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.