No preview necessary for masking

[Hoptoad]

Most of the time I see the correct masked shapes in the workspace, which is great. Please it make it 100% if the time.

I don't want to have to Preview a masked image to see if my mask is working.

[Greenlaw]

Yes, I agree that seeing reasonably accurate masking in the workspace is long past due. Hopefully we'll get that in the future.

For now, once I set it up my masking and test it (ctrl-R), I just move on. Since I know the result is going to render fine, I just ignore the display anomaly. (Since I animate in 3D programs as much as I do in 2D, I'm used working with less than perfect display previews during animation.)

In the rare case where I absolutely need to see an accurate display in Moho's workspace, I'll create a duplicate art group that has the art arranged to look correct for the workspace that probably doesn't render correctly and set that to Don't Render This Layer. The I'll set the original properly masked group to Hide In Editing View. This way, I'll see the art 'correctly' while animating, and the project will render correctly even though it would display incorrectly if it was visible.

That setup requires extra work though, so the situation has to be a pretty critical before I'll bother with it.

Hope this helps.

[Hoptoad]

In the rare case where I absolutely need to see an accurate display in Moho's workspace, I'll create a duplicate art group that has the art arranged to look correct for the workspace that probably doesn't render correctly and set that to Don't Render This Layer. The I'll set the original properly masked group to Hide In Editing View. This way, I'll see the art 'correctly' while animating, and the project will render correctly even though it would display incorrectly if it was visible.

Thanks, that's a clever solution. I'll probably do that once my rig is done.

Still, I may've wasted 5 hours tinkering with masks because sometimes the display in the workspace is periodically false and I didn't realize it.

I'm FINALLY alert to this odd issue, thank goodness, so I won't be wasting any more time while making masks in the future (I hope), but I suspect many users are wasting a lot of time every day thanks to this weird problem.

The appeal of Moho is the speed. If normal frame-by-frame animation is like driving on a dirt road peppered with numerous bumps and pot holes, Moho is like driving on a smooth highway with no speed limit. . .except for this awful tar pit in the middle of your lane which suddenly appears while you're adjusting the sun visor.

Moho is great, but this mask behavior is bizarre. It's like the coder was 95% done writing the code for masks and then somebody rang the doorbell and the coder answered the door, got distracted, and forgot to finish what he was doing, so he started working on bones or whatever.

[Greenlaw]

Still, I may've wasted 5 hours tinkering with masks because sometimes the display in the workspace is periodically false and I didn't realize it...

...Moho is great, but this mask behavior is bizarre. It's like the coder was 95% done writing the code for masks and then somebody rang the doorbell and the coder answered the door, got distracted, and forgot to finish what he was doing, so he started working on bones or whatever.

The masking UI can seem odd when you're used to doing like in Ae for example. There you simply draw a vector mask directly into a layer or you use the layer above the layer you want masked and set to one of four options (alpha, alpha inverted, luma, luma inverted.) It's not always very efficient (unlike nodal compositing in Fusion or Nuke anyway,) but at least the previews are accurate.

On the other hand, an advantage to the Moho way is that a single mask can affect an entire group of artwork, so in that sense it can be more efficient. There's also a lot of options for how that mask affects each layer inside that group. If you're clever about it, you can create some very advanced setups with a few mouse clicks, way beyond what Ae can do. But then there's that possibility of getting less than perfect previews.

I've actually gotten used to how it's done in Moho so I really don't think about it much and don't see creating masks as a hindrance. I do still hope the preview for masking will improve though.

Some tips for new users:

Basic masking is really easy in Moho. First make everything you want masked is in a group, and place your mask layer at the bottom. Now right-click on the group and choose Mask - Inside Bottom Layer. Done.

If you want an inverted application of the mask, choose the second option Mask - Outside Bottom Layer.

For most users most of the time, that's all you'll probably ever need.

For more advanced application, create your layers in a group as described above and double-click the Group layer. This opens a Layer Properties window. Select the Tab called Masking. Most of the time you want to choose Hide All. By default, this is basically the same as Mask - Inside Bottom, and Reveal all is basically the same as Mask - Outside Bottom Layer. You need to click Apply to set your choice.

The other settings can be applied to each any of the child layers, and this is where it can get interesting (or confusing if you're new to it.) For most intermediate users, everything up to now is all you really need. Well there;s one more thing: if you want the outlines from the bottom most layer (the mask) to appear on top of everything, double-click that layer and choose Exclude Strokes. This is a convenient trick that works most of the time, but when it doesn't, all you need to do is copy the mask layer to the top, make it visible and knock out the fills.

For advanced masking techniques, you can use these settings on any layer to make any layer a mask, or make multiple mask layers mask each other in special ways, or make any layer not be affected by a mask or only be some masks. It can get very complex, so I suggest playing around with a few layers to see how the different settings on each layer affect the whole group.

One last tip: When the masking is straightforward (i.e., separate layers residing in one group) it can look perfectly correct. The problem usually arise when you try to mask a group layer in the most obvious way. As mentioned earlier, I usually just set this with then understanding that the results will be fine.

But sometimes when I really want it to look correct in the workspace, instead of applying an external mask to the group, I'll make a duplicate or reference of the mask inside the sub-group, and apply the masking there. What this means is that instead of asking Moho to do one complex mask, I'm not asking it to do two simple straightforward masks. I may be creating 'redundant' mask layers to do this but preview can look better and the added layers really don't affect performance.

Wait, I lied...here's one more tip: To see masking in Moho more correctly, I like to keep GPU Acceleration in Display Options disabled. I only enable this option when I'm working with many large bitmap images or when I need to see a specific effect live.

Hope this helps.