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In its own words, the biggest upgrade to date advertises the best 2D rigging system, the combination of unique traditional and non-traditional animation tools, a completely new graphics engine and many new tools, such as Liquid Shapes, Multi Strokes, Smart Line
Boil, Delayed Constraints, Vitruvian Bones, Physics, Particles, Dynamics… Despite obvious adversities in the past and great competition, Moho now wants to find and maintain its place among professional 2D animation programmes.
Moving story – from Moho to Moho 14 (2023)
According to Wikipedia, Michael Clifton, founder of Lost Marble LCC, published his animation software before the year 2000. Simple vector animation and a bone system that was already advanced at the time immediately attracted the attention of users interested in animation, who hoped for further rapid developments. As Clifton originally developed Moho for BeOS, which came to an end in 2001, he had to port his programme. He subsequently adapted his software for Windows, Mac OS and also Linux. in 2006, the programme – and the developer – moved to the company e-Frontier, which wanted to continue marketing it. A new change came in 2007, this time to Smith Micro Software. From then on, the software was called Anime Studio, but was renamed Moho again in 2016.
in 2020, many users in the Moho forum were delighted to learn that Moho was back in the hands of Lost Marble. Lost Marble acquired the software with the support of Cartoon Saloon. The Irish animation studio, Cartoon Saloon, is probably known to connoisseurs for animated films such as The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea and Wolfwalkers. It has received five Oscar nominations, among others.
“We always called Moho ‘our secret weapon'”, says Tomm Moore, co-director of Wolfwalkers
Director of “Wolfwalkers” and “Secret of Kells”, is said to have said at the time. This autumn, Lost Marble announced the release of Moho, Release 14, as a pro and debut version. While these lines were still being written, the first update, 14.1, was released, which Moho’s search for updates on a Windows 10 system did not (yet) recognise. The list of new features made us curious..
A lot of talk about a little 2D animation?
Despite the huge boom in the 3D sector, 2D animation will retain its justification in various sectors and in different media. This is not really the place to discuss design or media trends or the pros and cons of 2D or 3D. A look at 2D software, such as Moho, reveals a rather complex situation that is constantly being determined by new technologies and may soon change fundamentally through the use of AI. 2D animation has long since ceased to be limited to pure frame-by-frame animation, i.e. the classic animated cartoon that older people may still remember from early animated films, but now refers to various 2D animation techniques. The market now offers a whole range of programmes for animating with different approaches, including programmes with very different prices, such as Animate CC (adobe.com), Toon Boom Harmony (toonboom.com), TVPaint (tvpaint.com), CelAction2D (celaction.com), Pencil2D Animation (pencil2d.org), Cartoon Animator (reallusion.com), Synfig (www.synfig.org), OpenToonz (opentoonz.github.io/e)… This list is arbitrary and absolutely incomplete, but should give an impression of the fact that “simple” 2D – and the software for it – is still in demand. A look at current media also shows this: animated films still exist, advertising and explanatory videos can be found on almost every website and some stories or product information are more convincing through the graphical means of 2D design than through more elaborate, hyper-realistic 3D animations.
Meanwhile, the many programs and online platforms promise to simplify and revolutionise 2D animation and achieve the best results with the least amount of effort. Moho also aims to be such a tool. Moho is a versatile software with lots of tools that attempts to cover every area of (2D) animation and make everything animatable.
What can Moho do?
Moho Animation Software promises professional, powerful and user-friendly 2D rigging and animation tools as well as new drawing, deformation and effect tools. The list of new features is long and fills several pages in the manual, but only supplements the many tools already available. Moho is a vector drawing programme with a range of special drawing tools that now also enable a natural look similar to that of raster graphics. Thanks to the newly developed graphics engine, drawings, styles and effects should be displayed much better and more smoothly. The current version offers various drawing styles such as wet ink, charcoal, gouache, rough ink, watercolour and others, as well as several dozen preset brushes with complex adjustment options. By using styles, you can control the exact look of your drawings and edit multiple drawings at the same time, changing the shape, colour, line width, brush settings and effects.
Animations can be achieved by simply manipulating individual selected control points of the drawn (vector) curves – optionally also controllable with Bezier handlers or, for example, with a variable magnet tool or various deformation tools in the timeline, whereby Moho automatically sets keyframes. Fills and strokes can be varied as desired and thus also animated. There are a number of different tools and methods for deforming drawings (e.g. Liquid Shapes are new). Keyframes can also be set for effect settings.
In fact, everything can be animated in Moho. Moho supports the animation of vector points, strokes, shapes and layers as well as various effects in different ways. Moho allows better frame by frame animation in the current version, especially through improvements in the timeline. Although we are talking about frame-by-frame animation, with Moho this means that all of the programme’s manipulation options for vectors are available in every frame. Rotoscoping should also not be a problem.
Moho aims to support all conceivable animation options and technologies, which are almost impossible to list here: Already mentioned are animations of vector shapes (points, fills and lines), object and path animations, deformations through warping (also for imported images), bones that can be controlled with constraints (targets, IK stretching, IK solvier), or the use of physical rules, such as reactions to gravity or wind and adjustable collision detection.
New in Moho 14 are Delayed Constraints. A bone (Control Bone) to control everything! In the Bone Constraints, where Bone Dynamics and Control Bones are defined for controlling angles, position and scaling of individual bones, there is now also the option of specifying a delay for subsequent movements of bones. Controlled bones can be “told” when they should follow the control bone and by what percentage (before or after their movement, with smaller or larger amplitudes). There is an example in the Moho tutorials that shows how, for example, an (octopus) tentacle can move very lively and elastically after such settings.
Also new are the aforementioned Liquid Shapes: For shapes within a layer, it is possible to apply Boolean operations to each other. Each shape can be assigned either “Normal”, “Add”, “Subtract” or “Clip”. “Normal” shapes that are overlapped by others can then be “manipulated” by the shapes above them, as with Boolean functions in other programmes (the order of the shapes can be moved up and down within a layer using the Shift and arrow keys). The function is made particularly interesting by the “Blend” option, which, depending on the value, softly rounds off the resulting shapes. The result can be fixed with “Merge”.
As long as “everything is still in flux”, everything remains animatable and it is amazing what a variety of shapes and smooth animations are possible with this new option. The shapes behave in real time, like fluid forms that displace each other or seem to flow into each other. This technique, combined with various layer effects, is demonstrated in the trailer for Moho’s tutorial videos.
Although Moho is a 2D software, movements are also possible in 3D space. Moho can import 3D objects and also generate simple shapes from 2D shapes (rotation and extrusion bodies are defined in the layer properties, or layers are rotated and positioned around the X or Y axis).
Moho offers a rudimentary 3D view for working in space. When the 3D button is clicked, Moho still jumps to an obviously preset view, which has to be corrected every time you want to use the 3D space. A “smoother” camera pan or even the selection of possible camera settings would be more pleasant. Most users probably use the 3D options mainly to arrange objects in space and to create camera movements with parallax and depth of field effects.
Many tools
Many tools offer many possibilities, but also require a lot of work with the programme in order to be able to exhaust all the possibilities and use the respective settings and options effectively. Everything is easy if you know how to do it. – Or as the old maths teacher used to say: “The solver can see immediately what the result is”. This also applies to Moho.
A beginner can either be delighted by the ease with which lines and shapes can be animated in Moho, or frustrated by the sheer endless possibilities – and the corresponding settings and options that need to be “figured out” first. Accordingly (and irrespective of the fact that in many computer forums “your own software is always the best”), opinions also differ there, from rejection because it is too complicated, to euphoric statements about the “best 2D animation programme”. The tenor is that Moho offers a professional approach with a corresponding learning curve.
The community of Moho users appears to be quite large and there are numerous tutorials online (also on commercial learning platforms such as http://www.udemy.com or http://www.toonfiles.com) and also help, e.g. in the Moho forum of Lost Marble (see the box with links). Lost Marble provides dozens of tutorials and webinars on the software and also offers learning courses on its website in addition to various paid content and some brush packs (including character, cartoon and Halloween content packs…).
A first look at the software shows us that there can’t be too many of these courses.
The current version of Moho can be used in several languages, including German. We find the German version more convenient to use, but most of the help can be found in English-language sources, which is why we use modern, occasional German or English expressions in the programme. In addition to context-sensitive tool tips for all functions and information on the currently selected tools in the programme’s status bar, Moho offers help in the form of a wiki. Unfortunately, this is only available online. In some forums there have been requests for a downloadable PDF file or similar, which would be easier to access and perhaps more searchable.
We are sure that not all aspects of this software can be discussed here. We have limited ourselves to a general overview and some of the “specialities” and new features of Moho in order to convey at least some of the “Moho feeling”.
An easy start?
At first glance, Moho seems as simple as software is usually advertised by the manufacturers. And indeed, even beginners seem to find it easy to take their first steps in the programme. By default, a randomly selected sample animation opens after the splash screen – a nice way to see Moho in action. You can switch this off in the preferences, along with other settings, but you can also simply open several files in parallel.
Of course, everyone has already seen a graphics application, perhaps even an animation programme. Then the default UI of Moho will already appear somewhat familiar.
If you want, you can change the brightness and the display of some editor colours, e.g. for objects, selections or the canvas background, in the default settings. Menus can be docked or undocked in the Window menu and, of course, customised shortcuts are possible.
There is the usual menu bar at the top of the screen. In the centre of the screen is the canvas, Moho’s drawing area (the view can be split, display settings can hide certain content), to the left of it is the toolbar, which is equipped with different tools depending on the selected layer type. A new file opens with a vector layer by default. Accordingly, some drawing and layer tools as well as buttons for controlling the camera and screen navigation are offered (if a bone layer is active, the corresponding bone tools are activated). Depending on the active tool, a tool options bar above the canvas shows further options. To the right of the canvas, either the Style or Actions menu can be displayed. Below this is the layer menu (similar to the layer palette in other applications).
The centrepiece for animations is of course the timeline with the playback controls at the bottom of the screen. The timeline shows the current position of the playhead for the animation (a very narrow vertical line), animation channels for objects and, of course, keyframes, which can be set, moved, copied or deleted here.
There are various display modes (Channels, Sequencer, Motion Graph). The interpolation methods between keyframes can also be changed here. Onion skins can be switched on or off and the length of the animation can be set. The Relative Keyframing option allows animated objects to be repositioned and existing keyframes to be moved “relatively” with them. Perhaps a small pitfall for newcomers to the programme: objects and drawings, as well as receipt assignments… are created in frame 0 by default in Moho! No animation can be tried out here, while no drawing and no objects can be created within the timeline (except in FBF mode).
A look at different layers
Moho uses different types of layers for different purposes. Vector layers are the standard layers for all vector drawings, similar to
in common graphic programmes such as Adobe Illustrator.
There are a variety of layer options for different purposes. Among other things, there are settings for effects such as shading, the vector display (e.g. whether an animated “noise” of outlines should simulate the style of hand-drawn animations), there are also options for display, opacity, motion blur… In the layer settings, you can also specify whether elements of the layer are captured by Moho’s camera at all, whether DOF affects them – or how a layer should interact with other objects, e.g. follow a path or react to a warp layer..
Whether depth of field (as Moho calls the depth of field in the German translation) affects the layers at all, which render style, image resolution is used, or whether, for example, layers are displayed sorted by depth, is specified in the project settings. There are layers for imported images and image sequences. There are currently no more bitmap tools in Moho. Technical difficulties in editing and displaying bitmaps in earlier versions are cited as the reason. But apparently the developers are planning to fix this problem later. For the time being, the main focus was on the vector tools and the new graphics engine.
However, bitmaps can be imported and deformed, e.g. with Bones. Meshes can be
Meshes can be defined as warp layers or an automatic function for mesh creation can be used (Draw/Create Mesh Layer). Images can be masked in the same way as vector layers. Various options can be set under “Masking” in the group settings for layers. The lowest vector layer serves as a mask for the layers above it. Masks can be used to simulate light and shadow effects by applying layers with different colours, intensities, blur and layer modes to objects – but only up to the edge of the mask. In the test with a Windows 10 system, an assigned shadow effect was often only displayed in the render preview.
Patch layers offer a special type of masking, e.g. to conceal overlapping contours at joints. Patch layers (round vector shapes) “hide” the overlapping layer, e.g. exactly at the joint.
The new Curver layers are used for simple but effective deformation of vector or image layers. If a layer is selected, a new type of warp layer can be created under “Draw/Create Curver Layer”. The layers to be deformed are specified in the layer settings, under “Vectors”, to which warp layer they should react. Curver layers, originally consisting of just two points, can be customised in terms of size, thickness (area of influence) and number and position of points. Smooth distortions are then possible in the timeline.
Curver layers can be combined with Bones. The animations can also be controlled with Smart Bones. Compressible Curver layers do not distort their objects “linearly”, but according to exactly which points are moved. This means that part of a figure can remain “untouched” while the rest is wildly distorted. This is a very simple way of creating organic-looking deformations (which can of course be animated).
Special layers also contain particles and bones. Switch layers contain elements that are only displayed “switched”. Switch layers group different elements, but only display one at a time. This means that predefined or drawn hand positions (as vector or bitmap graphics) can be exchanged in animations using keyframes, for example. When importing Photoshop files, layer groups in which only one element is visible are automatically converted to switch layers. Moho also uses the same principle for FBF animations
principle is also used for FBF animations, as well as for lip synchronisation. Here, as with
Switch Layers, the most suitable mouth shapes are made visible according to the imported sound curve of a speaker. Moho attempts to do this fully automatically, but also works together with Papagayo, for example, a tool that simplifies lip synchronisation. Of course, the images for the respective phonemes can also be set by hand or Smartbone, as in “normal” switch layers. If vector drawings that have been “morphed” are used for the mouth shapes, Moho can even calculate smooth transitions here. However, the smooth transitions should not be visible when using Smartbones.
Layers can be sorted and summarised in groups in the layer menu. Different blending modes (as in other graphics applications) can also be selected there, for example.
If bones are used, all elements to be animated must be subordinate to a bone group. To do this, either create a bone layer in the layer menu and then move the layers to be manipulated underneath it, or create a layer group by right-clicking on selected layers, which can then be converted into a bone layer. Switch layers can also be created in exactly the same way. And Moho also has a text layer.
Bony
Lost Marble advertises a sophisticated bone system. Not all bones are the same in Moho. There are bones that are “simply” drawn hierarchically.
Every bone that is drawn on an active bone is automatically bound to it. With the “Reparent Bone” icon, the hierarchy, represented by green and, for selected bones, red arrows, can be viewed and changed. Sketch bones are drawn even more simply, in a single line. This allows long bone chains to be created. The length of the individual bones can be preset. Smart Bones can probably control every animation that has been summarised in an action via its respective angle – including the order of the objects in switch layers. Actions can be reused as required. Under “suitable” conditions, e.g. if bone structures with the same structure are used, they can even be used in different projects.
The Vitruvian Man, or rather the famous depiction by Leonardo da Vinci, was the model for the name Vitruvian Bones. When using these bones, similar to switch layers, elements (e.g. body parts, but with the bones included) are exchanged in the animation. For example, a character has four arms, like Shiba. Each arm has a different posture and position. By switching the individual poses of the arms, animation time is to be saved considerably.
Pin bones are created by simply placing a point when drawing a bone. They can be used like “normal” bones but, depending on the specified bone strength, they enable special distortion effects to be created both for vector drawings and imported bitmaps by moving (T), rotating (T Alt) or scaling (T CTRL). As mentioned, bones always affect the objects that are subordinate to them.
Binding in Moho, as in 3D software, is the linking of bones and “content”. Flexi-Bind Points is the standard method; it binds points to bones in such a way that they are influenced by all the bones in the parent bone layer, depending on the Bone Strength, the area of influence of each bone. More control is achieved with the direct binding of selected points to selected bones (bind points). When recreating classic cutout animations, it makes sense to have all the body parts of a figure to be animated in individual layers. Bones that are connected to these layers (bind layers) then only affect these elements.
Moho still offers some options to make rigging more efficient, e.g. the option to “Create Smooth Joint for Bone Pair” (tries to create smooth joints between two bones). This is probably best suited for bending bitmaps, e.g. when bending a leg.
Conclusion
Moho clearly claims to do 2D animation at a professional level, and not just because of the $400 price tag for the Pro version. Moho offers a wealth of drawing and animation options that cover almost every possible 2D task. However, the software also requires a corresponding amount of effort before it can be used effectively. We will save ourselves a comparison with other applications that are either easier to use but offer fewer possibilities – or can do even more, but are then also more complex.
If you are serious about 2D animation and want to try out the advantages of vector graphics and, above all, Moho’s Bone system, you should take a look at the demo versions. We think that the latest upgrade, especially because of the new graphics engine, has really taken Moho to a new level. We wish Moho a good way into the future and hope for good news from Lost Marble.
A collection of Moho scripts
There are various instructions for installing the scripts in Moho, including here:
is.gd/moho_scripts_install. At least for most of the scripts in this list there is the option “Download for Install Script command”. In this case, the installation was successful with just a few clicks using the installation script integrated in Moho. Please make sure that the scripts are intended for the current Moho version!
Some suggestions for testing
MR Curve Tool: This script simplifies the drawing of curves. One option is
z. Drawing outside frame 0. is.gd/mr_curve_tool
MR Pose Tool: Promises to speed up posing by combining the Transform Bone and Manipulate tools. is.gd/mr_pose_tool
MR Key Motion: Manipulates curves in the timeline by moving selected keyframes (Smooth, Pull
(Smooth, Pull, Scale, Flip). is.gd/mr_key_motion
MR Path: Should help to analyse animations by drawing “bone” and “point paths” across the animation layers for visualisation. is.gd/mr_path
MR Tween Machine: Anticipation and exaggeration – anticipating movements and “overshooting” are among the well-known principles of animation. This script generates additional keyframes before and after the end of a movement in order to achieve the desired behaviour. is.gd/mr_tween_machine
MR Transform Rig Tool: Parts of the rig can be deformed without affecting its functions. is.gd/mr_transform_rig
MR Guides: Create and edit guides without having to leave the current layer and action. is.gd/mr_guides
MR Overlay: Create an “overlay” to obtain a reference layer. is.gd/mr_overlay
MR Continue Animation: Extend existing animations based on two neighbouring keyframes up to the current frame. is.gd/mr_continue_animation
MR Track Bone: Transfer the transformation of a bone from an animation to any skeleton. is.gd/mr_track_bone
Script for importing Affinity Layers or Krita, Spine, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Gimp… into Moho is.gd/import_layers
LipSync with papagayo: An app to easily automate lip synchronisation lostmarble.com/papagayo
Specsheet
Moho Pro 14: 399.99 US dollars
Moho Debut 14: 59.99 US dollars
For the differences between the two versions, see here: is.gd/moho_debut_14
or is.gd/moho_pro_14
System requirements
Windows 10 or higher, 2.0 GHz Intel Core i3 or higher, 4 GB RAM or higher, 16 GB free hard drive space or more, OpenGL 4.1-supported graphics card required (1920 × 1080 recommended)
macOS 10.15, or higher, 2.0 GHz Intel Core i3 or higher, 4 GB RAM or higher,
1.6 GB free hard drive space or more, OpenGL 4.1-supported graphics card required (1920 × 1080 recommended) – Moho 14 is fully compatible with Apple silicon chips (M1) (M2)
For displays with high pixel density, the minimum resolution varies depending on the scaling level recommended by the operating system. For example, if the operating system recommends a scaling level of 200 per cent, the minimum requirement may be a resolution of 2736 × 1824. Or if the operating system recommends a scaling level of 150 per cent, the minimum requirement can be up to a resolution of 2160 × 1440.
A demo version is available. This is fully functional, allows opening and saving of Moho files, and is valid for 30 days. Restrictions are no import of external file formats (images, films) and no export of animations to other formats (MP4, MOV, PNG…)
