How do I: prevent my animation export from looking aliased?

[peter wassink]

I did a test animation with a library character. (Spacewoman)
This looked smooth in the preview but after "animation export" the output looked much more pixelated then the 'in Moho' preview

i used the default render settings which includes
- anti-alias
- extra smooth

i also made sure the resolution of the project is sufficiently high (1920x1080)
What am i missing?


link to an image comparison:
( to best see what i mean you need to download the image because the Google preview makes both look extra crappy somehow)

[Greenlaw]

That sounds strange. Those settings should work. Enabling Antialiasing does just that, and Extra Smooth works by rendering the image at 2X size and then scaling it down to the target resolution. It takes longer to render but is well worth the extra time.

I haven't noticed any unusual AA problems using Moho 14.3 for our animation tutorial footage, but I'll check out the Space Woman project you tested with this evening.

[peter wassink]

Thanks D.R. !
i have a link to the Moho file if that is usefull?
but i basically just imported the character from the library into a new project.

link to the MOHO project

[peter wassink]

i read somewhere on the forum to do a CTRL-R for a render preview...
and this is what it gave me.

render result

[Greenlaw]

Ctrl-R is for Render Preview, which should give you a reasonable representation of the final render. (It's not perfect, but usually close enough.)

Be sure the Render Preview window's Zoom Level is set to 100%. The artifacts in the image you posted are characteristic of the Render Preview being zoomed at an odd size. To do this, click the Restore Defaults button in the lower right corner.

[Greenlaw]

Here's a test render from the file you posted...



The image on the left is the Display Preview, middle is Render Preview, and the right is the final render.

I do see the AA issue in the final render. I'm unsure why this is happening, but the render settings look good. My guess is that it has to do with the brush texture being used.

[Greenlaw]

Yeah, it's a bad brush texture. I removed it from the legs, and here's how it looks in the Render Preview...



Much better AA quality now.

I know some brush textures have a poor alpha channel, and I avoid those brushes.

TBH, I don't see a need for brush textures in this animation. The application is so fine and small, I couldn't tell it was there until I looked at the Style settings. I'm not sure, but this could be another reason Moho is struggling with it.

Hope this helps.

[peter wassink]

Yes! Thank you that helped a lot.
problem solved
I though it strange that moho would not be able to do a better output.

Thank you for digging into this for me!

btw what method do you use to post images?

[Greenlaw]

I just thought of something this morning and revisited the rig. The issue could be related to a setting called Merge Alpha not being checked on for the brushes used.

With this checked off, I believe Moho treats each brush instance as a separate image and renders them that way. This is a straightforward way to apply the images in a Stroke, but when dozens of these images are stacked on or near each other, the alpha channel might start causing AA problems. The brushes are applied densely in this character art, and I'm almost certain that's a problem.

When Merge Alpha is enabled, I think Moho looks at the combined Stroke image, and then generates a combined Alpha channel, so it's less likely to have an AA issue.

In the Space Woman project, Merge Alpha is unchecked. I know the project is pretty old, so perhaps it predates the availability of Merge Alpha?

Sorry for the uncertainty peppered throughout the above; this is just a theory of mine. Maybe someone from Lost Marble can confirm or correct it?

If the explanation is correct, that's cool because I finally understand what Merge Alpha is for. If not, maybe I'll learn something else today.

[Greenlaw]

For forum images, I use Dropbox.

When you get the image link, paste it into the post, select it, then click the Image button. This formats the link to display the image.

For Dropbox, there is one extra step: You need to slightly edit the link by changing dl=0 at the end of the link to raw=1

This tells the forum to display the image rather than downloading it from Dropbox.

If you don't have Dropbox, you can get a free account here:

https://www.dropbox.com/basic

You can use any image server site as well.