I "#€% surrender...

[mangeman]

I've been making pixel art in photoshop and importing to Moho. It gives me strange sporadic gaps between character parts and I can't reproduce what causes it. I've tried turning off edges/anti-aliasing but it doesn't help. I've tried saving the PSD file at extreme resolutions and scaling it down in Moho. There can be a 3 pixel gap between an arm and the torso whilst the other arm looks good. On the example there's also a one pixel hairline at the waist.



Tried exporting to Illustrator and then importing an AI version 8 file into Moho. Useless. You get a one layer outline without fill.

So finally I figured, fantastic I'll just go ahead and draw from scratch using the plethora of intuitive tools built in to Moho. Another two years of development and they will surely rival Microsoft Paint anno 1989.

I get some interesting results in the editor when I draw some boxes as you can see. It doesn't show on the render, but what exactly is going on here? It's a BOX, right? About as simple as it gets.



Fix your importing. How anyone manages to use this professionally is beyond me. Adobe is standard, deal with it. Allow for seamless import of the latest PSD and AI formats from the CC suite. As it is, Moho is basically good for the manufacturing and maintaining of headaches.

[jahnocli]

Try PXLR -- it probably does what you want and it's free. I don't think Moho was ever designed for pixel art; you're blaming an apple for not being an orange...

[slowtiger]

The gaps you see with your imported images are only at the file borders, and they appear because Moho/AS calculates with sub-pixels. To avoid these, add 2 px of transparency around your artwork in PS.

Aside of that, using a PIXEL program for pixel art seems to be the obvious choice. But OK, people are even using Excel for painting.

[mangeman]

I'm not struggling to create the art. I'm struggling to use it properly in Moho, so I don't see what PIXLR adds for me. Moho as far as I can tell was designed to animate graphical elements, photoshop can create such elements. Or are you saying that Moho wasn't designed for elements that have right angles?

Every layer in the psd file has transparency all around them, and the gaps that appear do so inconsistently. There's no gap in the neck for example. So where should I add two transparent pixels?

[slowtiger]

Ah, different workflow. I never use "import PSD", I save my stuff by hand from PS and take care of these little details. I assume that Moho/AS imports each PS layer as a file with the exact dimensions of the artwork, thus creating that border problem again.

Your understanding of "graphical element" only refers to the content (something rectangular with hard edges), but it's more important to understand the technical differences between pixel and vector artwork.

Moho/AS user Mike Scott successfully animated several music videos in 8bit style, so it's completely doable. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-tNUur2YoU.

[mangeman]

My workaround is to reduce the number of parts to the bare minimum. I don't need the arms separate because I animate them using switch layers only. In this instance I don't have switch layers for the arms anymore, I just create combined torsos and arms and alternate between those instead. Works just fine. Same with the head, I went from separate head and hair to just one layer with both to eliminate potential gaps.

Anyway thanks for the help. But they really need to get on this and include up to date Creative Suite CC support because jumping through all these technical hoops to make up for basic software functionality destroys creativity.

[jahnocli]

...are you saying that Moho wasn't designed for elements that have right angles?

No. Moho can deal with right angles just fine. I'm saying that Moho is a vector program that can use raster images. It definitely was not designed with pixel art in mind. So it seems strange that you are criticising the program for something it wasn't designed to do when there are pixel animation programs out there specifically designed for this.

[mangeman]

So it seems strange that you are criticising the program for something it wasn't designed to do

You can see the arbitrary graphical artefacts that Moho produces, right? Why have PSD import functionality when it's broken? If it's a vector-based program, why not have 21th century vector format import available? Why can't I open an Illustrator CC 2017 file with all layers intact? The built-in tools are horrendous. Just the fact that each layer has it's own grid rather than one fixed grid that all layers can snap to disqualifies the entire proposition.

If importing was consistent and predictable then a Photoshop pixel art > Moho > Premiere workflow would work very well. As it is I have to think around the limitations of a VERSION TWELVE product. Even better would be the equivalent AI support so I can make a vector-based "pixel art" look but I suppose that will be for version 18.0 at a 699 dollar upgrade.

[jahnocli]

...I can make a vector-based "pixel art" look but I suppose that will be for version 18.0 at a 699 dollar upgrade.

I suppose so. Welcome to the forum, by the way.

[Víctor Paredes]

Did you try unchecking the anti-aliasing in the Project Settings or in the image layers' proprieties?

[mangeman]

Did you try unchecking the anti-aliasing in the Project Settings or in the image layers' proprieties?

I have tinkered with that, it's doesn't help this particular problem. My solution to combine the arms and torso works consistently so I'll stick with that.

I can get a cleaner look by selecting "nearest neighbour sampling" in the image layer in Moho, it's just annoying that I have to make that change to every layer. It should be a document wide option as well.

[Víctor Paredes]

I can get a cleaner look by selecting "nearest neighbour sampling" in the image layer in Moho, it's just annoying that I have to make that change to every layer. It should be a document wide option as well.

[Víctor Paredes]

For image layers already imported, if you need to apply Nearest neighbor sampling to all images at once, simply filter the layers by image kind, select all the layers, open the proprieties, go to image tab, check "Copy all image settings to other selected layers" and press Apply.

[dkwroot]

It's incredibly easy to make pixel art in Moho. Just go to view>Enable Grid

Then use the draw shape tool with grid snap enabled.

Alternatively, you could enable pixelation in the layer settings.

[mangeman]

For image layers already imported, if you need to apply Nearest neighbor sampling to all images at once, simply filter the layers by image kind, select all the layers, open the proprieties, go to image tab, check "Copy all image settings to other selected layers" and press Apply.

That's excellent, I'll do that from now on, thank you.