Moho Forum

Hello,

I have the done the tutorials, but Im still having problems importing the scans of my drawings and animate them.

What I want to know, if somebody could offer me their help, is how can I manipulate the lines of the drawing ignoring the paper. The problem I was having is that, when I tried to apply bones to my drawing it manipulated the paper also, which I was hoping to use just as a background.

This is not exactly what you asked for but it will explain the concept

http://nobudgetvideo.com/moho/claymohtion/

You will see he got a photo of his clay pieces, cut them out and saved it as a transparent png then assembled those parts in Moho. In essence you need to do the same. You cannot animate the whole image scanned as a single image without distortion because it is not vectors. Scan it in and then use a paint program to cut it up arms, legs etc.

Hope that helps.

Yea, You have to cut it up in sections, Upper arm, Lower arm, hand, Torso, Head Ect........
Then just bind the bones to the according layer, Example...
Hand bone bind to the hand.png
And so on

Thank you for your reply, but my problem is that I cant sepparate any bodyparts of the drawing because it is merged with the paper it is drawed on. What I dont know is how to make my drawing (imagine a stick-man) usable for moho, so that i.e. i can apply bones to each bodypart.

thank you again for your help!

Ola. Primero disculpa mi espanol.

Dejame tratar de explicar. Si tienes un dibujo y usas el sistem de juesos (bones) de Moho para animar lo, sin separar a los brazos etc, puedes pero vas a ver distortion en la mayoria de casos. En esta prueba que hice con un pescado functiona bastante bien pero no tiene brazos, ni piernas etc so el animation es basico.

http://stormvisions.com/bc/fish3.mov

El imajen lo converti en PNG usando Paint Shop Pro, y selectione una area que fuera transparente, y despues lo abri en Moho.

Quisas Ramon o otro te puede explicar en espanol el processo con mas detalle si te hace falta -a mi se me hace un nudo en los dedos tratando de escribir en espanol.

Puedes tambien abrir tu imagen en un programma como Paint Shop Pro, GIMP or Photoshop etc y hacer varias copias y 'cortar' los brazos etc y guardarlos como imagenes separados con transparencia y armarlo en Moho con bones.

Por ultimo puedes trajer to imagen en Moho, poner nuevos 'vector layers' como brazo. cabeza, etc y copiar el imajen con los heramientas de dibujo de Moho dibujando cada pieza seperado. Asi te es mas facil mover las piezas despues.

Y con eso me voy, ya me dolio la cabeza.

Jaja, muchas gracias maestro, el español esta muy bien! My problem is that I cant seem to get the drawing sepparated from the paper, I know there has to be an easier way than to trace it with Moho´s drawing tools. What happens is that when I manipulate an arm, the whole paper bends. Maybe what I dont understand is the "transparency" concept, because I dont know how to use Photoshop, but if there is someone who can explain to me how I can get a simple stick man drawed by hand with a pen on a piece of paper and scanned to the computer to work on moho, I would kindly appreciate it.

Thanks again!

If yer gonna draw stick men just draw them straight in Moho.
I did this a week ago:

http://www.christianteenforums.com/inde ... st&id=1265

It's very easy to put together.

James

Ok. Can you tell us what graphics program you are using? The link I mentioned above is actually the process http://nobudgetvideo.com/moho/claymohtion/ he took a picture of the clay and cut out the parts but tell us what program you have -Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro etc- and someone will be able to explain how to set up the transparency.

I see several solutions here:

1) trace the original drawing in Moho (or another program, that produces Illustrator files which Moho can import) so you end up with vector graphics; separate the body parts and put them in their own vector layer

2) redraw your character on paper and draw the character's body parts as in an exploded view (separate from eachother), then scan and
2a) use an image editor to copy each bodypart into a separate image; make the background made invisible in these images and save each image as a transparent PNG file; use the original image scan as a reference where each part should go (use a separate image layer in Moho for the reference scan)

3) if you are not able to redraw the original "drawing" (e.g. because it is a photograph), separate the body parts in a copy of the scanned image and do some retouch to repair the parts whith holes in them; now follow the same procedure as in 2a

4) If you character was in a photograph, you could try to rephotograph the character, but now with all limbs straight and overlapping eachother as little as possible; now scan and follow the same procedure as in 2a

For 2, 3 and 4: use a Moho image size that is large enough that it can contain the assembled character (as a bitmap image) easily. So for a 1200 by 800 pixel bitmap image use a 1500 by 1500 pixel Moho file. You can alway import the character in a Moho file with smaller dimensions (Moho scales the image down).

Hello again, I use the Photoshop, but I dont know how to make the background invisble so that only the drawing gets exported to Moho. What happens is that I save the file as .png and then in Moho I have to deal with the white backround as well.

Thanks again, and a Happy New Year!

If you cut out the sections from your image in photoshop.
Create a new file, Size it to your licking.
Drag say... the arm onto the new file u made.
Save it as .png, And in MoHo the background will NOT show, No more white background

Hello, I did just what you said: opened the drawing in photoshop, selected a bodypart and cut it; then I opened a new window and pasted the selection. Then I saved the document as a .PNG and imported it to moho. The white background was still there.

Thats weird
Ill make a video of me doing the process, Just to make sure all the steps are being made.

BTW, Are you using a transparent background?

I think im not using a transparent background, because its white... maybe thats the problem, I dont know how to make a transparent background!

Perhaps this simple tutorial will help (found through Google). It is so simple, that is has to work. The idea is:
1) open your file
2) using the Magic Wand tool, select everything that is background
3) invert the selection
4) copy the selection
5) create a new transparent image
6) paste the selection
7) save the new file

If you couldn't come up with this procedure yourself, it means you have no adequate experience in using Photoshop. Perhaps you should consider taking an online crash course to learn the basics.