Turn on all layers.
This tutorial continues on from the previous three, moving into the animation features of Moho. You can either continue on with your project from the previous tutorial, or you can use a file that has been created for you - it's named "Tutorial 1.4" and it's located in the "Tutorials/1 - Basics" subfolder within the main Moho folder.
There are three basic ways to animate objects in Moho: animating an entire layer, using bones to animate parts of an object, and animating the individual points on an object. These three types can be combined to make very complex animations. This tutorial will walk you through all three types of animation.
Open your previous project (or the "Tutorial 1.4" file) in Moho. Make sure all the layers are visible by clicking to turn on each layer in the Layers window.
Turn on all layers.
Your window should look something like this:
Starting point for this tutorial.
Layer animation is the most simple way to make objects move around in a Moho animation. It's limited in the way you can move the objects, but in some cases it's all you need. Layer animation moves an entire layer around as if it were painted on a pane of glass.
Click the Clouds layer in the Layers window to activate it. Next, set the current time to frame 72. This is done in the Timeline window. To set the time, scroll the timeline panel sideways (if necessary) until you see the number 72 in the ruler at the top. Click on the number 72 and the time marker will jump to that frame, as shown below:
Time set to frame 72.
In Moho, an important concept is to learn the importance of frame zero. At the far left end of the timeline is a frame marked zero. When the time is set to zero, you are in Moho's creation mode. For now, you should only draw, add bones, or create other objects at frame zero. When Moho is at any other frame, you are animating the objects you have created. As you get more comfortable with Moho, you can choose to draw objects at other frames, but for now it's best only to create new objects when the time is set to frame zero. You can switch back to frame zero at any time by pressing the rewind button, or by clicking on the number 0 in the timeline. For now, leave the time at frame 72.
Select the Translate Layer tool from the toolbar. Click and drag to the right in the working area to move the cloud layer to the right:
Moving the cloud layer.
Notice that a marker appeared in the timeline at frame 72. (You may have to scroll downwards to see the marker.) This marker represents a keyframe - a point in time at which the layer has been given a position. There are several animation channels displayed in the Timeline panel. This keyframe appeared in the Layer Translation channel, because that's what type of action you just performed - you translated (moved) a layer.
The new keyframe.
Try out the animation so far: press the play button at the bottom-left of the main window. The animation loops when it reaches the end (in this case frame 72). When you've seen enough, press the stop button.
Playback controls.
Bone animation uses skeleton structures to move an object around. You got a good feel for how bones work in the previous tutorial when you used the Manipulate Bones tool. When animating bones you use very similar tools.
Activate the Skeleton layer by clicking its entry in the Layer panel. Set the time to frame 12 by clicking the number 12 in the Timeline window. (You may have to scroll the Timeline window before you can see the number 12.) Now, pick the Manipulate Bones tool in the toolbar. Click and drag the bones in Frank's legs until they are positioned as shown below:
Move Frank's legs.
Note that the Manipulate Bones tool works differently at frame 12 than it did at frame 0 in the previous tutorial. At frame 0, this tool is used to test a bone system, and doesn't permanently modify the bones. However, when you are animating bones (at any frame other than 0), the bones do hold their new position.
Next, pick the Translate Bone tool. Click on Frank's spine bone and drag it downwards a bit:
Lower Frank's entire body.
Next, set the time to frame 24 and choose the Bone->Reset All Bones menu command. Press the play button to watch your animation, and press stop when you're done.
When you played back the animation, you probably noticed that after frame 24, Frank doesn't move any more. You could add more keyframes by setting the time to some later frame and moving Frank's bones some more, but let's try out Moho's animation looping feature.
In the timeline, you should see a group of keyframes at frame 24. These keys represent bone movement (the spine bone moving up and down) and bone rotation (the bending legs). Drag a rectangle around these four keyframes to select them:
Select bone keyframes at frame 24.
Next, right-click on one of these selected keys. A popup menu will appear. Select "Cycle..." from the popup menu. What you're telling Moho is that you want these keys to cycle back to an earlier point in the timeline. A dialog will appear asking you what frame to cycle back to - enter the settings shown below. You're telling Moho that on this keyframe, the bone movement should cycle back to frame 0.
Cycle settings.
Click OK and press the play button to see the difference. An animation channel with cycling turned on will repeat its animation over and over indefinitely. Typically this would be used for some kind of background element, not a foreground character like Frank, but it's a great time saver. In the timeline you can see an indication of the cycling in the bone channels:
Cycling indicated in the timeline.
Using point animation, you drag around individual points (or groups of points) on an object. In theory, you could animate the same types of motion as with bone animation - bones just save you a lot of work. Point animation is more typically used when you want to change the shape of some object.
Click the Clouds layer in the Layer panel to activate it. Pick the Translate Points tool from the toolbar. Press the enter key on your keyboard to make sure no points are selected. Finally, click the fast forward button to jump to the end of the animation.
Click and drag individual points on the clouds in small amounts, just to reshape the clouds a bit. This will cause the clouds to change their shapes slightly from the beginning of the animation to frame 72.
Point animation.
Use the play and stop buttons to see the result.
Remember how the Frank layer was imported into the project in the previous tutorial? Well, imported layers can also contain animation. Select File->Insert Object.... When prompted, open the file "Tutorial Extras" in the "Tutorials/1 - Basics" subfolder within the main Moho folder. In the dialog that pops up, select the Beach Ball layer and click OK.
A bouncing beach ball will appear in your project. Press the play button to watch it go. It bounces all right, but it's not really in the right position. Switch back to frame zero (press the rewind button in the timeline) to set the ball's initial position.
Using the Translate Layer tool, drag the beach ball to a better location. You can also use the Scale Layer tool to resize the ball. (Drag one of the corner handles of the scale control box to resize the beach ball the same amount in width and height.) Press the Play button to view the final animation.
You now have a pretty good grasp of how to draw, fill, set up bones, and animate in Moho. Feel free to jump right in and start working with Moho. Or, you can read more tutorials that dig deeper into specific topics.