Nasty outlines on stroke brush

[Nicohk92]

Thanks!!

[Nicohk92]

Actually this issue was never fully resolved. It was ok when I was just dealing with grass, but now that I am testing the "Background with custom brush" technique, my 900x900px png pixelate like crazy. Anyone can indicate if there's a size limit to the png used? Otherwise, what could be the problem? (I tried many things)

[slowtiger]

No size limit. I regularly use bitmaps 10.000 px long in one dimension.

[hayasidist]

the "Background with custom brush" technique, my 900x900px png pixelate like crazy. Anyone can indicate if there's a size limit to the png used? Otherwise, what could be the problem? (I tried many things)

what are your project settings? If your screen dimension is more that 900 px then your background needs to be stretched to fill - and that will pixelate. If you zoom or track in that will also pixelate.

You'll need to make the bg image big enough so that, at the maximum zoom you intend to use, you won't lose resolution. For example, you're working in HD (1920*1080) and you intend to zoom or track in so that you have a 5 times linear (25 times area) magnification: the MINIMUM bg image size you need is 5*1920 = about 10,000 px on the horizontal.

[Nicohk92]

720P on a mac MBP new generation.

But even the standard brushes (or those city BG found on AS tutor) pixelate, not even when they're a quarter their original sizes. And this wether I use zoom, layer scale, line width or a combination.

I tried everything, turning off GPU accelerator, different scale compensations configs, legacy curves and not, etc...


If it worked I could use this technique every where and take vacations with the time saved.

Heeelp!

[Nicohk92]

Here are links to three pictures.

The first one shows the difference between the png simply dropped in the project and the same used as a brush.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2uVG ... authuser=0


And more worrisome actually. Here is what now happens when I turn GPU acceleration on and off. The strokes almost double in size and look weirder. it's getting very pronunced on any project now so I just keep the damn thing off.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2uVG ... authuser=0

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2uVG ... authuser=0


On a macbook pro 2013 with Maverick


Should I just do a clean install?

[Nicohk92]

I just trashed the program, deep scan my machine for anything remotely linked to Asp (After renaming my custom folder to back it up)

Installed Anime studio pro again.

The problem hasn't changed.

So it's either a bug of Anime studio with Mac or a user error but I think I have exhausted every solution.


grr...

[Nicohk92]

what are your project settings? If your screen dimension is more that 900 px then your background needs to be stretched to fill - and that will pixelate. If you zoom or track in that will also pixelate.

You'll need to make the bg image big enough so that, at the maximum zoom you intend to use, you won't lose resolution. For example, you're working in HD (1920*1080) and you intend to zoom or track in so that you have a 5 times linear (25 times area) magnification: the MINIMUM bg image size you need is 5*1920 = about 10,000 px on the horizontal.

I just tried with a 2000x2000px PNG as a custom brush in a 720P project. Still pixellated as hell when the stroke shape doesn't even fill half the screen. Gets worst as size increases.

[hayasidist]

sorry - I must have misunderstood what you were saying about background images... (I'd interpreted what you said to mean that you were using a PNG as a background image) ...

so would I be right in assuming that you've created a 2000px square brush; you use that as a stroke on a path - then expand the point width using a mix of line width (limit is 256 on the UI) and percent increase to try to fill a 720p field?? That is guaranteed to give you a pixelated mess!!!

how to overcome the 256 point width limit: open a new project with (say) 16*16 pixel field. Draw a line / create a shape with the width to be (say) 256. Copy that line into your 720p project. You'll get a higher line width (11520 px in my test), but beware: if you try to change it it'll be limited to 256; also, with a brush PNG smaller than the line width, you'll still get pixelation.

however, you then hit the next snag, and that's the alignment of individual brush images along the path - you can get close but it's less than wholly perfect at the "joins".

IMO, with the PNG image that you have, the approach I'd use is to set that PNG as an image texture for a fill and use the "tile" option for filling an appropriately sized rectangle.

[Nicohk92]

how to overcome the 256 point width limit: .

That's not what I'm asking either . Let me rephrase: even before getting to 256px, my stroke is already pixelated. as you can see in the images I posted. (I just took the forest square off animetutor for the example, a 900x900px png in this case ) whichever brush stroke I try, (native ones and custom with all kinds of sizes), my stroke gets very quickly pixelated, way before I reach the png original size and way before i even reach 256.

Nice trick to make it even bigger, but useless for me at the moment as reasonable sizes already look horrible.

the approach I'd use is to set that PNG as an image texture for a fill and use the "tile" option for filling an appropriately sized rectangle.

The brush stroke I posted was arbitrary as part of my many tests. I intend to use brush stroke to make trees grow and other evolving landscape stuff without burdening my system too much. Tho I'll definitly test your idea for something else. Thanks!


So Yeah. My scene is getting heavy, the spinning wheel is starting to show its colors, and I still cannot resort to brush strokes for anything else than grass

[slowtiger]

Finally found time to do a test myself.

Here's the brush I used:


Here's the result:


I see some degeneration on the line borders, which obviously is caused by rotating the brush image with a not-so-good interpolation. It has nothng to do with brush file size or video codec.

Since there's no setting for this, you have to live with it. However, in motion this would be invisible.

I recommend you enlarge your project by 1.5 or 2 and render this, then reduce it again to original size in your video editor. This will give you smooth lines again. The difference in render speed can be neglected since what you're doing already will max out your machine ...

[hayasidist]

yeah - I used a standard brush (526 -- the # shape) that has clearly defined edges to see if there was some fundamental issue with AS... all rendered fine here with rotations, translation and scaling (using the line width tool -- I cranked that up to 400,000% [four hundred thousand percent] and the edge resolution was still very tolerable).

[as an aside, I've discovered that stroke width (as in the style window) isn't animatable (any more??)]

so I guess whatever artefacts you're finding are down to: the brush construction (it has feathered edges and the feathering is magnified - as in standard brush 511 - the filled circles?); or, if you're looking at exported video and have used a "lossy" codec (such as h.264), I would suspect that.

[Nicohk92]

Thanks a lot Tiger for trying out (And sidist).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2uVG7 ... sp=sharing

Here's what I get with your brush on a 720p project and 100px line width (the rest of the increase in by line width tool. 200px gives similar results).

It's a bit better than previous attempts, which I think may be due to the smaller size png (compared to the 900px i generally went for). It's a bit reassuring but I'm not sure I'll use it for backgrounds and your workaround is too much of a detour for my current workflow. But who knows, I may not have the choice anyway.




Thanks again