No AA Dotted Lines When Below 2.0 Width Causes Heartache and Despair Moho Pro 14

[BigBoiiiJones]

So I always tend to export my stuff with no AA its kind of the standard when animating in Japanese anime media due to external AE plugins like OLM and PSOFT that are common mainstream tools used in the anime industry and most of those plugins don't work when AA is preapplied. So my issue is when doing work for other companies or my own stuff and I use a line width that is lower than 2.0 I get dotted artifiacts. I don't get this issue in other software like Clip Studio, RETAS, CACANi, or OpenToonz and I doubt the render engine is supposed to handle smaller line widths this way so I'm reporting it here. Not sure if anyone else has this issue but its definitely a problem that is consistently repeated on my end. This also happens when using the line width tool to set a lower line width.


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[Greenlaw]

Here's what I believe is going on...

In Moho a 1 pixel wide stroke is literally 1 pixel wide at your current project size. In other words, a 1 pixel wide horizontal line will take up exactly 1 pixel in height of your frame. If you set your stroke to 0.5 pixel wide and draw a line say 25 degrees, and you have AA disabled, you will probably get a broken line because It's not possible possible to draw line thinner than a pixel and Moho is averaging where it should draw a full size pixel. Depending on the angle of the stroke, this line might appear more broken or less broken.

When you have anti-aliasing enabled and you set a thinner than 1 pixel stroke width, I think Moho is then able to simulate a thinner line by blurring the pixels...so this is a visual trick and the stroke is not actually drawn thinner. Zooming in on the line should reveal this. I'm sure this is true for other programs too when drawing the lines under the same condition.

To check this, set your project size to 8 x 8 pixels, and then set your stroke to 1 wide pixel and draw a horizontal line...the line will take up 1/8 your canvas. But if you set the stroke to 0.5, the line will still only take up 1/8 of your canvas. (Note: I suggested 8 x 8 pixels because Moho doesn't allow a smaller canvas size.)

If you're intention is to use OLM in Ae, I would avoid using a stroke thinner than 1 pixel in Moho. At full HD res, a 1 pixel wide stroke is pretty darn thin anyway.

[Greenlaw]

I just checked this in Clip Studio and, yes, the program is faking the thickness of lines thinner than 1 pixel.

For example a 0.5 pixel wide black line with AA disabled looks exactly the same as a 1.0 pixel wide line with AA disabled. When you enable AA, the 0.5 pixel line may look thinner than the 1.0 pixel line but the AA is just blurring the line, making it look gray instead of black...the result can appear to be a thinner line but it's really a blurry gray line...just like what you get in Moho with AA enabled.

[BigBoiiiJones]

I just checked this in Clip Studio and, yes, the program is faking the thickness of lines thinner than 1 pixel.

For example a 0.5 pixel wide black line with AA disabled looks exactly the same as a 1.0 pixel wide line with AA disabled. When you enable AA, the 0.5 pixel line may look thinner than the 1.0 pixel line but the AA is just blurring the line, making it look gray instead of black...the result can appear to be a thinner line but it's really a blurry gray line...just like what you get in Moho with AA enabled.

I could understand the anything under 1.0 I just researched myself and this is actually a surprise to me tbh. Never noticed it. However the problem is Moho does this for lines under 2 a lot of anime work is usually done between 1 to 6 in pen pressure. It's a issue on how Moho distributes the no AA with lines from 1.0 to 1.9





Edit: Just to make things clear this image is from Clip Studio

[Greenlaw]

Oh, shoot...you're absolutely right.

I recreated those lines from your image and I see what you mean. With AA enabled all three lines look fine but when disabled the only unbroken line I'm seeing is the 2.0 one. So Moho strokes below 2.0 are not usable for OLM in Ae.

I guess I hadn't noticed because I often render with AA enabled, and when I need to render with no AA to use OLM in Ae, I typically use 2.0 or thicker strokes. Hmm.

I'll try to point the devs to this thread and see what they think.

[Greenlaw]

I tried this same test in Clip Studio Paint using the vector pen tool with AA disabled and I see no broken lines there.

It also seems like the line weights with AA disabled are more accurately represented in CSP, that is CSP's 2.0 non-AA line is clearly heavier than Moho's 2.0 non-AA line. Maybe Moho is not drawing strokes with the proper weight when AA is disabled?

[BigBoiiiJones]

Just want to say this issue is still happening with 13.5.5 So I'm updating the topic title to newer version

[BigBoiiiJones]

Just bumping since this is a issue in v14 still.

[BigBoiiiJones]

Still a issue in 14.1