Unsightly edges on exported animated objects

[Timothy 2020]

I am exporting a 4K-resolution animated character from Moho as Quicktime ProRes 4444 and then bringing the guy into FCPX where I lay him on top of a different background.

Everything is working fine except for one thing - I am getting unsightly edges around the Moho character when laid upon the background in FCPX.

It's a tiny white 'glow' and looks a bit like if there was no anti-aliasing applied or something. As a result, the edges of my character have a slightly 'raggedy' quality when placed on the background. So far, I have only really tried toggling with FCPX's compositing settings and options, but none of them seem to address the problem. Besides - I have now looked very closely at the exported animation mov before I ever bring it into FCPX, and can see these edge problems do appear on the exported animation itself.

I was just wondering if anybody else has experienced this and whether there might be a setting I can adjust in Moho, to make the edges of the exported animation object behave differently? Did I miss a step, do something silly or am I not understanding something? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated, folks! In the grand scheme of things, in the 4K sequence, it's almost unnoticeable - but it does cause problems at certain moments.

Here's a small image of this edge problem on the Moho export and which I had to enlarge - don't know if you can see much.

https://ibb.co/S34wn94

[slowtiger]

Is that a vector character or made from bitmaps? If bitmap, it's possible that you've exported the images as "don't pre-multiply alpha" and this now shows over a dark BG.

[Timothy 2020]

Yes, the character was originally created in Procreate as PSD files - and then brought into Moho and boned and rigged and works great.

When exporting, I am leaving the box 'Do not premultiply alpha channel' unticked.

[SimplSam]

One alternative is export from Moho as an image sequence (PNGs), and see how that flies.

[Timothy 2020]

Thanks for your responses, slowtiger & SimplSam.

Okay, I just tried exporting as PNG image sequence - and interestingly, the problem seems to disappear. Unfortunately, that's a workflow problem for us. We do need to export it as a video file...

But it's very interesting the problem seems to disappear when we do it image by image....

I wonder what is causing this.

UPDATE: We have been able to virtually eliminate the problem by simply increasing the resolution in the project settings.

[arglborps]

I found that there are two severe bugs when exporting to ProRes from Moho.

1. Moho seems to be ignoring or using the wrong colour profile. When you export in ProRes from Moho the colours look washed out.
2. When using ProRes 4444 from Moho, alpha channels seem jaggy/dirty

Exporting as picture sequence in PNG will give you brilliant colours and super sharp alpha channels instead. It's super easy to either use QuickTime Player to then convert the image sequence into a proper ProRes 4444 movie (⌘ + SHIFT+ O "Open Image Sequence" – I'm sure you could also automate that via Automator or AppleScript to watch certain folders for subfolders to convert automatically).

You can also import image sequences into Apple Motion and treat the sequence as if it was a "normal" movie.

I found using image sequences to be superior to movies anyway, because if you need to re-render only 2 seconds of e.g. a longer animation, with image sequences you only need to export the exact number of frames you fixed, not the whole movie.

[Greenlaw]

I found using image sequences to be superior to movies anyway, because if you need to re-render only 2 seconds of e.g. a longer animation, with image sequences you only need to export the exact number of frames you fixed, not the whole movie.

Yes, that and image sequences require fewer resources to render than a movie file, so it can be faster and less likely to crash. After rendering the image sequence, I'll compile the footage to a movie file in a compositing program (for final editorial) or from a video editing program. Some media player programs can do this too.

Images are also easier to edit and manipulate in compositing programs, and of course in any paint program.

FYI, rendering to image sequence (PNG, EXR or whatever) from an animation program (any animation program) is standard practice at every studio I've worked at.

As for the problem of getting incorrect colors pace in ProRes format, we run into a similar issue with DNxHR and some other codecs saved in .mov from After Effects all the time, so it's not unique to Moho. (For Win anyway; it's probably better for Mac, but I don't have much recent Mac experience.) Some programs apparently tag the color space data incorrectly for .mov. To work around this problem now, I have to load the final frames to Nuke and render the final movie from there to get the correct color format. It's very annoying. (Adobe says they're working on fixing this for Ae now.)

There are other ways to work around the issue. In my personal work, I've been able to avoid this issue simply by not using the .mov container, and using higher bit depths settings for my final movie output. (Not currently possible from Moho since it is limited to 24-bit color.)

Hope this helps.