Faint lines around strokeless things

[Jkoseattle]

I have many filled (white) vector shapes in which I either hid some edges or else elected not to have a stroke at all, but these shapes often have very thin lines where the stroke is supposedly hidden. After a while I manage to do something which makes them disappear, but I'm not doing it on purpose, and this evening whatever I've been doing I'm not doing so they are still there and the deadline approaches. Anyone know what's going on?

[synthsin75]

Masking generally doesn't play well with hidden edges. There are usually solutions, but not a one-size-fits-all solution. I'd have to see a file to make specific suggestions.

[Jkoseattle]

Not all these shapes are involved with masking. I have a white horse drawn with black lines and am hiding edges all over the place and see these lines.

[Greenlaw]

Can you post a render to show what you mean? No need to show a full image, just a detail of the problem.

Does the line show in an actual render or just the display preview? How about Preview vs. Export Animation? In my experience, Preview is a close approximation of a final render but it's not exactly the same thing--in fact, I've seen edge issues that show up in Preview that don't show up with Export Animation or Moho Exporter. I think it has to do with how Moho composites the image internally (i.e., over white vs. over black). Anyway, If you can pair down a scene to just the problem elements and upload that, somebody here might track down what's happening.

FWIW, I've been using ASP/Moho in TV production for some time now and I don't think I've seen the problem you described. But, as Wes says, there can be many reasons for problems like that, with as many solutions. Here are a few examples of what I've seen and solutions:

Sometimes I might see a thin black line along masked edges that overlap other shapes but this can be corrected by using the Expand option.

Another thing I've seen happens when you have two duplicate groups that have inverted and opposing masks. In this case, the edge where they meet can have a thin gap in it. To fix this, I disable antialiasing for only the mask layers so the pixels in the mask layers can line up precisely. In this situation, the lack of AA in the mask layers doesn't have an adverse effect on the rendered image.

I'm not saying either of these will solve your issue but the examples may give you some ideas.

[Jkoseattle]

OK, yeah, it doesn't render with the thin lines when I preview, so I'm going to ignore it for now, watching carefully when I export to make sure I don't see it anywhere.

[Greenlaw]

When in doubt, render it out.

Yeah, I wouldn't count on the viewport or Preview Render to be fully accurate. Whenever I see something questionable, I do a full render of at least one frame, and then decide if this is really a problem. Usually, it's just a display problem that's easy to ignore.

That said, occasionally, a preview problem can affect my ability to animate the scene (as opposed to rendering it.) This is usually a masking issue, and it's often solved by changing the stacking or nesting hierarchy of the masks. When I run into this kind of problem, I'll break out the problem in a separate scene using only the essential elements. This makes it easier study and experiment with the problem. Once I have the proper solution in my test scene, I'll apply it to the real scene.