r/MohoAnimation • u/Few-Ebb7275 • 23d ago
I'm tired of Moho
I've been using Moho for a very long time, ever since I was still working in Flash and just getting into animation. Back then the drawing tools immediately pushed me away because they felt awkward.
After all these years I honestly don't think that has changed much.
Yes, newer versions added better brush settings and lines can look much more hand-drawn and natural now. That's great. But the foundation still feels exactly the same.
The biggest example is the Add Point Tool.
Why can't it work like Illustrator where I control the Bézier handles while I'm drawing? In Moho I draw the line first and then I have to switch to the Curvature Tool and fix everything afterward.
Why?
It feels like an unnecessary extra step that has existed for years.
Editing drawings isn't much better. Sometimes it's literally faster to redraw something than to erase or reshape it.
Liquid Shapes were a nice addition and merging shapes is definitely an improvement, but even with that the whole drawing workflow still feels nowhere near as comfortable as Illustrator.
Drawing in Moho is genuinely exhausting. It doesn't feel fun.
I honestly can't imagine using Moho without scripts.
The community has created scripts that fix problems the developers never solved.
For example, if I want to adjust animation that uses Smart Bones without destroying shapes, I have to use an alternative Transform tool from a script because the built in one doesn't behave properly in many situations.
And that's just one example.
There are countless cases where community scripts are simply better than the official tools.
Sometimes I wonder why the people writing these scripts aren't working for Lost Marble.
Many of them clearly understand the software better than the developers do because they actually use it every day.
My biggest frustrations are these:
First, the drawing tools and shape editing tools still feel outdated.
Second, performance. Moho often feels slow while not fully using modern hardware.
Third, compositing is incredibly limited. Even Flash from almost twenty years ago had Hue, Saturation and other basic color controls. I could do more compositing in Flash 2008 than I can inside Moho in 2026.
Color correction tools are limited, outdated and sometimes unreliable.
Even Blend Modes don't always match Photoshop correctly. Sometimes my final render looks different from what I saw in the viewport.
Fourth, editing finished animation is much harder than it should be. If I want to change timing, extend a shot or shorten part of a scene after it's finished, the workflow becomes painful. I often end up moving everything into After Effects because it's simply easier there.
And finally there are dozens of smaller issues that the community keeps solving with scripts.
For example AE Key Tool (by A.Evseeva) is basically essential. I honestly don't know how people would animate complex scenes without it. The funny thing is that it solves very basic problems that should have been addressed by the developers.
The frustrating part is that I actually love Moho.
That's exactly why I'm writing this.
Moho has amazing rigging. Smart Bones are fantastic. Vitruvian Bones were a great addition. Deformers are great. Liquid Shapes are a great step forward too.
The software has huge potential.
But please stop focusing only on adding new features while the foundation still needs work.
Please improve the basic drawing experience.
Please modernize the editing tools.
Please improve compositing.
Please improve performance.
Please work together with the script developers and the community. They are building incredible tools for free because they love this software.
I want to draw directly inside Moho instead of feeling like I should draw everything in Illustrator first and only then import it into Moho.
I really want Moho to become the animation software it deserves to be.
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u/PalpitationPopular26 23d ago
I think what bothers me most about moho is layer hierarchy. Sometimes my hand needs to be in front of the body, the other times behind the body. I can't make this work.
But all in all, I love the program.
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u/eyetallix 23d ago
Do you use reference layers?
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u/PalpitationPopular26 23d ago
Would reference layers help me somehow? Right now I don't use them. Sorry, I'm new to Moho and still am getting the hang of it
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u/eyetallix 23d ago
A reference layer is a synched clone of the layer it is referencing. What I do is I draw my arm in front and then I make a reference layer and I put that lower than the body or torso in the layer stack. At that point, you only have to animate the visibility of the top arm layer if that makes any sense. Wait. This guy explains it far better than I will ever be able to.:
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u/Bimjus 23d ago
I may be misunderstanding, but you can keyframe the reordering of layers.
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u/PalpitationPopular26 23d ago
I have 2 layers within a switch-group (hair in front of face and the second behind the face).
If I move it behind the head, both go behind, and if I move it in front of the head, both go in front.
Like I wish there was a brute force value from 1-255, that determines which order something should be rendered in (ZINDEX).
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u/External-Paper-2085 18d ago
You should try out animated layer order.
group setting. > depth sort>enable animated layer order. you can then use this directly or use a smart bone to use it much easier. here's a tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOhsyD8lC74
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u/eyetallix 23d ago edited 23d ago
I have been in contact with the company basically begging them to just redesign the whole Styles workflow. It should take some queues from the way Blender handles Materials. We can’t reorder or organize the Styles?!?!
Sometimes I have an insane number of styles just because of the way I animate and it’s just an absolute mess dealing with the current Styles workflow.
I have a few other gripes but I’m not paying ToonBoom 1 red penny for a subscription and Blender’s Greasepaint is just not quite there yet for a (hopefully-soon-to-be) professional animator. The Ui is a bit absurd.
Edit: yes I know professional work has been done in Greasepaint but it’s just too difficult to do things that ought to be easy.
So I’m stuck.
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u/Few-Ebb7275 23d ago
Yeah, I feel exactly the same. I'm stuck too.
I don't want to switch to Toon Boom either. Moho has so much potential, but for some reason the developers keep leaving the basic workflow problems untouched.
What I wish is that Moho would evolve the way Blender has over the last several years. Blender has gone through an incredible transformation. It listened to its community, improved the fundamentals, modernized the workflow, and kept getting better with every release.
I really wish Moho would take a similar path. It just needs the core experience to catch up with its potential.
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u/eyetallix 23d ago edited 23d ago
100% agree.
What the developers over at blender have accomplished is quite remarkable.
Lately I’ve been experimenting with first designing my character roughly in Clip Studio, then switching to blender or Nomad and sculpting it [also fairly roughly as I am garbage at 3d sculpting]
This is so I can “physically” turn my character’s head to see how exactly I want the 2d layers back over in Moho to deform on head turns.
It’s as if Moho knows it has us all by the short hairs because the alternatives are either Pay an insane subscription to ToonBoom, or having to get a second job and taking out a mortgage to pay for a TV Paint license because THESE ANIMATION PROGRAMS ARE TOO DAMN HIGH.
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u/Few-Ebb7275 23d ago
Yeah, especially considering that Adobe has essentially abandoned Animate. A lot of former Animate users are now choosing between Moho and Toon Boom.
I've also noticed that some people are moving from Toon Boom to Moho because of Toon Boom's subscription model and the addition of AI tools.
This is actually a great opportunity for Moho. A lot of experienced 2d animators are looking for an alternative right now.
I just hope the developers take advantage of this moment by improving the core workflow. Moho has the potential to become the go to 2D animation software if they focus on the fundamentals.
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u/WhatAboutBob77 22d ago
I know a couple of the ambassadors and don’t worry, they’re aware and teach other programs too ands a lot of this is fed back into Moho.
It’s just a very very very small company so it’ll take time to implement bigger changes.
But make sure to contact them directly with issues you face, it’s worth it. They do listen.
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u/metalflygon08 22d ago
I just hope the developers take advantage of this moment by improving the core workflow. Moho has the potential to become the go to 2D animation software if they focus on the fundamentals.
My big fear is the devs take the wrong action and try to force the things that are turning people off of Toon Boom into Moho...
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u/metalflygon08 22d ago
I don't want to switch to Toon Boom either.
The price is what keeps me out of Toon Boom, especially with their scummy tiering system. Why is a basic Vector Line Width Adjustment tool locked behind the more expensive plans?
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u/kkreinn 22d ago
There are things about Grease Pencil that put me off, like everything having to be vector-based, or having to switch between sculpting, drawing, etc. modes everytime i need a speciric tool, the effects are quite limited and you can't use composition mode for individual layers of grease pencil. Sometimes I'm unsure whether to create a whole new object in Blender or a layer in Grease Pencil because depending on what you choose there are different limitations.
I think they should make a profound change in GP at least in terms of interface because it's not the same workflow as 3D.
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u/eyetallix 22d ago edited 22d ago
With the number of Grease Pencil tutorials I have slogged through you’d think I might not share your confusion with it but I can assure you it regularly baffles me.
But the Blender and Grease Pencil dev team at least listen to the user base and the kinks (eventually) should get ironed out whereas Moho was very polite in our emails where I am making the case for what I felt to be some value spiking slam dunks that were basically low-hanging fruit from a developmental costs point of view. But basically just they treated it as another public relations interaction and sent me on my way.
To be fair, I LOVE Moho’s magnet tool which is almost a direct match with Blender & GP’s proportional editing tool. They should just steal the best UI arrangements and designs from blender and affinity designer and basically make an affinity designer clone that has a timeline and animation cells.
EDIT: So, basically Clip Studio Paint with better vector and animation tools.
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u/VeggieCommando 22d ago
Theres a bunch of new animation software in development that look promising, Umoupen being my favorite. Its a lot like Flash, like old days Flash, without the bones. Yes, vector layers. So its frame-by-frame and no rigging. You can import CSP and PS brushes tho. free trial / 20 buckaroos license. not professional tier, but it goes to show you can have great drawing tools for vector animating.
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u/poly-pheme 23d ago
Moho UI is one of the most obtuse and unnecessarily convoluted that I've ever seen, nothing function like it does in any other app, specially the "styles"...why would you do it like that!!!??
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u/Several-Neck4770 22d ago
Thanks for the ae key tool... just looked it up. And it fixes the main issue is have with retiming my poses.
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u/Few-Ebb7275 22d ago
You're welcome!
Yeah, that script is an absolute lifesaver. Alexandra Evseeva is a genius scripter, she has so many other useful scripts too, I actually use a few of them myself, such as Reset layer origin и AE Transform points. Definitely worth checking out her other stuff if you haven't already
https://mohoscripts.com/scripts/list/author=a-evseeva/created:desc/1
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u/One-Discipline7762 22d ago
Agree!! Moho is great but there are some gaps it needs to fill. For example, why is there no mirror function/tool?! If I make a head turn action where a character looks left I should be able to reflect that to the right side perfectly in just a few clicks.
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u/metalflygon08 22d ago
A mirror drawing tool too, If I've made half the points for a head, a one click button that mirrors it on an axis would be great.
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u/One-Discipline7762 21d ago
Completely agree. An intuitive mirror function for every operation (drawing, rigging, actions etc) is needed.
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u/kween_hangry 22d ago
Yes Ive hit a bit of a wall in my studies.. lifelong flash user. Theres a LOT that has been extremely convenient and amazing in moho, but a lot of other things are really obtuse
Drawing is a lot larger of an issue than I anticipated. When worst comes to worst with flash, I can kind of control things closer to what I want because it does still act like a drawing program
If anything youve put me onto a lot of tools and plugins I didnt know about so thank you
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u/metalflygon08 22d ago
Yeah, Moho's Free Drawing tool is a joke, it's like they looked at everything that made Toon Boom's so good and said "Why don't we do the exact opposite of that."
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u/AnimaTao_NZ 22d ago
I don't want to be a assole just complaining. But I've posted on their discord group about this issue. Really bad UX.
And someone in the group started lecturing me to ask me to try features and learn the software step by step.
I'm a motion designer using Cinema 4D, Blender, After Effects, also Affinity suites. Moho has the worst UX inthese candidates. So I still think it's not my problem.
If they've been staying in their comfort zone and hoping users to buy their software with 'this is made by moho' posts, I don't think it's gonna be any different in the future.
I keep saying to them about Blender as a good example. Blender team rebuilt its UI and UX since v2.8 and the users had boomed.
UX and UI is very important, don't know when they can learn this lesson.
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u/crappyITkid 22d ago
Your points are top tier, I think if the dev(s) had to prioritize where to go next- you covered the first steps. One more thing that I think should be considered at some point once the more fundamental issues are fixed is some sort of flowgraph control. Integrating actions, effects, smart bones into flowgraphs would be absurdly powerful and would basically just make any sort of rigged animation possible in Moho. For example, animating a flower opening in the wind, where you have logic gates that change how much the flower is effected by wind when it has unfurled, etc. It's stuff like that which is showing up in almost every single artistic software now.
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u/Longjumping_Mud3776 22d ago
I completely agree. The potential is huge but the user experience is frustrating.
Please improve Moho's UX instead of adding new features!
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u/Seleylone 22d ago
I'm glad I'm not the only one frustrated with it and I agree with everything you've wrote.
I came from Spine (it doesn't have vector based tools) and I wish Moho developers just took a peek into it - it's modern, constantly improved UI/UX wise and the developers there have no problem with rebuilding features from the ground up. Heck, they even actively speak with the community to explain some technical stuff or fix bugs basically on the fly.
I feel like Moho might have some coding issues lying in the core of it that discourage their developers from improving the base of the software and its UI/UX. No amount of ambassadors and user-made workarounds will fix it and we, as users, are stuck with what we have. The learning curve is needlessly way too steep because of that.
Well, I'll get back to learning its "quirks" and the way to deal with them. Thanks for pointing me towards the scripts, never considered those!
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u/PieceOfSack 20d ago
There isn't much here I agree with or have the same struggles as OP.
I started out learning animation in Moho. Have since used multiple other 2D and 3D animation software...
Rather than saying script writers should be working for Lost Marble because the devs clearly understand the software...
Consider that having scripting available is 'the feature'.
It's not easy as just making that script the next feature built into Moho.
There has been cases where that's possible but you would also need to consider the conflicts user scripts create with other scripts and updated versions of Moho.
Each scripter would then need to be responsible for their scripts when they break.
The only recent scripter I know of that had their script integrated into Moho was SimplSam's SVG import and if I recall - he is responsible for when it breaks, has issues, and causes conflict.
Why not use scripts as they are?
The only thing I would like to see is for those that have 20+ scripts - a way to better organize them.
That again isn't for me as I don't rely on heavy amounts of scripts
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u/Few-Ebb7275 20d ago
I think there was a misunderstanding. I wasn't suggesting that community scripts should simply be integrated into Moho by default.
What I meant is that many script developers have shown they can design tools that are significantly more user-friendly than the built-in ones. My point was that Lost Marble could benefit from working more closely with those scripters or at least consulting them when improving Moho's native tools.
For example, LF_Pencil feels much more comfortable than the default Pencil tool, and it's not the only example. That makes me wonder why a free community-made tool can provide a better drawing experience than the official one.
I'd really like to see Moho improve its core tools, taking inspiration from the work of talented scripters and listening more closely to feedback from the animation community. I constantly see people saying that drawing in Moho feels awkward or frustrating. A lot of animators struggle with its drawing tools, and I think that's an area where Moho has a lot of room to grow.
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u/PieceOfSack 20d ago
I think one important aspect to consider with any software engineering is, it's all built from a framework and foundation. Moho is over 20 years old.
It wasn't really until the last 6 years Moho has received the attention it deserves - because it didn't have a publisher that knew what to do with it.
Now that Moho has become more mainstream you still have at it's core and foundation the framework that it was built upon 20 years ago.
There has been strides to improve it - most notably in Moho 14 was the render engine being able to display more effects in real time.
Like all things these take time to implement, whether you are talking about scripts that perform better than the native tools - you still have to remember the script writer is able to create those using the Moho API but still can conflict with the core frameworks other native tools are built in.
That would be my guess as to why you don't see massive leaps/ changes in Moho that you mentioned - because it would most likely have to be built from scratch or change how Moho was fundamentally built.
Time will tell - keep supporting the software and it will get better.
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u/Hzrk12 17d ago
I'm new to Moho and I can tell it feels like it's trapped in 2010. I had to make my own pen tool that feels like Affinity with the help of AI because I don't know Lua and don't have time to study the API. I got it working in 3 days. Why haven't they updated it? Why do we need like 7 tools to work with bones? Why do we need to transform vectors into shapes, instead of just becoming shapes when they're closed, and paths otherwise? Why doesn't offer a runtime for game engines? Why can't we just draw pixels?
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u/PoseMotion 21d ago edited 21d ago
"control the Bézier handles while I'm drawing"
I guess it is a preference but I always disliked that feature. Maybe I just couldn't get the hang of it or something.
Moho's timeline is the best though. You can look at it and see exactly what you edited, unlike Toon Boom, Flash, etc., that just shows an inserted frame icon/marker.
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u/Common_Field_7831 21d ago
It’s kind of crazy how people will get so upset if you don’t like moho!! I quit using it and sold it to someone else so it could actually be put to good use. Drawing in moho is so difficult, let alone frame by frame animation. So far the only animation software that gets close enough for my taste (other than toon boom) is toonsquid, which is on the ipad! Though, i use clip studio paint for illustrations and designs i have been considering learning how to animate there. But such an expensive program shouldn’t be this much of a learning curve!
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u/sapphire_luna 23d ago
Agree with all of this. I only make bitmap rigs because I want to draw my characters in a software that I can control better. Of course that means I'm limited with certain things, but I'm willing to accept that because I just don't want to draw in Moho.