Pngs from flash not rendering right

[FlipsterFlop]

I exported PNGs from flash which had linear and radial color crossfades. I use the highest setting for colors. When I put these pngs in moho, and then render the animation (which I also do at highest settings), the crossfades are no longer smooth, but have obvious gradient lines. How to fix this?

[D-Zomba]

i think maybe what you want to do is impossible with moho. i havent treid it myself, but from what i've read moho has trouble recognizing gradients from a lot of programs, like illustrator i know won't work, but i'm not sure about flash. i think maybe if you import it into another program that is compatible, and then export it again, or something? actually i'm not sure. i know the png format is supposed to work, but maybe something about how flash makes the image doesnt process in moho. i dont know...im not very into the technical stuff, just animate mostly. can someone confirm if im cprrect or not?

[myles]

Which codec are you using? Some codecs use colour-lossy compression even at highest quality, which is not so noticeable in live action. On a quick low-resolution test at highest quality, Sorensen and Indeo 3.2, for example, demonstrate visible quality loss, but this is not noticeable for Sorensen 3.

Try Full Frames (Uncompressed) for AVI, or None for Quicktime - does the problem still occur? Other non-lossy codecs you can try are HuffYUV and Lagarith for AVI, and PNG or Animation at full quality for Quicktime.

Don't forget to use the "Extra-smooth images" rendering option.

D-Zomba - good guess, but the gradient problem with Illustrator files only refers to vector import - PNGs from any software shouldn't be a problem.

egards, Myles.

[FlipsterFlop]

When I export the video uncompressed the same thing happens. I make sure to check extra smooth lines. I assume if the full frames are flawed no compression will fix it, but I still tried using Lagarith anyway, which didn't help. I don't think theres anything wrong with the PNG, which looks fine when I open it in Windows picture viewer.

Any other suggestions? I really appreciate your help. I can't finish my animation, or at least have it look nice and polished, and it's very aggravating.

[myles]

I make sure to check extra smooth lines.

Not extra-smooth (Anti-aliased) lines, Extra smooth images - it's further down in the list of rendering options.

I assume if the full frames are flawed no compression will fix it

No, compression can either leave it the same or make it worse, it can't make anything better.

Any other suggestions? I really appreciate your help. I can't finish my animation, or at least have it look nice and polished, and it's very aggravating.

If you render a single frame somewhere in the video does it also look colour-banded?

Is your PNG image roughly the same size or maybe a little larger than it will appear in the final rendering? Significant resizing of images can lead to problems - not just in Moho, it's a general image processing problem.

Is it possible for you to upload the PNG somewhere? Your .moho file?

Regards, Myles.

[FlipsterFlop]

I tried rendering a single frame. It shows up in the moho window looking bad, but if I export it as a png, bmp, or jpeg, that file will look fine, with the gradient intact. Strange. When I import these files back into moho, and render the animation, it still looks bad. And yah, I've been checking both 'anti-aliased edges', and 'extra smooth images'.

Heres a small piece of one of the png files, where the problem is most obvious:

http://tinypic.com/nwk8jp_th

Let me know if your able to get different results, or have any other advice.

I suppose, as a last resort, I could finish the animation and export it as a series of bmps. And if I can find a program that will make an AVI out of them (know of any good ones?). Still, I'd prefer to fix the problem in moho...

Something else I just realised is that, even though the png I hosted was never exported through moho, the problem with the gradient shows up when I see it on the website, but not when I save it back to my computer. Now I'm extremely confused...

[myles]

Heres a small piece of one of the png files, where the problem is most obvious:

http://tinypic.com/nwk8jp_th

The gradient is nice and smooth on that image - I assume this is before you animate it in Moho?

Hmm, I just did a simple on-screen 360-degree rotation to Lagarith-codec AVI, and the results are equally smooth.
(Importing your image fragment as an image layer without resizing, project settings left at default 320x240.)

I tried rendering a single frame. It shows up in the moho window looking bad, but if I export it as a png, bmp, or jpeg, that file will look fine, with the gradient intact. Strange.
[...]
Something else I just realised is that, even though the png I hosted was never exported through moho, the problem with the gradient shows up when I see it on the website, but not when I save it back to my computer. Now I'm extremely confused...

Hmm, that is highly suggestive of display banding - can I ask you to check (most likely culprit) what colour resolution you are running your monitor at, and also let us know if you are running LCD or CRT (considerably less likely)?
In Windows, right-click on the desktop, choose Properties from the pop-up context menu, look at the Settings tab for a drop-down list called something like "Color quality".

(And also to detail which codec you are rendering at, what settings, and what media player you are using to play back the animation? Although I'm now less convinced this is the issue. Which software are you using to view the PNG images?)

If, as I am now starting to suspect, you are running at less than 24 or 32-bit colour (16-bit, for example), and your PNG viewing/creating software is doing some smart dithering but your media player is not (nor is your web browser), that would explain everything.
Simply reset your monitor to display at 24 or 32-bit colour (well, at 32-bit settings you actually get 24-bit colour but 32-bit optimised driver operations, but that's a different discussion) and you should now see the Moho animations in their full colour range which your monitor was not displaying.

To a considerably lesser extent the same applies for LCD, which has some gradient banding or dithering problems (display problem only, not actually present in the source material) which are more obvious in animation or live action than in still images - there are some perfectly good LCD monitors and TVs in one of our local electronics shop which look lovely for some images and films, but look significantly worse when there is a smoothly graduated sky taking up a majority of the screen while the camera is moving. Old CRT technology or plasma does better at this, even expensive new LCD computer monitors are still mostly 6-bit per channel rather than 8-bit, and the lower contrast ratios of earlier LCD screens can also sometimes accentuate banding or dithering.

Another thing to check - are you ticking "Use NTSC-safe colours" when you are exporting your animation from Moho? This could also introduce banding by reducing the colours used - I'm far less suspicious that this is the problem though.

One last thing - are you viewing your animation at full-screen (which can be something like 1280x1024, for example, or even 1600x1200), when your animation is rendered at, for example, DVD resolution ?
Like a low screen colour resolution or a lower contrast LCD display, the resizing can sometimes introduce display banding that doesn't actually exist.

Regards, Myles,

[FlipsterFlop]

Wow, do I feel dumb. My color settings were at 16 bit the whole time. I set it back to 32, and everything works perfectly.

Anyway, thank you so much for the help! God only knows how long it would have taken me to think of that...