Cut-out animation software?

I've just made a 10 minute film & a music promo using digitally cut out photos animated in flash. The trick is to import them in the right way. I use pngs with an alpha channel and use a 5 pixel blur on the edges.

Flash speeds up the process of animating and then using after effects you can add camera moves, lighting, etc.

Believe it or not, SouthPark is made with Maya. They just model the flat "cut out Pieces and texture them to look like construction paper. They can then offset the pieces by small amounts and it will cast shadows to give it the look of actual cut outs. It also allows you to have a huge library of objects for replacement, like mouthshapes and so forth.

You could do something very similar with Flash, just import texture swatches, of cloth, construction paper, wood, you name it, and use them as fill for vector objects that you can then use to animate. You won't get the drop shadow, but that can be faked with some degree of imagination.

I checked their website but it seems that moho is for vector animation, how does it behave when working with bitmaps?, is it possible?

Quite possible. I'd say Moho would be very suitable for cut-out animation.

I did a small sample cut-out animation a couple of months ago to demonstrate to a local computer graphics group. I spent some time in carefully masking off the character (a photograph of a politician) into separate pieces (using a separate program). A few minutes importing and placing the pieces into Moho, a few minutes rigging - creating a 2D skeleton and hooking character pieces up to to the bones, and the character was ready for a simple animation - nothing too complex, just several seconds worth of arm-waving and a ventriloquist's dummy drop-down jaw, I was only demonstrating the concept of cut-out animation.
However, based on that, I'd say larger projects would be no trouble for Moho.

A very simple cut-out example can be seen on Lost Marble's website (the creators of Moho): http://www.lostmarble.com/moho/features/images.mov (about 143 kB)
The character on the left is a simple cut-out animation from one of the basic tutorials included with Moho, the character on the right is a Moho vector character.

Moho supports a range of image formats for cut-out style animation.
It will support alpha channel transparency where provided (well, I've only tried it on PNG images, but I think it is also supported in TGA and TIFF), so you can mask off your cut-out pieces before importing them. However, it doesn't support editing the alpha channel within the program, or chromakey/lumakey masking. Alternatively, Moho does enable you to create a vector mask for your bitmap.
(It also enables you to use animation formats such as AVI and Quicktime in image layers, with alpha support where provided by the codec, but that's possibly not relevant to your needs.)

Bitmap layers can be warped for e.g. bending a limb, or you can just use rigid cut-out separate limb parts.

Your bitmaps can be animated purely as layers (rotation, scale, translate) with a customised layer origin (pivot/scale point), or assigned to Moho's 2D bone rigs for even easier animation.

You can also scan (or otherwise create) multiple cut-out versions of e.g. a face or mouth, and jump between them using Moho's "switch" layers setup, for lipsynch or facial expressions, either manually keyframed or using audio-volume or X-sheet style automation.

You also have access to the whole range of Moho's effects that can be applied to bitmap layers (drop shadows as seen on the cut-out character in the animation referred to above, layer opacity as well as on/off visibility keyframing, layer blending modes) as well as Moho's other effects (e.g. a great particle system - note: you can use cut-out layers as particles if you wish).

You can download a demo version to try it out, which is fully featured and not time-limited but will render with a watermark.

Regards, Myles - happy Moho user (hobbyist level).

I'll keep that in mind and if I figure I want to by a licence I'll contact you. Thanks for the offer.

You're welcome. I spoke to him and he's prepared to sell up to four licenses (he's using the rest). He has also talked to Celaction and they said the new licencee can upgrade the software to the latest version and get a year's tech support for a small upgrade fee directly from them.

From what I've heard, Celaction is like the Maya of cut-out software, it's a high-end solution with a lot of professional tools that hobbyists probably wouldn't appreciate or need. Certainly a lot of big names in London are using it.

I'm glad someone said it before I did... go MoHo all the way and you will have no regrets!! It's one billion times faster and better than After Effects or Flash for making cut out animation - specially for the characters!!

I use it all the time, it's my favorite 2d animation software, hands down. I would only use Flash if I wanted to draw frame by frame.

Macromedia Flash is also very versatile as a tool for cut-out animation, try it , you just might like it :)

I would say that TweenMaker would be something to check out, except that it focuses on life like inbetweens and doesn't really do bitmapped stuff.

Still, there is a free student version you can check out at:

http://www.tweenmaker.com.

Best of luck!

MoHo's great for simple cut-out but if you want to combine some traditional animation and morphing then Solo is the way to go. It's pretty complicated though as it has everything from the drawing tools through to the compositing effects - lots to learn. If you've been using Toon Boom V3 then you are already on your way up the ladder.

The only hurdle is the price, but you get a hol' lotta package for your buck.

You need MOHO. It's very cheap, it has more features than any other similar program and it's a small download. It has "bones", a proper camera, it can import 3D files...the list goes on. Try it completely free by going to:

http://www.lostmarble.com

You won't be sorry!

Jeff

I know people who have rented Celaction before - you should ask about that.

And actually, I know someone who bought a few CelAction licences and then the project was cancelled - I can see if he is willing to sell you one if you want.

I'm very new to cut-out animation and am using Toon Boom Version 3. I really like it. The interface is very straight-forward and user friendly. They have a 30 day demo you can try for free.

-Cathy :)

Hey Cathy,

I see you're using Toon Boom V3. Although you are new to the cut-out scene, how new are you to 2D? I am training on Toon boom Solo and am having problems using the IK "bones", which is definitely not the usual 2D animator's arena!. Seems my knowledge of 3d rigging fails me there. I'm looking into purchasing V3 maybe if I can get a good 2D rig going.

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