Zlogspot - animationandvideo

It's hard to believe I'm still going with my quest to learn Moho. It's definitely been an up hill battle but I'm determined to get to the final run of video tutorials that will teach me what is actually new in the latest release of the application. Unfortunately that's not going to happen with this installment which continues on with the Advanced Moho Pro Tutorials from video 28. In this installment I've drifted through another six tutorial videos and am finally starting to discover some of Moho's more useful features. The list below are the tutorial titles and my summaries of each follow after that. I wish I could make demonstration animations for every aspect but I really don't want to prolong my training any more than it already is. Pro - Enhanced Timeline Pro - Key Frame Editing Pro - Actions ( Make sure you watch this! ) Pro - Editable Motion Graphs Pro - Bounce - Stagger and Elastic Pro - Advanced Physics The Enhanced Timeline tutorial is an over...

Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3 or Smith Micro's Moho Studio Pro 12. Which of these 2D animation applications is right for you? Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a strong supporter, and fairly proficient user of CrazyTalk Animator since version 1. It's a great piece of software for producing 2D animations from purchased content quickly and, with version 3, is easier than ever to create animations from your own art. Lesser known is that I first purchased Moho Studio Pro 12 (then known as Anime Studio Pro 9) back in October of 2012 and have been upgrading it to the latest version ever since because I believed in it as an application for creating great 2D animation to TV quality standard. As such, it's a much more complex application than CTA3 that I only got around to learning properly late last year. I'm still in the process of blogging my progress . Despite this I feel I've learned enough of Moho to compare it to CTA3 to help you determine whic...

A brief look at 6 more of Moho's Pro Video tutorials in my continuing series following my progress of learning SmithMicro's animation studio . Of most interest here is the ability to create and import 3D objects. To me that's a little beyond the scope of 2D animation software but if you do want to combine 2D characters with 3D environments it is nice that you can achieve that without having to leave the program. There's also a brief introduction to importing 3D characters from SmithMicro's Poser software. Whilst you can still animate these characters directly in Moho the control method seems very limited (just based on what I've seen thus far). Anyhow, these are the Video Tutorials I completed and have briefly summarized: Pro - 3D Shape Design Pro - AS11 Pro Poser Pro - Advanced Camera Tools Pro - Depth of Field Pro - Depth Shifting Pro - Advanced Timeline A simple shape with 3D effects  Extrude and Inflate applied. 3D shape design covers the basics of turning f...

Toon Boom Harmony is widely considered the industry standard for primarily 2D animation. You don't get to be that if your software isn't exceptional. However, industry standard and exceptional usually translates to steep learning curve and probably contains more features than I'll ever use. So, in reviewing the latest version, Harmony 14, I'm setting out to answer two questions; How easy is it to learn the basics and is it software an independent artist/animator, like myself, should seriously consider as their go to, 2D animation studio of choice? Toon Boom were kind enough to give me a 90 day Harmony Premium license for this review (Harmony is also available in Essentials and Advanced versions) but I thought, since they offer a free 21 day trial, I'll give myself that to write this review. Will it be enough to answer my two previous questions and is a 21 day trial enough for you to make a decision as well? Let's find out... To be clear, I'm not setting out...

After a little bit of a break it's time to continue working my way through  Moho's Pro Video Tutorials  (which were actually created for Anime Studio Pro 11). After watching the next batch of video tutorials I've done a bit reorganization to my initial order of the videos, as my initial guess, based on the video titles, wasn't quite right. This week the videos I watched include: Pro - Nested Layer Controls Pro - Patch Layers Pro - Advanced Bone Rigging Pro - Bone Constraints Pro - Bone Enhancements Pro - Smart Bones Pro - Smart Bone Enhancements Pro - Smart Bones Update Nested layer Controls shows how to turn on the Nested Layer Control so that Bone and image layers can properly talk to each other  correctly. For example if you have a character rig where all the image components are buried in sub folders, turning this setting on will make sure they behave as you would expect and not become detached from the bones. Patch layers demonstrates a special kind of mask l...

Cool Froyd was originally created and rigged in the first version of CrazyTalk Animator . Now that CrazyTalk Animator 3 has added its all new G3 line of characters it's time to update Cool Froyd to take advantage of this more flexible (literally), single angle, character rig. Froyd was never designed to be an animated character. He's taken from a painting that I thought would be fun to animate. Which is largely what attracted me to CTA in the first place as, to this day, Reallusion still promotes CTA as a way to bring paintings to life. As such, the way Froyd sits is how he sits in the original painting. Non of CTA3's new motion files or character rigs for quadrupeds are front facing and therefore not suited to him specifically. However that's where CTA3's free bone characters fill in the gap. Anything that doesn't fit to a human, quadruped or spine template can still be animated with free bones. To help understand the difference between G1 and G3 characters ta...

GRRR Dog by TET. Can I animate  this guy in CrazyTalk Animator 3? CrazyTalk Animator 3 's bold claim is 'The One-for-all 2D Animation'. Does it deliver? Could it be your 'go to' 2D animation tool of choice? Before I explore those questions I feel a bit of backstory is necessary. I've been using Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator since its original incarnation that promised quick and easy, 2D animation creation. An idea that was relative depending on what kind of animation you wanted to do. Since my focus has largely been on original character animation my experience with CTA is relative to that. If you wanted to create animated characters from your original artwork, quick and easy didn't really describe the time and effort involved. There was a lot of preparation and considerable time spent rigging its G1 characters. CTA2's Multi-Angle G2 Characters. CrazyTalk Animator 2, introduced G2, multi-angle characters, with the revolutionary technique of being a...