Almost 3D - better Moho backgrounds with 2.5D - video Dailymotion

Kilian Muster

Here's how I use the admittedly half-baked 3D features of Moho for 2D animation backgrounds.  00:00 - Start 01:08 - Set up a scene for 3D 02:34 - Water Animation hint 08:48 - When to not use 3D 10:22 - Creating a room from scratch 17:27 - Setting up a more complex 3D scene 19:01 - Layer order vs. Depth Order 22:29 - Moving things in front and behind each other 23:57 - 3D Room Setup 33:18 - Repurposing 3D front views for side views  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- About Meisterjäger: When pompous huntsman influencer Sigmar—creator of the ‘Sigmar Look’—is appointed Meisterjäger (Master of the Hunt), he must turn his fake hunting fame into real trophies before the truth (or his prey) catches him. https://kilianmuster.com/meisterjager  About PIXELBLAST: Pixelblast is an independent studio founded by Kilian Muster.  https://pixelblast.net/meisterjager  Merch & Episodes: =================================== Pixelblast Shop: https://pixelblast.net/shop Gumroad: https://app.gumroad.com/pixelblast Sell App: https://pixelblast.sell.app  Due to the series being produced entirely as a one-man operation, production pace is slow. Check out the “Sneaky Peak” production blog to see how the next episode is coming along https://kilianmuster.com/meisterjager  Connect with us online: ======================= Pixelblast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pixelblast Twitter: https://x.com/PIXELBLASTanim Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pixelblast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pixelblastanimation  Series Creator Kilian Muster YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KilianMuster Twitter: https://twitter.com/kilianmuster Instagram: https://instagram.com/kilianmuster

Transcript

00:00Today I'd like to talk a little bit about 3D and parallax that you can do in Moho.

00:07And most people call the 3D that you can do in Moho 2.5D because it's mostly, that's not

00:17entirely correct, but it's mostly putting 2D objects, flat objects, in a 3D space.

00:22That's why they call it 2.5D. However, Moho can also import real 3D objects and render

00:30them as 3D objects in the 2D space, but that's a very rare case and I've only seen very few

00:36samples where this actually is done because usually the rendering of Moho of a 3D object

00:43as a cartoon rendering isn't that great, so usually you don't really want to use that

00:48part. Most people also just use the 3D as a 2.5D, putting different layers in a 3D space,

00:55so then when you move the camera and that the objects are different in different distances

01:00from the camera, you get this nice parallax scrolling. Okay, let me show you how you can

01:06do that very easily, very simply. Okay, this is one background I'm going to use in Fair

01:12Game, my new series. One thing I want to point out, the idea with Fair Game is that I make

01:19very short episodes, that I make it a kind of a low effort project so that I can churn

01:23out a full season within a year. A full season meaning like 12 episodes of about 4-5 minutes.

01:30The pilot will be a bit longer, but apart from that all very short episodes. Low effort,

01:35minimal, you know, the backgrounds have to stay simple, as simple as possible, and also the

01:41setup. I'm not going to go crazy about 3D and whatever, I just make it so that it just

01:46looks okay and is usable and fine. Okay, here is my background of this hunting

01:51lodge, and you see there's a lot of layers. It's mostly, you have the sky layer here, that's

01:55the background here, you can see that degradation. There are some mountains which are just flat

02:01shapes, you know, which gives this kind of shade of backdrop mountains. Then the swamp

02:06base is basically only just a green swamp water. And the background has a lot of

02:11of, you know, again, only silhouettes of these trees here, as you can see. Then I have a whole

02:17folder with a mid-ground because this is several layers which actually belong together are

02:21definitely in the same space in 3D. This is the whole lodge. A little bit of a hill in the foreground

02:28to cover part of the base here, of the stair. Then there is the lodge itself. As you can see,

02:35there's the bog water which is basically just those little highlights. And why I have this in a separate

02:42layer is very simple because with those I will be using, in vectors, I use these noisy outlines.

02:48That means if you actually render this, you will see, maybe you can see this when I just pull it,

02:55that it's slightly moving. So it's got this noisy outline, so it looks like it's water that's just

02:59wobbling a bit. I use this in Shady Woods as well, if you might remember the scene in the well with

03:05the water at the bottom of the well. It's the same. Noise outlines is quite useful for that. It's not

03:10very smooth because you have to set the frame rate. And if you set the frame rate to render at every

03:14frame, it'll be wiggling very fast. So if you want it to wiggle slower, you actually have to just

03:19animate on less frames. So you animate on the 2s or the 4s and then it gets less smooth. But I think

03:26otherwise, if you'd have to do it manually, it's just so much work. And I think the noisy frame

03:32really does the job there. Okay, further, that's that. Then there is the mid-ground, which is basically

03:37just that kind of island, that little piece of land that thing sits on with a tree and the big

03:43mushroom here. And then the front stuff is basically just this whole foreground here.

03:50Now, okay, I'm going to split this screen here. You know, it has this multi-split way of

03:55like in 3D programs where you can see different views in everything. So link to the left side,

04:01I see the normal editing view to the right side. I can use this, this icon here.

04:07Pan tilt, not pan tilt camera, which one is it? Where is the thing? Ah, this one. Sorry, sorry,

04:11nine. I just remember the key shortcut. So it's nine. I just remember nine. It's the orbit,

04:17the orbit cursor. With the orbit cursor, I can just orbit around this thing. And as you can see,

04:21everything's flat. So if I just move the z-axis here, I just move this further close to the camera,

04:26it's like, oh, great, it's going to be 3D-ish. But the problem is, it also becomes larger,

04:30you know, and I don't want this to be larger. I just want this to be closer to the camera, right?

04:36So that's, that's a bad idea. Now MOHA has a really, really great little tool. And the cool thing is here,

04:43Shift plus Alt to move in Z and maintain visual size. And that is the, that is the cool function.

04:51So you can basically set up your whole background, you can, you haven't, say you have a drawn image,

04:55hand drawn, you want to trace it in MOHO, you set up your layers for front and mid-ground and

05:00background, make your layers, you trace everything exactly the way you want it in the size you wanted.

05:05And now you're at the point where you say, okay, I put this in 3D space, but I do not want to change

05:10the actual size of the objects, even if they come closer to the camera. Then you just say Alt Shift

05:17and don't be surprised if this thing now gets larger while you're dragging. If I draw it dragging,

05:23this is just to, to help you to tell you, oh, this goes back or it goes forth, forward. Yeah.

05:29Because the moment you let go, so let's say I move this thing closer to the camera and I let go,

05:33it snaps back to the size it was. I do this again. Okay. Just an extreme case here. Boom.

05:39Same size. You think nothing happened. But if you look at the right side, you can see it moved

05:43forward to the camera. Yeah. This is too much for, it's just an extreme example here. Normally you

05:48wouldn't move it that much in the, to the front because then the parallax gets too extreme.

05:53But just to illustrate the point, if I now take the camera and do a side, um, this side dolly,

06:00you can see you got a nice parallax. This is completely over the top. So it feels like this,

06:03this island is way, way too far from the, from the lodge. So you don't really want to do that. So let's just,

06:10undo this and just do it a bit more subtly. Just, just a little bit forward, maybe

06:15and something went wrong now. Um, and now it snapped back. Okay. This should maybe do the trick.

06:21Yeah. I would, I would, I would stick with something like this where you have this subtle parallax. It

06:25shouldn't even, I would maybe even go with a bit less and you can always go back the same way.

06:29So if you're like, Oh, I went too much to the camera. You just, again, option shift and you move here

06:35and, and then you can do your, your kind of tweaking. So I think, yeah, this very, very subtle, um,

06:43let me just deselect it. So this subtle parallax here, I think is, is enough

06:49to feel natural. Because as soon as I start moving the rest, you get a bit more parallax going on the

06:55background. And that should be enough to, to really make it feel like, Oh yeah. Okay. This is like a 3d space.

06:59Um, so you can do the rest, this is the rest for all the other objects. So the whole mid ground,

07:05as I said, stays at where it is basically. Um, the, this background moves back a bit. Um,

07:11and I always want to have the, um, uh, this orbit view. So I have a rough idea of how far back I'm

07:20going. So it's not going getting too crazy. Yeah, maybe a bit more. I think that's enough. And you can

07:27always double check, you know, um, do a quick test with a, with a camera dolly and feel like,

07:32could be almost too much. It feels like almost, it's a bit too far away because this, this is

07:36supposedly very close by, right? So, um, go back to the background here and move it a bit closer.

07:45Sometimes it's just buggy. Um, and just see again.

07:51Yeah, it's still too much for my taste. Honestly, I would go more subtle actually.

07:55Um, background.

08:02Let's see.

08:06Yeah, I think this, this feels right. This feels right.

08:11But as you can see though, the moon, that moon, that planet is still moving and the mountains are

08:16stuck to the background. And you might have already noticed that the, uh, if you're snowing in here,

08:22this is kind of lifted off. So you have to adjust the position of the swamp base.

08:31So I would just go up a bit with that one, just to make sure that it's this stuff is actually still

08:34in the swamp. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's this. Um, this is one example of what you can do with the

08:452.5D stuff. Now, uh, in many cases like this one, um, I actually do not do 3D because it's just going

08:55to be a bit of a zoom in and at that distance, if you have like buildings and stuff, 3D, it's not

09:00going to do much for you unless you have a really big dolly shot. These establishing shots, uh, you

09:06would normally just zoom in a bit at the beginning and then you cut to the interior of the building,

09:11you know, oh, that's where we are now. So, um, that if you, if you look at the, the, there is

09:17the only 3D I have here is actually the sky and the, this backdrop here of these shadows here and

09:25the rest is all just flat, completely flat. That means if I now just do a camera dolly or you only

09:34get the sky and the buildings at the back, the rest is just fixed, right? This is another shot where I did

09:39no 3D whatsoever. I hope so. I hope I'm not lying. Yeah, it's totally flat. Only the sky, the sky's

09:45the limit. The rest is totally flat because it's one of these things where, um, I'm not going to

09:51dolly here at all. You know, it's just a, I'll probably have people walking in the streets towards

09:57the, and then you have probably some announcement or advertisements playing in. That's why I just made

10:01this green so I can easily just do a screen replacement. I don't have to do, I'm not going to do

10:05it using Moho. I've just written, probably if I show an advertisement or an announcement,

10:09I just make a flat, normal screen size thing of that. And then in Final Cut Pro,

10:15we'll do a screen replacement. So that's very, very simple. So no 3D here, it just looks 3D because

10:20it's perspective. I have a back wall and now I want to make a side wall, which is at a 90 degree angle,

10:31right? So if you just take this and copy, say, let's call this back wall, oops, two L's please.

10:41And I make a copy and call this side wall. And you could say, yeah, just turn it 90 degrees,

10:46right? No problem, right? Boom, 90 degrees. There you go. Yeah, just move it over. And then you already

10:53noticed like, oh, this is, why does this not fit? Because what you actually did here is

11:03you turned it 90 degrees, but the turning of the wall actually happens in the center of the wall.

11:09That's the, that's the, that's how this works. So if you, let's just undo this. If you want to do

11:19this proper, there's several ways of doing this. The easiest way is probably, you can see this,

11:22this cross here, you can move this. This is the anchor point. You would move, for example, the anchor

11:28point all to the, you zoom in as much as you can, move it and move it somewhere here, all to the left.

11:33Okay. Let's make sure it's exactly on the line. Okay. Now, if you do a 90 degree turning, that's in the wrong

11:44direction. I have to say minus 90 to go towards us. Now it lines up perfectly because you rotated,

11:51rotated the layer around this anchor point, which was exactly on the edge of the,

11:57of the wall, right? So that's one thing you have to keep in mind. Generally aligning stuff afterwards

12:04is awkward because that's the big shortcoming of Moho.

12:08Moho only has this orbit view, which is in perspective and very often in an extreme

12:18perspective. So you can never precisely place any point anywhere in 3d space because if it lines up

12:25here, you never know if it's just, it lines up because perspective is right and you look at from

12:29a different angle and everything's off. In a proper 3d app, you usually have a top view

12:38and a right view and you think, oh, I've got a right view. That's great. So I'm just going to zoom

12:43in here. I'm going to, no, no, because the problem is that these views

12:49usually show perspective in Moho and that's actually a problem. So that's, that shows how

12:57half fake the 3d is. In a proper 3d program, the top view, the side view,

13:02you should be able to see that flat, no perspective. So you can perfectly line up points

13:08and then you can double check in the perspective if everything looks right, right? So you can,

13:13there is no way to have any kind of grid that makes any sense in this 3d space to line up points

13:18perfectly. So what you have to do in every case, if you want anything to line up perfectly,

13:22is basically make sure it lines up in 2d space and then rotate it in 3d space. So it lines up

13:29as I did with this, with this rectangle. So say you want to have a roof here. I'm just going to copy

13:34this back wall. I've got the same back wall and you would want this to be exactly the same height as

13:43it is the width. So then it'll, it'll fit the rest of the room once you flip it over. But the problem

13:49is really here that the, you, you only have scales here, you know, I mean the whole, it's, and, and it's

13:59from the center and it's just awkward. So there's no numerically really good way of, of positioning

14:04this stuff really precisely. You have coordinates, but then you have to go manually place your, your,

14:11your origin somewhere here, which is never precise, you know, it's never going to be precise,

14:19no matter how much you zoom in. And then you just have to have to hope and pray

14:25that it's close enough that it'll line up, but eventually you will get gaps. You will have stuff.

14:29So what you end up doing very often, if I want to have a roof on this, what I would do, what I would

14:33do is actually, I'm going to make a roof. That's just way bigger, just way bigger. Because if you're

14:37in a room, you never see it outside the room. So it doesn't really matter if the roof is much bigger

14:42than the room, because you, you have the walls that kind of limit the room and anything that's on top

14:47of it. And it's bigger. It doesn't matter. It's a roof. It's going to close it. They will have no gaps

14:51whatsoever. Great. And then you can just flip this thing, uh, 90 degrees. This time, I think it's the X,

15:01right? Yeah. You're going to move it a bit closer to you. So you're going to move it in the Z axis

15:07towards you wherever. So it didn't kind of closes the thing. And now you've got your room,

15:12you know, moving with the camera a bit.

15:17And if you render this, it's a perfect roof. It'll, it'll always close the gap. It's fine.

15:24I have to work with these workarounds because it's, it's almost impossible to line up things

15:28perfectly in those cases. Another thing which I found is really awkward. You might have noticed this

15:33here. Um, can you see the line here becoming thicker towards the camera because of the perspective,

15:41but it's kind of broken because although the line becomes a bit thicker towards the camera

15:47from a perspective, it's somehow the back line here, the vertical line is thinner than the

15:55thinnest part of the line starting from the same place as the back line. And the front line also is

16:01not as thick as the thickest part of this perspective line. So that's really broken. Doesn't really work.

16:08So what I do in this case is basically, I just say scale compensation, screw it. Um, sorry,

16:15that's for the sidewall. Screw scale compensation. I'm just going to have the same line width, line thickness,

16:21no matter what. And then, as I said, I always use this background line width and tweak all the lines.

16:28So all the line widths will be the same for the background then in that case.

16:32For characters, you want to have compensation because if you make them really small and zoom out,

16:36or if you put them further away, you want them to be a bit with thinner lines. Otherwise,

16:41it's going to be very, very weird. They just look like a black blob because the lines might be

16:45thicker than the whole characters in size. But for this kind of stuff, especially if you do 3D,

16:50you might want to switch off the scale compensation. Otherwise, you, you will have rendering issues with

16:56line thicknesses and what else. And this just looks fine. It's all the same width.

17:00If I, if I can once again, switch that on again, you'll have some really weird.

17:05I'd renders well, it renders nicely, but I found lots of issues. As soon as you start layering stuff

17:10and touching stuff, it goes wacky all over the place already. You can see the roof here.

17:15You don't want to go there. So I personally think for backgrounds where you don't really need this,

17:22you just make it all the same width. That is my tip for that. And I just want to show you how

17:28this is set up. So if I move the camera around here, you can see this is a bit heavy now because

17:33basically I'm recording the camera. I'm capturing my screen in at the same time on the same machine,

17:40and I have to render this stuff. So it's, it's a bit, it's not really super smooth. It seems janky,

17:45not very smooth, but if, if you don't capture two full HD streams at the same time, this is butter

17:51smooth. Anyway, so this is the, this 3D thing and it's, uh, yeah, it should work for most,

18:00for most scenes. I think you can go in, can go closer into the thing. This rendering bug is just

18:06a rendering bug. If, if I actually render this out, you can see the, the carpet looks just fine.

18:10So, uh, Moho has its quirks sometimes with 3D stuff. Um, see again, it's, it's fixed again.

18:18So how did I, did I do this? So this is kind of, the problem with Moho is that, um,

18:25if you use this perspective view, it only has actually this, what is this thing called again?

18:32Orbit view. And the orbit view, for some reason, if you go to certain angles, the perspective becomes

18:41super, super, if you, if you zoom in sometimes, the perspective can become super extreme, super awkward

18:47sometimes. Um, the other thing that's sometimes puzzling a bit with the, and after a while it

18:53gets so messy that you just want to reset the view and go back to orbit view again, and then it gets

18:58reset somehow. So it's a bit buggy. Uh, one thing that is confusing with the orbit view is basically

19:03that, that the layering of objects, as you can see here, is not by default, not based on the actual 3D

19:11position. So it means that if, if I have an object 3D from the 3D space perspective in front of another

19:19object, it doesn't necessarily, that doesn't necessarily get rendered in front of it, if the

19:24layer order is different. So basically Moho would say, I render all the objects according to the layer

19:32order. So whatever is topmost will be frontmost, regardless of where in the 3D space it sits.

19:38You can change that. There's a setting for that, but I would not recommend to have it automatically

19:44layer, change the layer order according to the 3D position, because say I want the emperor sit on the

19:51throne, maybe one of his arms hanging over the shoulder armrest. Now you can't use 3D layer ordering

20:00for that because what you have to do is you, you have probably a copy of the, a copy or an instance

20:06of the emperor on top of the armrest, but you hide everything except for the elbow or the arm that

20:12has to be on top of it and the rest has to be behind. And then you have the, the emperor behind

20:17the armrest. And I have the armrest front. If I put that in front of, of the Kaiser for example, yeah,

20:23and I take the guy and would say, I sit him down here and he's, he's got his, and his arm should be,

20:29this is just really ad hoc. So it's not going to look good. I'm not going to fix the, the hand either.

20:35I just want him to be, say he's just down here chilling. Okay. And now I want his arm to be on

20:44the armrest right now. It's behind it, right? It doesn't look right. What would I do in this case?

20:48So what I would do is I just have an instance of him. He's now in front of it and I hide everything

20:54except for the arm. So lower arm. So let's just hide everything. No, let's just hide everything.

21:03He's got a lot of layers. Yeah. And I want the lower arm F. Yep. The upper arm F.

21:10Now I need to have the shoulder up there as well. The elbow of course also has to be in front.

21:16Yeah. And probably the hand. Where's the hand? Talk to the hand. Yeah. And move the hand

21:22hand on top of lower arm F. Okay. So now this is to show the principle. So again,

21:31so you'd have this arm here, something like that anyway. Yeah. There we go.

21:40So now you have the Kaiser sitting on the throne. I would still have to fix this here,

21:46by the way, this, this tail thing, just still looking here. I would have him sitting on the throne

21:52and parts in front of the arm rest and parts not. Right. Um, if I switch on the layer ordering based

22:02on 3d placement, they would all be on the same, on the same level anyway, that would be a mess.

22:07And then I would have to move the, the, the front part of the Kaiser a bit closer to the camera,

22:12but that means then you get the, um, it will be a little bit bigger and then nothing will line up.

22:18Those, you know, the elbow and the lines or something will not line up anymore. It's a mess.

22:21So you don't really want to do this kind of layering based on 3d placement, but rather on layer

22:28placement. And the reason the whole room is in, in, in, in a folder is because you, for a folder,

22:33you can tell Moho to allow, uh, enable animated layer order. That means when, whenever in the timeline,

22:40I start reordering things and change layers. If somebody has to move in front of something,

22:44say, for example, he walks down the stairs in front of a pillar, maybe he walks behind the pillar

22:51somewhere. And then now he's in behind the pillar. And if you want to down here, I don't know,

22:56he walks and walks in front of the pillar. I don't even know which pillar it is. Is it this one?

23:02Yeah. And I mean, the size is idiotic anyway, but if he moves like this and he goes in front of the

23:08pillar, see, uh, you have this layer order change here that you can see. So that's one thing that's

23:16important. If you do any kind of 3d, you definitely want to have this enabled. You want to have all

23:20the objects in that room within a folder so you can able it for that folder. Uh, you have to be

23:25aware that anything that is in a subfolder, um, you cannot in the timeline, once you're in a timeline,

23:30you cannot move anything out of a subfolder into an upper, upper, upper layer. That's not possible.

23:35So whatever you might want to move back and forth in front or behind each other would have to be on

23:42directly on that layer where you enabled the layer ordering. Super important. Otherwise,

23:47it's not going to happen. It's a bit of a limitation. Uh, but if you plan your, your,

23:52your scene and your background accordingly, shouldn't normally work just fine.

23:57These trophies here also are just fake 3d ish. So as you can see, they're just flat,

24:02plain sitting here. And, uh, what I had to do though, that was a bit tricky when I set this up.

24:09I just had to make sure that that from a placement point of view, if you look at the wall, that they're

24:15kind of sitting exactly on top of the wall or just going a little bit into it.

24:21If they're too far away from the wall and you have any kind of 3d movement, you see they're floating.

24:25They seem to feel off and it's never going to be perfect because again, of course,

24:32according to this, only the left edge is actually touching the wall and the rest is just

24:38away from that. It's a fake perspective, you know, and if, if I, if I would say I, I, I'd rotate the

24:43camera here, yeah, do a camera swipe, a real camera swipe, stuff starts to get, look really,

24:49really weird. You know, you can see here, it feels like a flat carton, paper carton, uh, thing that's

24:56just sticking out the wall and it has no depth. You can see that. So you don't really want to do

25:01swipes like that a little bit, maybe. Yeah. You can go at a tiny bit of an angle like this,

25:06a little bit like this, but generally I'd say don't do this rather do dollies sideways and do a

25:14little bit of a Z axis stuff that that should work fine. Everything else don't. Uh, another thing is,

25:19of course, uh, if I do dolly and if I do swipes, the roof will completely fall apart because this roof

25:25is not 3d. It's not at all 3d. Um, so what I've done is, is like the whole idea is that there is kind

25:32of a hole in the, in the ceiling and then you have this roof thing on top. And what it is in, in reality

25:38is actually, I have a hole in the ceiling that is right. And behind, I have this flat hue. It's just,

25:44as you can see, it's just flat. It's a flat, huge thing that gives you an illusion of an arched roof,

25:52but isn't, it's just flat, but it's so huge that if, if you look through that hole in the ceiling,

25:57you know, you just think like, oh yeah, yeah, that's, that's kind of a, you can already see here,

26:01like with the perspective that it doesn't work. That's wrong. I mean, that part should move the

26:06same way as the hole. It's a rectangle, but, uh, I'm never going to do this kind of camera work

26:12much anyway in this shot. All I'm going to do is maybe, oops, maybe a tiny, not really much. So then

26:22again, I'm not going to do, um, uh, camera swipes. So for the most part, if you don't,

26:30if you have something like this, you don't even see that the top part much,

26:33you will not notice it and you will not be bothered by it. Uh, these are the limitations.

26:38Um, yeah, so these are sticked out. And, uh, the trophies at the back, of course,

26:44are just flat on the wall, same level as the back wall. So there's the back window,

26:48the throne, the whole thing here is just one flat thing. Uh, you might wonder about the steps,

26:53what happens with the steps. So initially all those steps were

27:00flat shapes. Let me just do this for a second.

27:04So these were just flat shapes and the front most steps were lower and every

27:14step on top of it

27:16was actually just, just a flat shape that was, was higher.

27:22The reason for this is if they were all the same height and I just moved them up,

27:25you would see the gaps between the flat shapes floating

27:29midair. And you don't want that. So this just looked mostly, I first thought like,

27:34oh, this looks pretty much like a step. Yeah, that's fine. It's like a stair. That's fine.

27:37It's going to work. And there's one more, sorry.

27:40But, uh, if you, if you go into the, this view here, uh, it just, there were just a few things.

27:48It's just, yeah, if you go a little bit from the side,

27:52it just has no volume. There's no perspective to it. So I, I eventually thought like,

27:57it might work for the front view, but as soon as I go into the side view,

28:01how the hell am I going to do this, right? Without any kind of

28:06actual 3d body there, because that perspective is difficult. And as soon as you move the camera,

28:11even the slightest bit, you know, the perspective is going to, going to move radically, massively.

28:15And if you render this out, actually doesn't look that bad. Uh, and so having these,

28:19I still have to fix this a bit because the shape is kind of weird. I don't know why this happens.

28:23Um, but, um, I, I figured, yeah, it has to be 3d or nothing, or I can just forget the whole side view

28:29entirely. Um, so what I did was, uh, um, might want to just go, um, revert, reload the previous thing.

28:40And I, I used it, this extrude function, which it has. So you just have this rectangular shape

28:45and just tell, I just tell the, the object to extrude. And I didn't use silhouettes materials

28:52creases because it seems to be a bug. I haven't used this forever. And it turns out that when you

28:59do the extrude and use the outlines from that extrude command, you just get weird. It almost

29:05looks like a mesh, but not. So it's kind of, you see the inner, inner angles and lines inside the

29:10object to a, to a degree and have no idea how to fix it. And it always looked wrong.

29:15And so I said, forget it. I'm not going to do this. But instead I just told it to have, uh,

29:22an outline, a one pixel outline, which you only can see once you render the, so it's not going

29:27to show in the real time preview. It's just like going to look kind of weirdish flat. But if you render

29:32it, you actually get an outline. It doesn't look perfect. It's a bit weird, but it mostly worked.

29:40And I got a few more other issues because basically every, every one of these shapes is actually one,

29:44two, three, four, five, four shapes. That is the actual stair, the long horizontal stair,

29:51a rectangle with a yellow side band of this carpet, the red part of the carpet and the other

29:57other part of the carpet. And I had to, um, it was somewhere hidden. Yeah. I think the thickness,

30:02that's it exactly. Yeah. So if you, if you select, if you select a shape here, um, there is this thickness

30:12value and I think it's the 3d thickness or some, whatever. And if you don't do that because they're

30:21all in the same plane, even if you, if, if, if in the layer or in the, in the shape order within the

30:27layer, the shape is on top of the other, you sometimes get render issues. Some, some, for some

30:31reason Moho just doesn't get it that that this orange thing always has to be rendered on top of the

30:37brown, brownish beige stair. It just didn't, I just had problems. It didn't really work well. So

30:44when I set the thickness of this layer to be a little bit thicker than the stair,

30:49somehow it figured, okay, it's more up there. So it is always in front. And then it worked as a

30:55downside. You get these kind of weird little bumps because it's supposedly thicker. So it's like,

31:00like, like this bump mapping kind of thing that's happening here. It's not so bad because it is

31:05thicker. I mean, it's a carpet on top of the stairs. So I think it's mostly okay. But as you have seen

31:10in the side view and you render it, you get, because it's thicker, you get these weird bumps,

31:15which are a bit too much. So I might want to, I probably have to tweak the thickness of these

31:22colors to be just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit thicker. So it doesn't really show up in the render. It just

31:27looks like a flat stair-ish because right now it's just a bit odd. It's, it's a bit weird. I'm not

31:33entirely happy with this. Um, anyway, so these are some workarounds you have to deal with because Moho,

31:39I think the 3D at this point is very much an afterthought because that was introduced when

31:46the previous owner of Moho, Smith Micro, was developing it and they never went anywhere with

31:51it much. And ever since Lost Marble took over, they have never touched the 3D functionality at all.

31:58As far as I recall, I don't think they've added anything or improved anything. And so it's just in

32:03the kind of half baked state it's been in, but you can still use it to a certain extent. It's just,

32:11I wouldn't just rely too much on it and wouldn't think like, I don't think it's ever going to have

32:15full 3D capability. One thing that would be nice to have is if you could have universal lighting,

32:21because as you might know for, for certain, uh, you can, for a, for a layer, you can set lightning,

32:28you know, if you go into the layer here and you can go into the shadows, you can have your layer

32:34shadow animated, you can have layer shading, I mean the shading, and it would be cool if you just had

32:38a box says what that would say universal lighting and you could set maybe for the whole scene a light

32:43source and then everything would, everything would use that light source and you would get shading based

32:48on the light source. That would be kind of cool if you could do that and shadows based on the light

32:52source or something. That would be kind of cool. Uh, but that's probably not going to happen.

32:56So whenever I need that kind of universal lighting, what I do is I just render out these layers as,

33:01each layer as kind of a separate movie with transparency. I put it in 3D space in Apple

33:08motion because Apple motion has all these particle effects and all that stuff and can do all that

33:14crazy stuff. So that is, um, another thing, the side view. So what I did differently there is basically

33:20I took the front view as is and I just rotated the whole room by 90 degrees. Then next step I did was,

33:28let me show you this here, the pillars I had before. It's still the same pillars. I just kind of

33:36turned them around by 90 degrees again so that they face the camera again fully.

33:42Uh, I had to tweak a few things. Um, I had to work a little bit more with, with, with the 3D placement

33:51of the back part here because the chair, of course, as you can remember, was a flat image.

33:56So I now I'm using several, several images here. If I go with the, where is the back window, back window and throne.

34:04Yeah, just remove the Kaiser for a second. So what I did here is a lot of cheating and some 3D. So, uh,

34:12there is, let's just remove this one first. So what I have here is actually maybe just gonna show you,

34:18okay, you can see all these parts already. So I took all these parts apart from the throne.

34:24I have the throne front only the foot. So the throne, the throne back is really only the foot part and the back,

34:31the backrest of the throne, which is moved a little bit in three spaces, in 3D space backwards.

34:37Then I, I just took this front part, the leg part, moved it forward.

34:43The throne armrest actually, if you look at it in a 3D space, how this is sitting here,

34:47I think it is also important that you see actually how this thing actually is placed in 3D.

34:52So you can see actually this is, this is, yeah, this renders really, really thick lines and stuff.

34:57It's another thing. It doesn't compensate the line thickness and really goes crazy,

35:01but you can still guess the 3D placement. So you can see those pillars are turned 90 degrees towards

35:07the camera. The, the throne back is just flat. So it looks a bit flat. So you gotta live with that.

35:13It doesn't really have real depth. The armrest is actually a, again, it's just a turned pseudo perspective.

35:21So the perspective you can see here is just drawn. And then there is the throne seat,

35:27which is another, as you can see, it's just a flat layer that fakes depth. And it's in 3D space,

35:37it's placed between the back armrest and the, you can see the front armrest, which is another

35:45flat layer, just at 90 degree angle, put there. And they all fake 3D.

35:50And, uh, I guess if I, I guess if, if I do a bit of a dolly, even you, you will see very quickly

35:56that this all falls apart, but you are not going to, you see, you see this here, here it falls apart

36:00already. It's just completely broken. Right. Okay. So it's very fake. I just made it so that for the

36:08most part, if I'm going to have a bit of a dolly here, yeah, that works, you know, that's, that's not

36:14going to break. But as soon as you go further it here, it starts to break, but it doesn't really

36:19matter because at that point, if you see this very thin line here, you know, this is what the camera

36:23sees. So as soon as it starts to break, actually, it's out of the camera view. So it doesn't really

36:29matter. Okay. Another thing I did is I turned all these, these trophies 90 degrees. So they, they,

36:36they are flat on the wall. Now put them on the same 3D, Z, it's not a Z, but Z axis as

36:43the wall. And I had to redraw all these faces of course, to be from the front. So I, I just moved

36:50most of the layers around a bit, copied the eyes. So I have two eyes now and stuff, but it's really

36:54basically just, just a different image than the front, front one. Same for this one where I had

37:00all the front faces flat. So I had to turn them 90 degrees. So they stick out of the wall and then had

37:06to move stuff around and made a three quarter, almost side view of these guys.

37:12so that it works. Um, which mostly works. And if you look at this, because I don't think I need

37:18the front, that's the thing. I never, I never thought I'd need the front wall here. So these are

37:22still flat. They're still here flat. I'll probably never show these trophies anyway. So I just left them

37:29as they are. It doesn't really matter because on the side view, all you ever will see is probably that,

37:34not even that pillar, I think, unless you, yeah, you might see the pillar, but I wouldn't go any

37:41closer than that because it's going to fall apart. So you might see the pillar here. You'll never see

37:45the trophies. So it doesn't really matter. Yeah. And this is how I use this 3D stuff. You know,

37:52you can see already here, some wackiness going on, by the way, as I mentioned it, this is part of the

37:56rendering. That's kind of off. I guess if, if I, if I would go, uh, let me just go with the camera

38:01here over, screw over a bit. Is this going to render right? Let's see. It looks okay,

38:08but it's not perfectly lining up already. As you can see, there's a bit of a

38:11weird thing going on here, but I think for the background and you focus on what's in the

38:18foreground, it should work. And again, I said, I'm going to make this as simple as I can

38:24with as little effort as I can. That's why I keep the backgrounds very simple. I don't know.

38:28There's all these trophies in there, but they are part of them. They are the central part of the whole

38:32story. So I have to have these, but for any other details, I'm not going to put a lot of tiny

38:37things in there or anything. It's just really simple throwaway stuff that doesn't have to look

38:43super great or I'm not trying to get any kind of prizes for the backgrounds in this series. So,

38:49that is that. 3D in Moho. All right, Eisenhard, what's the vibe today?

38:57Ragged imperial grandeur, galactic apex predator, or do we go full enigmatic warlord who doesn't try too hard?

39:05Your wardrobe consists entirely of hunting wear in various shades of arrogance.

39:10And that, my riveted little friend, is called branding.

Almost 3D - better Moho backgrounds with 2.5D

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