Does referencing (bone layer, e.g. Characters) make Moho slow?

[Panha]

When referencing bone layer, e.g. a character (with bone structure), Moho becomes slow, especially on the original bone layer of that referenced character.
For example, I have two characters in a scene. Let's say character A and B. Then I make a reference of character A. After referencing, manipulating character A becomes slower than normal. However, manipulating character B works as normal (not slow). I noticed that only when referencing does the bone layer get slow. I sometimes have many characters in a scene and it works as normal if there is not any referencing bone layers. Is it normal behavior or a bug?

[Daxel]

I have noticed the same. To be specific, this is not workspace rendering performance, this is editing performance, it looks like it's the process of applying the changes to the reference in real time what makes editing the original (like: moving the bones) slower. And there were no corrupted references or negative keyframes. I wonder if this always happened of if it's a regression. I can work with it but it's a little bit slower.

[Greenlaw]

I think this is to be expected. Referencing, Moho is basically duplicating the data and maintaining links to the original. So, my understanding is that when you create a Reference, Moho still needs to dedicate additional memory and processing to it (although maybe not as much as a complete duplicate.) Then, as you create unique keyframes for the reference version, Moho has even more processing to do.

That said, I haven't noticed much of a slowdown here, and I reference or duplicate rigs all the time. (Usually, this is to create custom mask passes and other elements used in compositing.)

If I did see a significant slowdown in a Moho project, my first thought is to do what Daxel suggested: check for unintended negative keyframes. I haven't seen this occur in a few years, but I recently found this situation in an old character rig I repurposed for Moho 14.2.

[Panha]

I think this is to be expected. Referencing, Moho is basically duplicating the data and maintaining links to the original. So, when you create a Reference, Moho still needs to dedicate additional memory and processing to it (although maybe not as much as a complete duplicate.) Then, as you create unique keyframes for the references, Moho has even more processing to do.

That said, I haven't noticed much of a slowdown here, and I reference or duplicate rigs all the time. (Usually, this is to create custom mask passes and other elements used in compositing.)

If I did see a significant slowdown in a Moho project, my first thought is to do what Daxel suggested: check for unintended negative keyframes. I haven't seen this occur in a few years, but I recently found this situation in an old character rig I repurposed for Moho 14.2.

Thank you very much. However, there is no negative keyframes in the project and the slowdown happens all the time when I reference Bone Layer (e.g. character). My characters are made up of PSD file. I did not notice much problem either when referencing something like vector shape or points. You can try referencing a Bone layer (something like character) that is made up of PSD file.

[Daxel]

I just made some tests:

It happens the same in Moho 13.5.
It happens without negative keyframes or corrupted references.
It's not afected by worskpace rendering performance.
It doesn't happen if the reference visibility is off. However, to rule out the possibility of being just the rendering performance cost of having one more rig in the scene, I added a different rig to the scene and this new rig had great editing performance, so it wasn't the cost of one more rig.
It doesn't happen if you move the ref, only if you move the original.
The more refs of the rig you are moving, the slower.
It happens regardless of the content of the rig, vector or PSD.
It doesn't happen with duplicates.

Conclusion: It's normal behaviour, the cost of updating the reference in real time. The best workarround is to disable the ref's visibility, specially useful if you have multiple references. Duplicates are also your friend.

[synthsin75]

I wonder if it makes any difference if the original is below all the references in the layers window, since this is how Moho naturally calculates layers.
References being below the original could possibly have extra processing overhead.

Just guessing, mind you.

[Greenlaw]

That's very interesting. Now that I think about it, my reference layers are always above the original. I don't think I do that intentionally; it's just how I always have done it.

[Daxel]

I just tested it and no, the order doesn't make a noticeable difference.

[synthsin75]

Thanks, Daxel. Worth a shot, I guess.

[Panha]

I wonder if it makes any difference if the original is below all the references in the layers window, since this is how Moho naturally calculates layers.
References being below the original could possibly have extra processing overhead.

Just guessing, mind you.

Most of the time, I put the original layers below the reference.