Nodes · Masks

Crucible

Masksv1core

Overview

The matting engine, as a node. Click the subject; correct what is wrong. The correction vocabulary — Fix, Guide, Refine, Exclude — decides which control to reach for, and the tool says why when a correction has no effect.

How to

View the node and click the subject.
Wrong object → Fix. Wrong shape → Guide. Wrong softness → Refine. Should not have looked there → Exclude.
Chain a CrucibleRefine when the edge wants separate treatment.

Inputs

Input	What it takes
in	the image this node works on
shape	—
mask	limits the effect to this matte — the engine's universal mask slot, applied for every node that declares it

Outputs

Output	Type
out	Image

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	What it does
view	Choice	image	image passes RGB through with the matte in alpha (what you comp with); alpha shows the matte itself on black (what you judge it by).
band_opacity	Float	0.65	Not documented yet.
band_erode	Float	0	Not documented yet.
band_dilate	Float	0	Not documented yet.
role	Choice	composite	What the matte is FOR — and it is not cosmetic, it changes which stages run. composite: true float alpha, edge matting and background decontamination, for a matte going into a comp. occlusion: skips both, runs coarse and deliberately fat, for holding a mover out of a camera solve — a conservative region beats a beautiful edge there. holdout / garbage: coarse and generous, for excluding an area.
detail	Choice	part	Which nested subject you meant. One click is ambiguous — the person, the jacket, or the collar — so identification produces all three and this picks. If it grabbed too much, try 'part'; too little, 'whole'. Cheaper than adding a correction.
matte	Choice	auto	Not documented yet.
consistency	Float	0.6	How hard the matte holds still where nothing is moving. High stops hair crawling frame to frame; the blend is region-adaptive, so a genuinely moving edge still tracks rather than smearing. 0 is a full bypass — the right answer when the hair really is moving that fast.
garbage_shapes	Shapes	Vec::new(	EXCLUDE regions — "never look here". Draw over the thing in the corner of the plate that keeps getting picked up, once, instead of re-explaining it every frame. It CONSTRAINS identification rather than being cut out of the result, so you can draw the boundary straight through your subject: the edge still solves properly up to the line and simply finds nothing past it, with no aliased slice through hair. Screen-space and held still by default (a garbage matte is usually lens-fixed); per-shape lifetime bounds it to the frames it's needed. Not the same as role=garbage, which applies to a whole matte.
retain_shapes	Shapes	Vec::new(	INCLUDE regions — "always consider here". Ring a part of the subject that keeps getting dropped and it is kept, whatever identification decided. Where an Include and an Exclude overlap, Include wins, so a broad Exclude over a busy corner with the one real thing ringed inside it works. An Include says WHERE, not what the subject looks like — it won't drag identification toward its colour and take everything else that shade.
guide_shapes	Shapes	Vec::new(	Not documented yet.
guide_strength	Float	1	Not documented yet.
guide_falloff	Float	48	Not documented yet.
prompts	Text	String::new(	The corrections you have made, in order — the ledger. The matte is a pure function of this list, so the same clicks always give the same matte, and removing one bad click from ten minutes ago keeps the nine good ones after it.
paint_strokes	Text	String::new(	Not documented yet.
refine_strokes	Text	String::new(	Not documented yet.
tracks	Text	String::new(	The baked matte, packed run-length. Written by 🜛 Analyze; read by the node every frame. Not meant to be edited by hand.
frame_start	Float	0	The project frame the bake starts at — set by 🜛 Analyze.
status	Text	String::new(	Not documented yet.
bake_dir	Text	String::new(	Not documented yet.
bake_prefix	Text	"crucible".into(	Not documented yet.
bake_format	Choice	exr16	Not documented yet.
bake_first	Float	-1	Not documented yet.
bake_last	Float	-1	Not documented yet.
binding	Text	String::new(	Not documented yet.
tracks_hidden	Text	"[]".into(	Not documented yet.

Layers

crucible
crucibleCore
crucibleBand

Known edges

Two stages are still reference-* placeholders, so Crucible is not shippable yet — see crucible.