Exclude Stroke, wait for fix or not?

[KuzKuz]

Thanks for fixing that bug. I am happy that I can use this powerful feature without an unwanted lines and my rigs now more optimized. Thanks!

[KuzKuz]

After detailed testing I see that the mask still doesn't work perfectly. Line still here, but line color was changed to fill color.


Can you please make this render mode "Stroke Style - None" with ignoring "Exclude Strokes" in all layers? In this case we will can render properly fills and strokes, in all mask situations, and composite fill and strokes in the video editing software without any unwanted lines.

[o0Ampy0o]

I'd like to understand this problem. What line are you referring to?





Also, it may annoy you or there may be examples of it being more obvious but if it is only the little white lines in the ear area in that rotating character of the first post no one would notice it unless they were thoroughly scrutinizing it. In its animated presentation it would be impossible to detect. Maybe I have yet to identify the problem. Does the flaw appear consistently? Very very nice character design BTW.

[KuzKuz]

Thanks o0Ampy0o! After many tests I understood. Unwanted lines is visible if add to mask another layer. I attach the file to this link. You can use this file to see mask structure and see the line in render. If delete the layer "Finger" in "Hnd" group, the mask will work properly.

[o0Ampy0o]

For those who don't know what I'm talking about - If you create a mask with the "Exclude Stroke" option, then whenever you have the stroke disabled or set to 0 width there will be a thin white line on render.

For some reason I frequently miss/overlook posts within threads in this forum. I believe I am reading every post in sequence then after posting a response or some time later if reviewing the thread I see posts that I had not seen originally.

Initially, I did not see this explanation. The problem is very clear to me now.

[synthsin75]

After detailed testing I see that the mask still doesn't work perfectly. Line still here, but line color was changed to fill color.

You just have to enable Expand mask by a Pixel.

[KuzKuz]

After detailed testing I see that the mask still doesn't work perfectly. Line still here, but line color was changed to fill color.

You just have to enable Expand mask by a Pixel.

Thanks, i know about it many years, but In this case if i zoom camera i will got different results, because pixel size can't be changed with camera.
In small view "Expand mask by a Pixel" just remove stroke.

Can you please make this render mode "Stroke Style - None" with ignoring "Exclude Strokes" in all layers?

This resolve all problems.

[synthsin75]

You just have to enable Expand mask by a Pixel.

Thanks, i know about it many years, but In this case if i zoom camera i will got different results, because pixel size can't be changed with camera.
In small view "Expand mask by a Pixel" just remove stroke.

If you change the color of the shadow shape, you'll see the outline is still there (just a little thinner). It just gets lost in the anti-aliasing with the dark color when very small. And if you don't like that, either disable scale compensation or up the outline width. It is expected that extreme changes in zoom may require different art to maintain the same readability.

[KuzKuz]

synthsin75, thanks for your help, I appreciate it. I wrote about this issue some time ago and in version 12.1 was bugfix.

● Unwanted lines appearing when masking with the "Exclude strokes" option.

In some cases this problem was fixed, but in another not. I just hope that this bug will be fixed totally. Thanks.

[KuzKuz]

New problem after bugfix. In shapes intersections, with exclude stroke option, render works without antialiasing.



And don't forget about line if add to mask another layer. Please fix this bugs. I do not ask for advice, I ask to fixing this bugs. Thanks.
If developers do not have enough beta testers to check mask in all conditions, take me. I can testing very deeply in a variety of situations and rigs!

[Greenlaw]

Yes, I ran into that bug a few weeks ago. It comes from using Exclude Strokes and it's actually been there for some time (I checked it against ASP 11 and it happens there too.) It's especially odd because the aliasing is occurring on only one side of the stroke.The developers are aware of the issue and looking into solving it.

Normally, I would find a way to break out the stroke and just paste it in a layer on top of the stack but I couldn't do that in this scene. (Sorry, I don't remember the exact reason I couldn't to this--maybe that simply didn't work. I'll have to revisit the scene to be sure.)

The developer showed me a workaround. He said because there were other strokes near the one that was rendering without AA, these strokes were somehow interfering with proper rendering of Exclude Strokes. So, using Hide Edge, he hid the nearby strokes (which were not visible anyway because they were behind the shape with the stroke I was excluding,) and somehow this fixed the AA issue when the scene was rendered. This was a workaround specifically for my case though and I'm not sure it applies in your situation, but it might be worth looking into.

TBH, I didn't understand exactly what was going in my scene. I think maybe Moho was trying to exclude the strokes that was behind the shape with the stroke I actually wanted to exclude, and this was somehow cancelling AA from the shape? If I get a chance, I'm going to examine the workaround again when I go back to work this week, and if I have a better explanation then, I'll post it here.

But hopefully, a proper fix is coming soon.

[Greenlaw]

Do me a favor: split the square where the circle overlaps it and then, using Hide Edge, hide those square segments that are behind the circle. Render a frame. Does it AA correctly now?

Based on what I wrote above, I'm just curious if this will 'fix' the problem.

[KuzKuz]

Greenlaw thanks! AA not working anyway if the stroke was covered with the shape, if I hide the stroke behind the shape, shape don't cut the stroke and AA work fine. But this feature, when shape cover stroke, is make "Exclude Stroke" so powerful and such mask system rig impossible to reproduce with another methods. For example this allow to make detailed hands with shadows, when one finger overlaps another finger with one masking shadow for all fingers and hand, with preserved colored strokes. I hope all masking bugs will be fixed soon.

[Greenlaw]

Yes, I agree. There have been situations where I can get nice renders without using Exclude Strokes and instead breaking out the strokes to a separate layer or group, but then I had major masking preview issues in the workspace that made the rig more difficult to animate. In these situations, I'd have go back to using Exclude Strokes and then post processing the AA in a compositing program--like, for example, After Effects with the free OLM Smoother plugin. That's not ideal either but it's another option.

FYI, OLM Smoother also works well for smoothing out strokes using Texture Brushes that also have AA problems. Actually, all of the texture brushes have AA problems to varying degrees. The problem is just more or less noticeable depending on how slow the animation is and how much contrast is in the brush.

[Bold Studio]

hey thanks for the masking vid with the reference layer. it helped me with my eye strokes going through the hair vector... control two separate hair layers with ref layer.