Moho Forum

I understand masking in terms from other software: There is a "source" and a "target". Whatever shape/image on whatever group/ layer is selected as the "source" will determine the shape and position of the mask. Whatever shape/image on whatever group/layer is selected as the "target" will actually be masked.

I think Moho is doing the same thing, but I don't get the terminology.

There is "Group Masking: No masking in this group / reveal all / Hide All". I don't get it. Is that telling the Group to be the source of a mask, or the target, or both, or?

There is "Layer Masking: Mask this layer". OK. That means it is the target that is actually being masked, yes? But what layer is the source of the mask?

There is "Layer Masking: Add to mask" OK, that means it is added to the source of the mask, yes? But what then is the target? And what if nothing is selected for "add to mask"? Does at least one layer have to be "add to mask" to create a mask?

Can there only be one mask? If there can be more than one, how do you tell which source masks which target?

Sorry if I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be, and I really appreciate any help. But layer masking and group masking in other apps is so simple to me, but right now I'm so confused with Moho. Thanks.

Group: switches masking on/off inside this group. Reveal and hide are two different masking modes. We'll use hide here. Hide means: nothing in this group is visible unless it's inside a mask.

Mask this layer: this layer will be shown only according to the mask.
Don't mask this layer: as it says.

Add to mask: makes this layer (part of) the mask, and it will be visible.
Add to mask, but keep invisible: makes this layer (part of) the mask, but itself will be invisible.

Usually you will have the mask layer(s) at the bottom of the group, which also is the rendering order.

Try this first, then experiment a bit. Note that nested masking is possible, but will show up correctly only in render.

For any group there can be only 1 mask, but this mask can consist of several layers. This is useful if you have fixed and animated parts, or soft and hard edges mixed. Note that any group layer can work as mask as well, this makes stuff easier if you have several animated layers, but you have to handle the mask settings only once.

All layers set to "mask this layer" and above a layer added to the mask are "target layers".
The only exception is that "clear the mask and add" keeps all lower masks from effecting higher layers.

Here's an old masking tutorial I just uploaded again:

And tutorial files:
https://sites.google.com/site/synthsin/ ... ects=0&d=1

One thing that helped me with understanding masking in Moho (let's face it, it's not intuitive at first glance) is that Moho evaluates layers from the bottom up. That's why masks are underneath the things they're masking.