and scale on any bone clicking on the right part of the bone, and more easily using the hotkeys to force translation (alt) or scale (ctrl). This works on multiple bones selected, just click on one of them.

- render layers and/or AOVs: Not sure what you mean by AOVs, but you can use the compositor to create composition groups (that can be just one layer) and render them separately as you wish. You can find better explanations on this forum (I don't use it that much).

- change layer colour on multiple layers at once: Use shift or Ctrl for multiple selection, click on quick settings, change the color, and then don't forget to click on apply for every layer.


These are not built in but can be done using some technique or script:

- connect/constrain/parent bones across different bone layers: this can't be done but there is a script that can help you with some of those use cases, by Mult Rush: https://mohoscripts.com/script/mr_track_bone

- combination actions (The combined animation of two or more smart bones drives an action): If I understood what you want, it can be done with a mix smartbones technique, that is automated by this script by A. Evseeva: https://mohoscripts.com/script/ae_mix_smartbones

[Stef Armchair Prod]

Amazing thank you. I'll have a look at every one of your suggestions. I'll post with fewer points in future. We are currently doing a lot of work using MOHO 14 including a 3 minute commissioned film so we'll keep learning.
Thanks again.