Moho Animation Forum

Hi, I'm working on an animation in Anime Studio Debut 8 (I know, it's old) with drawings I've created in Sketchbook Pro, and I think it looks OK. The only problem I have pretty much is that, because the drawings are so large, I can't Zoom out more than 160, so I can't see everything. And It'll take me forever to redo all the drawings.

So what I'm wondering is, does Moho Debut/Pro 12 allow you to zoom out more than 160? If not, here's my other question: Does shrinking PNG. files affect the drawing's clarity in Anime Studio?

Thank you!

I can zoom out in the project window so the project frame (the blue rectangle) is just a tiny blot in the middle of the screen. Artwork filling this workspace and more must be more than 200.000 pixels wide, and I don't think your drawings are that large.

If you have artwork in 1920 x 1080 px and import it into a Moho project of the same dimensions, it will fit the project frame perfectly and will be fine for rendering. If you have artwork in larger dimensions, let's say 4000 x 2000 px, and import it, it will be larger that the project frame. You can scale it to fit, or you can increase the camera distance.

Which unit does the 160 refer to?

slowtiger wrote:I can zoom out in the project window so the project frame (the blue rectangle) is just a tiny blot in the middle of the screen. Artwork filling this workspace and more must be more than 200.000 pixels wide, and I don't think your drawings are that large.

If you have artwork in 1920 x 1080 px and import it into a Moho project of the same dimensions, it will fit the project frame perfectly and will be fine for rendering. If you have artwork in larger dimensions, let's say 4000 x 2000 px, and import it, it will be larger that the project frame. You can scale it to fit, or you can increase the camera distance.

Which unit does the 160 refer to?

Thank you for your reply. The artwork reaches 7921 x 4459 px, so it's larger than it should be. I did this so that, unlike previous experiences, the artwork wouldn't be blurry in Anime Studio and once exported.
I'm sorry, I don't think I was clear in my original post. When I use the 'Zoom Camera', it doesn't zoom out far enough to be able to capture all of the artwork on the screen. The 160 is the zoom distance, which can be found on the top left corner after pressing 'Zoom Camera'.

OK, that's a normal size for a background, especially if you want to zoom in a bit. I recommend you just scale it down after importing so it's slightly larger that the project window.

I wonder if maybe you mix up the camera view with the project window view? Use the scroll wheel of your mouse, does the project view change in size?

slowtiger wrote:OK, that's a normal size for a background, especially if you want to zoom in a bit. I recommend you just scale it down after importing so it's slightly larger that the project window.

I wonder if maybe you mix up the camera view with the project window view? Use the scroll wheel of your mouse, does the project view change in size?

Oh, that's a relief. I was thinking maybe the artwork was an abnormally large size. I'm wondering, does resizing the image affect it's quality, or does it maintain it?

And just in case there's still any confusion, I'm not having any trouble viewing the artwork in the work area. My issue is that I can't see the entire piece in the Preview window. And in the work area, the blue border is cutting off quite a bit of the artwork.

The blue border indicates your project borders (and dimensions) so you can be sure to place artwork where it will be seen in the rendered video. Any background should at least fill the blue rectangle, or be a bit larger.

Example: I need to pan with a character, so the BG has the height of the project (1080 px), but is much wider, say, 6000 px. If I use the camera now, I can pan with my character a distance of about 4000 px and always have some part of the BG fill the screen.

Moho imports any artwork in relation to its project settings. If your setting is HDTV (1920 x 1080), a BG of these dimensions will just fit, and anything larger will be larger than the blue rectangle. You can easily scale this down, or leave it this way in case you want to pan around with the camera: the rendered result will be perfect. Just don't scale anything up after importing, this will lead to enlarged and blurry pixels in the final render.

slowtiger wrote:The blue border indicates your project borders (and dimensions) so you can be sure to place artwork where it will be seen in the rendered video. Any background should at least fill the blue rectangle, or be a bit larger.

Example: I need to pan with a character, so the BG has the height of the project (1080 px), but is much wider, say, 6000 px. If I use the camera now, I can pan with my character a distance of about 4000 px and always have some part of the BG fill the screen.

Moho imports any artwork in relation to its project settings. If your setting is HDTV (1920 x 1080), a BG of these dimensions will just fit, and anything larger will be larger than the blue rectangle. You can easily scale this down, or leave it this way in case you want to pan around with the camera: the rendered result will be perfect. Just don't scale anything up after importing, this will lead to enlarged and blurry pixels in the final render.

Having artwork that's large is perfect for animations like in your example, but I need to be able to see the entire background (or at the very least, most of it) in one shot, and not through panning.

Scaling up blurs the pixels, but does scaling down affect them at all? I feel as if that's pretty much my only option. The other option is if Moho 12 allows for the camera to zoom out past 160. Would you know if it does? Thank you.

Just scale down the BG, everything will be fine.

... or move the camera to a larger z (e.g. at 4 instead of the ASD8 default which IIRC was 1.7321)?

hayasidist wrote:... or move the camera to a larger z (e.g. at 4 instead of the ASD8 default which IIRC was 1.7321)?

Wow - you remember correctly to four decimal places? I have trouble remembering my kids' birthdays...

jahnocli wrote:

hayasidist wrote:... or move the camera to a larger z (e.g. at 4 instead of the ASD8 default which IIRC was 1.7321)?

Wow - you remember correctly to four decimal places? I have trouble remembering my kids' birthdays...

nope - I have a calculator -- what I remembered was Sqrt(3)!

slowtiger wrote:Just scale down the BG, everything will be fine.

Ok, thanks. I was just worried it'd mess up the quality, since it's not just the background, but I'd have be scaling down current and future characters, too. I just tried Hayasidist's suggestion, and it seems to work. Changing the Z hadn't occurred to me at all. Anyway, I thank you for taking the time in trying to help me! I really appreciate it.

hayasidist wrote:... or move the camera to a larger z (e.g. at 4 instead of the ASD8 default which IIRC was 1.7321)?

Thanks for your reply. I just tried that out, and it seems to work! Will changing the Z affect the animation at all?

probably not ... but it does depend on exactly what you have in your file and what's been animated.

e.g. if you have a character "standing on" the background
> moving the camera will "scale" both
> scaling down just the bg image will make the character look bigger


There are other options ... say if the ones you have now aren't doing what you want.

hayasidist wrote:probably not ... but it does depend on exactly what you have in your file and what's been animated.

e.g. if you have a character "standing on" the background
> moving the camera will "scale" both
> scaling down just the bg image will make the character look bigger


There are other options ... say if the ones you have now aren't doing what you want.

Great, thank you. So if I make sure everything I need is on the screen before I change the Z position, will everything move in unison? Or do characters move differently than backgrounds?

And thank you, I'll keep that in mind.