Download Moho Pro for macOS

A character rig needs a walk cycle before lunch. Moho Pro is open on a Mac, a bone layer selected, and the timeline already has twelve frames of contact poses. That is the usual starting point before anyone asks the practical questions.

1. What does it animate? Vector art and cut-out characters, with curve animation tools for smooth in-betweens. Physics controls cover density, gravity, friction and elasticity when you want a cape to fall naturally.
2. Does it play well with other tools? Yes. Import Photoshop documents, bring in Poser scenes for mixed 3D and 2D work, and export glTF/GLB for game engines like Unity, Unreal and Godot.
3. Is the scripting current? Moho 14 moved the interface to Lua 5.4.4, so older scripts may need a quick check.

Moho Pro used to be called Anime Studio Pro, so you may see that name in older tutorials. It runs on macOS 10.15 and later on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, with the same installer covering Windows.

Who clicks with Moho Pro

Mac users who think in layers and keyframes get the most mileage here. That includes freelance animators building explainer videos on a deadline and small game studios rigging characters for side-scrollers. The physics engine clicks for motion designers adding secondary motion — a scarf dragging through a turn, a stack of crates tumbling. If you are coming from a raster workflow, the vector bones save you redrawing every in-between.

Cut-out animators with libraries of reusable parts settle in fast. Moho's layers panel mirrors habits from Photoshop, so character builds from arms, mouths and blink cycles on separate layers feel familiar. People exporting to Unity or Godot also lean on the glTF export to skip a re-rigging step in-engine.

A from-scratch walk cycle

Say a side-view character needs to cross a forest clearing. Here is one way through it.

1. Rig the bones. Import the vector art or draw it straight onto a bone layer. Pin shoulders, elbows, hips and knees, then test the range of motion with the Manipulate Bones tool.
2. Set contact poses. Frame 1 gets the left foot forward, right foot back. Frame 12 mirrors it. Frame 6 is the passing pose — one leg straight under the body. The bone onionskin helps line up the arcs.
3. Add in-betweens. Curve animation tools smooth the motion between poses. Tweak the hip's vertical bounce on a separate channel so the stride does not float.
4. Lay in physics. Give the character's hair or cloak a physics layer. Set gravity to pull the fabric down and friction to slow the swing. Run the simulation and bake the points once it looks right.
5. Export for engine. With the cycle looping cleanly, export as glTF. The skeleton and mesh carry over to Godot or Unity without rebuilding the rig.

Rigging on top of a Photoshop background

Moho Pro plays a middle role between raster frame-by-frame apps and full 3D suites. A Photoshop document lands on a layer with its blend modes intact, so background painters can hand off a scene file and you rig over it without exporting flat PNGs first. Poser scene import lets a 3D creature step into a 2D painted world — the camera tracks and the shadows composite inside Moho before the final render.

The sequencer ties audio and scene cuts together. Drag a voice line under a character rig, scrub to the phoneme, and key the mouth switch layer. On export, the HD video output includes the audio mix, so a short goes from timeline to an MP4 without round-tripping through a video editor.

Scripting in Lua 5.4.4 means custom tools live alongside the stock ones. A quick script can randomise blink intervals across a crowd scene or batch-rename layers on a multi-character project. The built-in library of visual objects gives you starter props and rigs to pull apart and study — helpful when you are learning how the bone hierarchy affects movement.

For game teams, the glTF pipeline slots Moho into a workflow with Unreal or Godot. Animate the character once, export, and the engine reads the skeleton. Updates to the particle system in version 14.4 keep sparks and dust inside the export, so a spell effect travels with the rig.

Good to know: switching from the old Anime Studio Pro name means a lot of forum answers still use the old label — searching "Anime Studio Pro rigging trick" often turns up the right thread.

• New glTF/GLB export for game engines and 3D software.
• Particle system and layer fixes rolled in.
• Scripting interface updated to Lua 5.4.4.

• macOS 10.15 or later
• Intel or Apple Silicon Mac
• 2.0 GHz Intel Core i3 or higher
• 4 GB RAM or higher
• 1.6 GB free hard drive space or higher
• OpenGL 4.1 supported graphics card
• 64-bit OS required
• Online connection required for activation