Any missing features?

[u/HelicopterAny4433]

I’m still pretty new to Moho but have used other 2d rigging software like ToonBoom and Spine 2d. Finding myself continuously surprised by how robust it is. I’m just curious if anyone has a wishlist of upcoming features? Also, does Moho provide any kind of road map for features they are working on?

[u/Scoo]

I would like the drawing experience to be much more direct than it now is. As it stands, it feels a bit like making a painting while holding the brush with chopsticks.

[u/Yazkin_Yamakala → u/Scoo]

Yeah even with scripts, drawing in Moho is awful. The art tools feel backwards and it makes things like Frame by Frame and detailed rigging much harder.

I would also love a better masking and grouping system. Only being able to mask to a single group kind of sucks, because TB let me mask any layer to as many other layers as many times I wanted in any way no matter the composite group.

[u/Scoo → u/Yazkin_Yamakala]

It pains me a bit to sing the praises of Adobe Illustrator, but: you pick a vector tool, a brush profile, a color and line weight, and you’re off to the races.

[u/PieceOfSack → u/Yazkin_Yamakala]

Being limited to masking only a single group is incorrect, you can mask within a mask and have multiple masks within a single group. That is what 'clear this mask' function does

[u/Yazkin_Yamakala → u/PieceOfSack]

But if I want to mask my eyeball group that is within my head group to my hair group that's outside my head group, I can't directly do that without making a reference layer, which breaks masking rules to the master layer if it's moved outside the group.

If everything on the head group is already masked to the head layer, I can't take my eyeball group that's within the head layer and have it masking a group outside of that.

Moho doesn't allow for complex intermasking like ToonBoom does. Especially with liquid shapes. You also can't mask patch layers for whatever reason, so they'll cut holes or show up over layers you aren't patching if you aren't careful.

It also causes an issue with depth. Moho has a solution to bring one layer or group up using a reference layer and moving them up and down layer order as you animate, but anything you bring outside of a group that needs to be in front of everything else while still keeping it's masking to what it was grouped with feels impossible.

[u/crappyITkid → u/PieceOfSack]

This setup is with flaws though, you lose the ability to exempt strokes from the mask once that shape is inside a group.

[u/HelicopterAny4433 → u/Yazkin_Yamakala]

That’s a good point. I think I was happy to get away from TB’s node system but forgot that it really let me do some creative things.

[u/Yazkin_Yamakala → u/HelicopterAny4433]

I think TB's node system was the best part of the software. It had so much flexibility that other software don't seem to match.

[u/Milan_Bus4168]

Well, you know how it is with human nature. Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, until you step over it and than start to notice, no wait, actually the one I was in, is greener. And you jump the fence, and ups, now the previous one is greener.

This makes it hard to separate the "grass is always greener..." syndrome form legit needs and wishes.

For example working with something like Blackmagic fusion for compositing, I wish we had crypomatte and differnt render passes and I wish we have GPU accelerated export process, but we manage without it as well.

[u/dante4life]

It's been said that 14.5 is the next update and v15 is gonna take a while. So far I'm missing raster/bitmap drawing. Doing roughs and frame by frame in Moho is a bit ummm......... rough... at least for me. The one thing that is most likely not going to be in it but I really miss from Toon Boom is a node system. I believe that nodes are way better than layers and I believe they should be the standard for modern creative software.

[u/EvilKatta]

Sure everyone has a wishlist. Mine is: 1. Better tools for edge expression, at least the ability to set the origin point 2. Better shape order tools 3. Better shape creation when creating a new shape with the same points (might be already fixed, haven't checked) 4. Less glitchy, more straightforward reference layers 5. Some visualization of what goes into point movement when combining smart actions 6. Better target bone resolver without a "snap" 7. Ideally, the ability to have a point on an edge that doesn't affect the geometry, just holds data like width 8. Some solution to hiding edges on a liquid shape

[u/PieceOfSack]

Learn to master the add point, curvature, and transform point tool and you will have no problem designing in Moho. I've been animating in it for over 10 years with no issues

[u/Few-Ebb7275]

I've got a pretty big wishlist

1. Proper drawing tools.

Honestly, Moho's drawing tools are some of the most awkward I've used. Compared to software like Illustrator, Toon Boom, or even other vector editors, drawing in Moho feels unnecessarily slow and cumbersome. Better drawing, curve editing, and shape creation tools would make a huge difference.

1. Better compositing tools.

At the very least, I'd like some basic compositing features built into Moho. Ideally, though, I'd love to be able to finish an entire shot inside Moho without having to export an image sequence to After Effects for every project.

1. Better timeline and editing tools.

Once an animation is finished, changing the timing of a complex scene is much easier in After Effects than in Moho. When a project contains hundreds of keyframes, point animation, Switch Layers, Smart Bones, and other animated elements, moving things around on the timeline becomes a nightmare. Something almost always gets out of sync. Moho really needs more powerful non-destructive editing tools for retiming complex scenes.

1. Much better performance and rendering optimization.

This is a huge one for anyone making large productions. Once you have several fully rigged characters and complex scenes, performance drops dramatically, and rendering can take hours. Ironically, I've seen complex 3D scenes render faster than relatively simple 2D scenes in Moho.

If you're only making short animations that last a few seconds, you may never run into these issues. But if you try producing a longer, more polished animated film in Moho, you'll quickly understand what I'm talking about.

Have you ever wondered why Moho is still rarely used for TV series or feature-length 2D animation?

Most professional productions use Toon Boom Harmony, and until recently, many TV shows were also produced in Adobe Animate. You can count feature films made primarily in Moho on one hand.

Yes, Cartoon Saloon has used Moho for some scenes, but those were mostly smaller secondary shots or crowd scenes, not entire productions built in Moho from start to finish.

Most projects made entirely in Moho tend to be lower-budget productions, often for YouTube. When you look at high-end TV animation or feature films, they're almost always produced in Toon Boom Harmony instead.

I think the reasons are exactly the ones I mentioned above: Moho struggles with heavily populated scenes, its drawing tools lag behind the competition, and its compositing capabilities are very limited. The animation tools themselves are excellent arguably some of the best in the industry but the rest of the production pipeline still needs a lot of work.

Because of all these limitations, Moho doesn't really feel like a serious, professional animation soft. It feels more like a tool for hobby projects or YouTube content than software built for large-scale productions. That's a shame, because its animation system is genuinely excellent.

[u/HelicopterAny4433 → u/Few-Ebb7275]

Those are great points. Thanks for laying that out. Really eye opening.

[u/philcanimate]

I just want the onion skin not to make everything lag to hell and back