Moho Animation Forum

Hey guys. Might want to upgrade from ASP v6 for my next project and wondering what the new features are in versions 7 & 8 that might make it worth it.

I've read about physics engine, the "new" curve methodology, the simple 3D shapes that can be drawn and extruded. . .what else? Fancy stuff to simple interface stuff (heard you can now select, move, delete, etc. multiple layers at the same time, etc.

Can't find the answers in a single comprehensive thread on here.

Is 8 Okay or is it buggy and I should maybe look at 7?

If you are going to upgrade from 6 you might as well get 8 because there is nothing in 7 that is not in 8.

That's what I figured. . .does 8 work well? I've read some things about bugs.

One thing that continually nailed me in 6, that worked perfectly in 5, and that I still haven't figured out, is the styles panel. It just does not seem to work right. Did that ever get tweaked after 6?

One of the biggest drawcards for me to AS 8 was the masking bug fix. It is also quite stable I find.

D.K

What was the masking bug? I used masking for extremely simple applications, like keeping this shape from going outside the boundaries of that shape. . .revealing something slowly from being invisible, etc. Never encountered any issues.

With the physics. . .just watched a tutorial on youtube, seems kinda neat. Can you do this kind of thing with it:

I had a character in my last short film flip a coffee table. I hand animated from trial and error everything that happened thereafter, from the rotation of the table/the speed at which it flipped, to the distance/timing and arc with which all the objects on the coffee table flew off and landed.

So can you, with the physics engine, do something like flipping the table, and the rest of the animation would take care of itself (objects would fly and land based on weight/gravity, etc.?

For a thorough explanation do a search but a small white/black line would appear where it was not supposed to when masking. Apparently it was due to AS antializing. Anyways it's been sorted in 8.

viewtopic.php?t=19216&highlight=masking+bug

Cheers
DK

basshole wrote:So can you, with the physics engine, do something like flipping the table, and the rest of the animation would take care of itself (objects would fly and land based on weight/gravity, etc.?

You can. The trouble you may run into (I definitely would but I'm far from an expert using the physics engine) is getting the objects on the table to sit still until the flip. Items with collision turned on tend to constantly "dance" around.

Again, this was my experience, which was about two hours total of tinkering around. The way I worked around it was to use the Physics engine to create the keyframes I wanted, then turn the engine off and copy and paste the keyframes into a regular animation.

Things I really like in version 8 that I think makes it worth it:

Shape select tool. Say you're on layer one and with the shape select tool you click on a shape on layer 8, that shape will immediately be selected instead of having to select layer 8 and then select the shape. You don't even have to have the tool selected, you can just hold ALT and right click on a shape at any time. Great workflow improvement!

Import a PSD file and get each layer as a seperate layer in AS. It will be imported in a bone layer but now you can also right click a bone layer and convert it to a switch layer.

Round caps on strokes. Instead of the ugly flat ends of strokes you can now have them rounded. Looks much better.

Curve profiles. This was introduced in 7 i think and I use it all the time for trees and grass and stuff. Some examples.

Stroke exposure. Animate how far along a line the stroke is visible. Some nice effects can be achieved. Also introduced in version 7

Follow path. A layer can be animated along a path. I think this was introduced in version 7.

Well, those are some of my favourite features.

Danimal wrote: You can. The trouble you may run into (I definitely would but I'm far from an expert using the physics engine) is getting the objects on the table to sit still until the flip. Items with collision turned on tend to constantly "dance" around.

Not an expert on physics either but there is an option called "start asleep" which I think means that the object will remain stationary until something bumps it.

Cool! Just downloaded the trial so I will play with it.

Multi-core render was introduced in v7, had a bug with embedded scripts that was fixed in v8.

There are many small things I like in v8, like when it ask for a new name when you create a new layer etc...

I have an imac '08, dual core.

Remind me. . .all those user-created scripts that I have installed. . .those won't somehow be "detected" and installed from my older versions, right? I'd have to manually transfer them into the proper folders?

basshole wrote:I'd have to manually transfer them into the proper folders?

Yep.