Moho Forum

After just a few frames (and hours) it became clear that Moho's Flash export of 3D animation is always much more "bulkier" than plain 2D animation (even if it depicts the same). Four frames of the 3D animation needed 14955 bytes, while the 2D version needed 8300 bytes (44 % less). The complete 3D animation needs 200384 bytes. If the amount of bytes saved is about 40%, the 2D version would need approx. 120000 bytes. It takes between 45 and 75 minutes to redraw a frame (faster in a vector drawing program, which I can't used due to the demo version of Moho).

I will try to complete this animation at a later date, after I have registered Moho and am able to export the frames individually to Illustrator files. It takes a lot of time to do all the drawing in Moho, which I'd rather spend on something else right now.

It takes between 45 and 75 minutes to redraw a frame

??? Is that correct? I guess I don´t understand what you are referring to.
Are you referring to rendering your animation? It takes that long to render each frame or the animation or ???
My building link up above was about 36 frames at 24 fps and took about 3-5 seconds to render the entire animation in Moho.

...am able to export the frames individually to Illustrator files...

From my understanding, one can import vector files from Illustrator into Moho, but one cannot export vector files from Moho to Illustrator. The only files Moho exports are image type files. If you know how to export a vector file from Moho to Illustrator, please let me know.
Or are you referring to exporting png, targa or bmp images to Illustrator?

To me ~~~~~Complicatedness like this

Toontoonz wrote:

It takes between 45 and 75 minutes to redraw a frame

??? Is that correct? I guess I don´t understand what you are referring to.
Are you referring to rendering your animation? It takes that long to render each frame or the animation or ???
My building link up above was about 36 frames at 24 fps and took about 3-5 seconds to render the entire animation in Moho.

Yes that time is about correct; redrawing all those shapes at the correct positions by hand takes a lot of time. Remember, I had trown all assistance from Moho out of the window. I should have known better.

...am able to export the frames individually to Illustrator files...

From my understanding, one can import vector files from Illustrator into Moho, but one cannot export vector files from Moho to Illustrator. The only files Moho exports are image type files. If you know how to export a vector file from Moho to Illustrator, please let me know.
Or are you referring to exporting png, targa or bmp images to Illustrator?

No, I just was mistaken and you are right. There should be a Illustrator export filter (or any other popular vector format) in Moho, but unfortunately there isn't. Flash has one, though, but Flash has trouble interpreting my 3D SWF files, so I can't use Flash as a intermediate.

Although I found an alternative route to create Adobe Illustrator files (using the online service of AutoTrace, which converts bitmaps into vector formats: .ai, .eps, .svg, and others), I think it a very complicated way of making 3D SWF files smaller.

The Windows program Flash Optimizer does a much better job than I ever could, and certainly much quicker.

I enlarged the Moho animation to a new size of 1280 x 960 pixels and exported it to SWF. Next, I transfered the file to my Windows system and ran Flash Optimizer (still 4 days left for the trial version). Here are the files:
- original from Moho (233 Kbytes)
- Compressed by Flash Optimizer (100 Kbytes)

Strangly enough, it matters how large your source file dimensions are. The 320 x 240 pixels SWF file was only 196 Kbytes. One would expect that vector files are completely independent of the dimensions of the canvas. In Shockwave Flash this is obviously not the case.

Nevertheless, this means all my efforts -- how interesting they may have been -- were in vain. I can't beat Flash Optimizer by mere hand drawing.

This human was beaten by a computer

sang820 wrote: To me ~~~~~Complicatedness like this

Sometimes I'm being so complicatidablifying I even don't understand myself

I don´t know, but maybe it seems perhaps you are getting too concerned about making as small a final rendered file as you can?
Once you make any animation over a few seconds long and has any type of detail and movement in it, I have found it easily gets large, really quick.

Anything that is going to go on longer (as in minutes) is going to be real big. Saving a few bytes here and there doesn´t matter. I am more interested in what my animation is saying and doing. (Yes, I do try to keep the file size down as much as possible.) And with more and more people having a fast broadband internet connection, is it necessary to keep a Flash file real small, under 30- 50 Kb? And what can one create in that small of a file?

The way I do a final render of the animation is render out individual bmp, png or targa files from Moho, import all these files into Adobe After Effects, do all my editing and add the sound in there, then if I want to take it into Flash to add interactivity to it, I export the compiled movie file as a Macromedia (soon to be Adobe) Flash Video .flv file. This really compresses the size. Then do the Flash interactive thing and export as a .swf file. This is the best way I have found to compact and put the movie together.

This is useful information for a newbie like me.

If I understand correctly, the best way to go in Moho is to create a bitmap movie and don't use the SWF export filter at all, ever.

I use iLife '05 with iMovie. Is that good enough to create QuickTime animations with sound?

RASH wrote:This is useful information for a newbie like me.

If I understand correctly, the best way to go in Moho is to create a bitmap movie and don't use the SWF export filter at all, ever.

I use iLife '05 with iMovie. Is that good enough to create QuickTime animations with sound?

Regarding the way to make an animated movie, there are always exceptions to any way of doing things. One has to experiment and see what works best for their hardware and software situation and the animation one is making. A ball bouncing up and down for 2 seconds for use on a website does not need the same treatment as a very elaborate and complicated 30 minute animation for TV with lots of characters, objects, backgrounds, scenes, music and voices.

I don´t use iLife so can´t comment on it.