Feature request from a Motion Designer

[synthsin75]

Sounds like you should work through the included tutorials, so you have a base understanding of the basics.

this is not helpfull.

This is the feature request section and this is a serious request.
you have to acknowledge there are some serious issues regarding the UI and UX of working with shapes and styles.

Unless you are not interested in improving moho, telling us what comes down to basically "just learn how to work with the quirks" is not a very constructive way to deal with this feedback.

It actually is helpful, to both the users and the developers. When it seems like a user doesn't understand the basics, it's not likely that the developer will take it seriously, especially compared to animation pros they get feedback from. And I've tried to offer advice to help overcome any lack of understanding here, including a video explanation. Understanding how things currently work makes feature/improvement requests more effective. If this is not helpful, and you'd prefer to struggle on your own until Moho devs make it work the way you want it to, I guess that's your prerogative. Please ignore my posts if they annoy you.

i have been trying to finally grasp this part of moho for weeks in my spare time now, working along all the style/shape tutorials but i keep getting baffled,
surely part of this is on me but still i believe its also an indication the UI here is just not very good.

Even if the UI is fairly opaque, which is true for newer users of many different software, it's unlikely that people will have solid suggestions on how to improve it until they fully understand how the functions work. I would suggest setting aside a fair chunk of time to practice with Moho. Very few things worth learning can be picked up in our spare time.

One concrete request i can mention:
When you are in the DEFAULTS(For new shapes) mode of the shapes panel and you have a style active, it would help if MOHO simply previews what this style is (Fill, Stroke, Brush) is.
Instead of forcing you to first apply the stroke to only then find out it was not the style you intended.

You cannot have a saved style active for editing AND defaults for new shapes at the same time. If you mean in defaults mode with a saved style applied, how would you suggest previewing it without applying it to any shape? Another window to clutter the UI? Showing it in the defaults mode, so you can't see the defaults? What if you have two saved styles applied? Which one should it show? And is it difficult to apply strokes? If you select the shape, you can freely experiment, seeing your changes in real-time on your shape.

[Greenlaw]

One concrete request i can mention:
When you are in the DEFAULTS(For new shapes) mode of the shapes panel and you have a style active, it would help if MOHO simply previews what this style is (Fill, Stroke, Brush) is.
Instead of forcing you to first apply the stroke to only then find out it was not the style you intended.

Tip: When I create a Custom Style, I'm diligent about giving it a sensible name. In general, I do this for most Moho items like Bones, V-Bones, Actions...and even Shapes when they're part of a complex layer, such as hands with articulated fingers, or Liquid Shapes.

For example, when a Style is meant to be used only for character outlines, I'll name it something like Char Lines.

When the outline Style is for a specific character, it might be called Bob Char Lines. Then, every Style meant specifically for the character would be named Bob Whatever. This way, I'm never confused about what any Custom Style represents. This practice is definitely better than relying on the default 'Style 1, Style 2, etc,' names.

I also try to keep the Style name as short as possible, often using abbreviations, so the entire name is visible in the window.

A lot of workflow practices like this don't come from the manual...it's just stuff one figures out after using the program in a couple of productions. So, keep using Moho...it will get easier sooner than you might think.

Hope this helps.

[larsgudm]

Sounds like you should work through the included tutorials, so you have a base understanding of the basics.

Well friend, I've spent 50 hours in the software and watched all the tutorials. I've got the basics. I'm saying specifically how they could be better, in my opinion. I managed to pull of what I wanted, but I had all these different things I found either annoying or unnecessary; arbitrary limitations that I believe could be removed to the benefit of both new and old users of Moho.

[synthsin75]

Sounds like you should work through the included tutorials, so you have a base understanding of the basics.

Well friend, I've spent 50 hours in the software and watched all the tutorials. I've got the basics. I'm saying specifically how they could be better, in my opinion. I managed to pull of what I wanted, but I had all these different things I found either annoying or unnecessary; arbitrary limitations that I believe could be removed to the benefit of both new and old users of Moho.

Sorry, that's the impression I got.

21. What's the point even of having style 1 and 2? And why can you change it without having anything selected with the select shape tool? Changing it here really does nothing. It will not go across to a new shape when thats created. So is possible to change it around but it serves absolutely no purpose. Honestly it’s just confusing..
22. The style override makes no sense at all. The checkboxes to the right of the color settings are so obscure and hard to make sense of. They should have a tooltip. Also they should be completely removed in my honest opinion. Why on earth should you have to do these extra arbitrary steps? Why have indivdual customization, then styles and then overrides again to just end up back at individual customization?
23. Make a clear distinction between editing styles and editing objects. I really get confused by it every single time I try to make anything have a new color.

If you do not understand the point of being able to apply more than one saved style, do not understand the overrides (even wanting to remove this useful functionality), and don't understand how the style window displays what's being edited, it's really hard to believe that you understand the basics.

I would suggest spending another 50 hours with the software. Or just ask more question here. There are plenty of people willing to help.