Moho vs Toon Boom Harmony (Which One Should You Use?)

If you’re looking into producing turned-on content, there’s a wide variety of software and techniques to explore. Two similar 2D volatility programs - Moho and Toon Boom Harmony, have a lot in common, but differ in some key ways.

In this post we'll squint at the differences so you can determine which largest suits your goals or way of working.

In other words:  Moho vs. Toon Boom Harmony. Which one should you use?

Contents:

• Use Cases
• Learning Curve
• Art Tools
• Animation Features
• Cost
• How to get started

Use Cases

Moho

The big vaccinate of Moho is it’s ease of use for creating reusable 2D rigs with a tremendous value of control. This makes it unconfined for TV shows, web series and plane for creating video game animation.

Moho goes all in on its vector rigged characters, and neglects other hand-drawn features. While it does have the option to do hand drawn animation, it’s very limited.

While it’s not an industry standard volatility software, it has been used in Oscar nominated full-length films:

Toon Boom Harmony

Toon Boom Harmony is a very feature-rich and versatile program that is an industry standard for all kinds of volatility productions.

It has a unconfined full-length set for a traditional 2D animation pipeline, which makes it spanking-new for full-length films and high-quality commercial work. It moreover has the most sophisticated system for creating 2D rigged puppet volatility which makes it perfect for TV series volatility where keeping notation resulting and reusing artwork to save time is a huge advantage.

Here’s some examples of unconfined pieces washed-up with Toon Boom Harmony:

https://youtu.be/rkdN3sCtwtU

Moho vs. Toon Boom Harmony: Main differences

Moho:

• Reusable characters
• Content with a very tight schedule
• Powerful Weft Rigs

Toon Boom Harmony:

• Film and TV
• Large Productions
• Puppet Notation / Hand Drawn Animation

Learning Curve

Moho

Moho prides itself for stuff intuitive, and they have made an effort to make rigging a much less daunting task, but there’s still a lot to learn to weightier implement their tools.

While the increasingly simple rigs are easy to set up, you’ll have to dig deep to use all of its smart tools for creating increasingly ramified rigs. 

Toon Boom Harmony

The learning lines with Toon Boom Harmony can be difficult. There is a lot to learn depending how deep you want to go. It’s easy unbearable to get started doing vital frame-by-frame animation, but to really take wholesomeness of Harmony, there are specific techniques and weightier practices that are definitely worth it to learn.

This is particularly true if you want to get into Harmony’s advanced weft rigging features or its nodal compositing system. These are specialties that are very powerful, but you don’t necessarily have to dig into at all if you don’t want to.

Art Tools

Moho

Moho focuses on vector drawing tools. While it does have bitmap drawing capabilities, you’re increasingly likely to import bitmap artwork drawn in flipside program.

Most of the tools you’ll probably use are the rigging tools, which work unconfined for both vector and bitmap art.

Toon Boom Harmony:

Toon Boom Harmony has both bitmap and vector drawing tools. The bitmap drawing tools indulge for increasingly natural sketching and painterly effects, and Harmony’s vector tools are for creating nice wipe finished inked and painted artwork.

Vector lines can moreover have styles unromantic to them that replicate the squint of increasingly traditional looking media.

Harmony has historically been increasingly focused on it’s vector art tools and many of it’s increasingly wide features and cadre workflows are intended to be used with vector-based finished art.

Animation Features

Frame-by-Frame Animation

Toon Boom Harmony has excellent tools and features for doing frame-by-frame animation and replicating the workflow of a traditional 2D pipeline. From rough animation, to clean-up/coloring, to final compositing, Harmony has everything you need.

Moho does have frame-by-frame capabilities, though it’s not its strong suit. 

Rigging Character Puppets

Moho’s biggest selling point is its rigging capabilities. It features a wide variety of wide rigging tools that allows for both an intuitive simple rigging process, and an wide ramified rigging pipeline if needed.

Its unique Smart Bone system is the easiest way to make rigged notation that finger increasingly hand drawn.  

Toon Boom Harmony moreover has extremely powerful features for making rigged weft puppets. It’s easy to add vital wreck and deformers to a weft to make them easier to pose and animate, or with some increasingly work and know-how you can build very versatile full-turnaround weft rigs that can be repurposed for just well-nigh any scene.

Many shows made in ToonBoom might be using rigged notation without you plane noticing. 

Other Factors

Moho has many effects that can be unromantic to your layers and drawing elements that let you do things like add shadows and color modifications.

It can be unintuitive to icon out how to unzip the effect you’re going for since variegated effects are unromantic from variegated places in the interface. Many effects can’t be rendered live in your canvas view so you’ll need to do a lot of preview renders to see how your effects look. 

Harmony moreover has a host of effects to wield to your artwork. There is a learning lines to icon out what you can do, but the system is ultimately more resulting and robust.

Harmony Premium offers a ramified nodal compositing system that let’s you unzip effects that couldn’t be washed-up any other way. It’s moreover easier to see a live preview of your effects as you wield them. 

Cost

Moho is misogynist in two versions: Moho Debut and Moho Pro.

Moho Pro is what we recommend using. The key features that makes the Pro version worth the upgrade are Smart Wreck and Smart Warp. These tools are what makes Moho’s rigging so great, and are highly recommended.

There’s moreover things like size limits and 3D object support that make Pro much better suited for doing serious volatility work. 

The pricing for Toon Boom Harmony depends on which version you buy.

• Harmony Essentials is good if you’re just getting started.
• Harmony Advanced adds bitmap painting tools and increasingly support for a traditional hand-drawn workflow.
• Harmony Premium adds increasingly wide weft rigging and a node-based compositing system for wide visual effects and rendering.

You can buy Harmony either as a subscription plan or as a one time permanent license.

Moho vs. Toon Boom Harmony - How do you choose?

Who won the Moho vs. Toon Boom Harmony fight?

Choose Moho if you’re interested in doing rigged-puppet volatility and want to be worldly-wise to unzip impressive, whilom stereotype results with a unelevated stereotype learning curve. 

Go with Toon Boom Harmony if you’re looking to invest time in learning a powerful industry-standard program that offers the flexibility to do either traditional frame-by-frame volatility or rigged-puppet animation.

Get started

Bloop has animation-focused courses for both programs, so you can jump in and learn all the tools you need to know to get started animating.