handwriting font

[slowtiger]

Sometimes tasks ask for strange solutions. I had to design a logo with a handwritten font, meaning designing the font as well. Well, my handwriting sucks for quite some time now, as well as my calligraphy skills. I did some sketches, imported into Moho, and the task was done in an hour - Illustrator still doesn't have variable width lines. Smooth curves, and everything is still adjustable. (In the end I'll vectorize the rendered result.)

[sang820]

Moho的绘图工具不十分精确（例如没有比例尺），但它很灵活。
最棒的的是----可以直接制作成动画 祝绘画愉快

[heyvern]

I too still do "non animated illustrations" with Moho just for ease of use. Variable width lines! Yes they rock in Moho.

Illustrator has them now but they are plain wonky and I'm not a fan at all. They are difficult to use and extremely difficult to manage the variable widths after they are created. I get so annoyed with them in Illustator I usually give up and just use filled shapes to create variable width strokes. Another benefit with Moho as a drawing application is NO DOUBLE SHAPES all over the freaking place. Everything can connect logically. I still can't understand why apps like Illustrator can't have stroke and shape connections without freaking "double lines" everywhere to have separate fill colors next to each other. Every since getting moho so many years ago, this one feature for me has always been the best of everything Moho can do.

p.s. Would like to see ability to adjust where the stroke centers on a shape in Moho like in other tools. Inside, outside, center at minimum. The new variable stroke width in Illustrator has total control of where that center point is which is a nice touch. It isn't fixed to inside outside or center.

[slowtiger]

I'm one of the few (?) people who actually worked with ANIMO in its vector incarnation back in the 90's. That software had the most sophisticated stroke engine I've ever seen:
- on any point, you can have a different width
- on any point, you can have a different colour
- you can even have a different gradient at any point
- that gradient could have more than 2 colours
- it also included transparency
- and you could have a positive or negative offset of the stroke from any point.

Of course most of these options you wouldn't need 99% of the time. But as an effect? Neon glowing lines? Striped toothpaste? I thought the best use was to have a shape with a blurred outline (stroke width had a very large range), with being able to control the amount of blur at any point, from sharp line to fluffy cloud.
(If anyone ever implements this, please include copy & paste & store of stroke point settings.)

[synthsin75]

We can do inner/outer strokes fairly easy (workarounds). Outer strokes just require my create shape tool, that allows you to stack shapes on the exact same vectors, allowing a fill-only shape to cover the inner stroke. Inner strokes take a bit more overhead, as you have to use a reference without a stroke to mask the shape. The end result is the same, but such inner strokes could be a pain to animate, nested in a mask layer.

[heyvern]

We can do inner/outer strokes fairly easy (workarounds). Outer strokes just require my create shape tool, that allows you to stack shapes on the exact same vectors...

Oh wow I remember long long ago when that was possible by default. I loved it. It was for this sort of overlapping strokes that I used it for. I still can create multiple shapes on same vectors but it's annoying and a pain and unless really needed. Not exactly worth the effort. It never crossed my slow brain to modify the create shape tool to do it. Cool beans.

I miss having a bunch of different shapes on the same vectors. I wonder why that feature (or bug?) was removed? I seem to recall that it didn't match the logical behavior of the shape tool.

[synthsin75]

Oh wow I remember long long ago when that was possible by default. I loved it. It was for this sort of overlapping strokes that I used it for. I still can create multiple shapes on same vectors but it's annoying and a pain and unless really needed. Not exactly worth the effort. It never crossed my slow brain to modify the create shape tool to do it. Cool beans.

I miss having a bunch of different shapes on the same vectors. I wonder why that feature (or bug?) was removed? I seem to recall that it didn't match the logical behavior of the shape tool.

Well, for new/unaware users, too many stacked shaped will eventually defeat the anti-aliasing of their edges, as each shape if composited to the render. The paint bucket use to be the biggest culprit of this. So that was removed, to do way with complaints and possibly blaming Moho for poor render quality. Much better to blame a third party script. We could still do it without the mod, we just had to include a different extra point in the creation of each stacked shape. PITA.

Yeah, some effects cannot be easily duplicated without stacking shapes.