Tutorial 1 - A Quick Run-Through

Introduction

This tutorial quickly runs through the major features of Moho, without going into too much detail. The purpose here is more to give an overview of how Moho works, rather than to teach you how to use any specific features. In this tutorial, we will draw and animate a simple object.

Moho has several editing modes that group different types of tasks. The tools available to you are different in each editing mode, although you can switch between modes at any time with a click of the mouse. The basic Moho editing modes are: Draw, Fill, Bones, and Animation. To move from one editing mode to the next, simply click the corresponding tab at the top left of the Moho working area.

This tutorial introduces the Draw, Fill, and Animation editing modes for vector layers, while the following four tutorials focus specifically on each of the four modes.

Drawing a Simple Shape

Launch Moho by double-clicking the Moho icon, or selecting the Moho shortcut in the Start menu (Be menu on BeOS). When you create a new Moho project, the application starts off in the Draw editing mode. The main window should look something like this:

Select the Circle tool by clicking on it in the toolbar. Click and drag in the main window to create a circle shape. You can hold the <shift> key while dragging to force the shape to be a circle, rather than an oval. Try to keep the circle within the blue rectangle (this rectangle represents the visible area of your project). If you're not happy with your circle, just select the Edit->Undo command from the menu bar. Your circle should look something like this:

Filling a Shape with Color

Click the Fill mode tab to switch edit modes.

In the Fill edit mode, you can take shapes that were drawn in the Draw edit mode and fill them with color. Choose the Edit->Select All command from the menu bar. Next, pick the Fill tool from the toolbar. Your window should now look like this:

The fill tool shows an area that is ready to be filled in (the red checkerboard area). However, this area has not been filled yet. When you're satisfied that the circle is ready to be filled with color, press the spacebar on your keyboard. This tells Moho you're happy with the fill and want it to become permanent.

After pressing the spacebar, the fill style window updates itself to show the color and other settings for the fill shape you created.

Click the "Fill color" rectangle to pick a new color for the circle, and set the "Edge width" slider to 1. Finally, choose the File->Render command from the menu bar. A new window will open to display the current state of your project. Close this window when you're through looking at it.

Simple Animation

Click the Animation mode tab to switch edit modes.

In animation mode, you move objects around and set up keyframes - points in time at which an object has a certain position. At points in time between keyframes, Moho automatically computes the position of all objects.

When you switch into animation mode, the Animation palette will automatically open. Near the top of the Animation palette is a ruler that displays frame numbers in the animation. Click the tick mark next to the number 12 to set the current time to frame 12.

Next, choose Edit->Select None from the menu bar. Pick the Translate tool from the toolbar. Click and drag the bottom point of the circle upward to distort the circle into a shape that looks like this:

Now pick the Rotate Layer tool . Click and drag in the main window until everything rotates into a position similar to the one below:

Back in the Animation palette, click frame number 24 in the ruler to change the current time. Next, select Animation->Reset All Points from the menu bar to move all points back to their original positions. Now choose Animation->Reset Layer Rotation to reset the rotation of the entire layer.

Congratulations, you've made an animation! Press the play button in the Animation palette to watch it go:

When you're done, press stop. OK, so it probably won't win any film awards, but you're off to a good start learning Moho. You've learned how Moho has different editing modes for different operations, and even how to use a few tools. You can experiment more on your own, maybe adding more keyframes. When you're ready to learn more, move on to Tutorial 2.