Everything has become slower

[Alek_vr91]

Hello everyone.
It's a pleasure to be here and I hope I'm not wasting your time with questions that have already been asked.
I have been working with Moho for 5 years now and I am very fond of this program, because you can do everything at a fair price.
The problem is that in version 14.2 everything has become slower.
I have noticed that the management of the Display at the bottom right has changed and if I keep the fill and strokes settings active, the program slows down significantly and it is impossible for me to work.

I will give you some context:
I work in the video game industry and each of my animations is made up of 1 to 3 realistic characters that interact with each other.
My animations are made directly on moho using vectors, and this allows me to collect assets to reuse and modify over time.
So imagine a work plan with a lot of vector layers that make up the various parts of the characters' bodies, I also make heavy use of masks for shadows and highlights.

For now I have avoided the problem by reinstalling version 13.5.
Is there anything I could do to solve the problem or should I wait for version 14.3?

[SimplSam]

You can also try the main disable Masking option (or Masked Layers on the Layer/Group) and see if that helps, as sometimes complicated Mask layers (the actual mask) can have a big impact.

If there is an example file you could share, that would help the diagnosis.

[Panha]

Try turning off Layer and Shape effect, and masking while working in editing or animating. Also if you use a script, https://mohoscripts.com/script/sz_remove_empty_actions, to remove empty action and keep only necessary actions from your project. Removing empty actions may help the performance effectively.

[Alek_vr91]

Thank you very much, so the only thing to do is play with the display parameters.
I hope they solve it as soon as possible because I have never experienced such a slowdown.
This is an example of a single non-animated character:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KZJs0f ... sp=sharing

[hayasidist]

have you checked the moho file for negative keyframes? These can be a cause of slow downs and crashes.

viewtopic.php?t=32714

[SimplSam]

It is difficult to tell from that image, other than you are using lots of masks. If there is any way you can create/share a small, generic looking sample project file that exhibits the issue, that would help.

[Greenlaw]

Extra-high-resolution images and extra-high-density meshes for warping can drag down performance. If you think this could be the cause, try reducing the image resolution to what's suitable for a decent final-quality render, and optimizing the mesh to the lowest number of polygons that will give you nice deformations.

This should not only speed up Moho, but the result could even look better.

[Alek_vr91]

So, the negative frames should be in the timeline, if I understood correctly, however in my case the slowdown is caused by the drawing itself, which is completely made through vectors and masks.
Regarding the resolution, if you mean the one that can be manipulated via project_settings, it is 1280x720, so it is already very low, just now I lowered it further and it is still slow.

At the same time as this discussion I also sent a request for help to Moho support, and the one in the link below is the same file I sent them (I am still waiting for a response).

I would like to point out that all my previous projects had never slowed down until version 14.1, and I have not changed my working style.
The only thing worthy of note, perhaps, is the fact that I use the copy and paste layer and import Shift+Ctrl+Y very often.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/slx28kjo ... 000bh&dl=0

[Daxel]

I took a look at your file and the problem here is clearly the current high performance cost of the strokes of the masking layers. Disabling the strokes gives me perfect 24FPS workspace performance.

I recently made a post about the tests I made about workspace rendering performance and the most important conclusion is that one: the strokes of the masking layers are a big performance bottleneck right now: viewtopic.php?p=219473#p219473

And yes this problem has worsened in the latest versions, which makes sense because Moho has been improving it's worskpace rendering fidelity. I really hope that now that the fidelity is already perfect (or close enough), they can focus on optimization for the next minor versions.

Disabling strokes, and disabling masked layers (the new option) are the two best ways of improving workspace rendering performance. Disabling masks works too but it looks too different.

Using an old version is an option, but for me it's just a tradeoff. With the old workspace renderer I was constantly rendering the current frame to see exactly how the drawing looked like, and that is not needed with the new renderer. To see how the animation moves like, the old renderer was faster but the fidelity was no great, which makes it comparable to using the new renderer and just disabling strokes or masked layers. So at the end, and taking into account the new features and bug fixes, I prefer the new versions and I'm optimist they will improve performance now that they just finished improving the fidelity.

Edit: I almost forgot: another conclusion of my tests is that liquid masking is noticeably more performant than normal group masking, so use it wherever you can and performance will improve.

[Alek_vr91]

Thank you.
I think I also came across your post during my first searches on the web.
It is not easy to work with details disabled, especially after 5 years of habit.
But I also prefer this compromise compared to the previous version, also because I think some things about bones have been improved because they do not behave the same way in version 13.

[Greenlaw]

Regarding the resolution, if you mean the one that can be manipulated via project_settings, it is 1280x720, so it is already very low, just now I lowered it further and it is still slow.

I meant imported bitmaps, but it sounds like this doesn't apply in your case.

Hmm...I'll let you know if I think of anything else.