Lets say you want to use a roto as a mask for adding a shadow or something.
So you set the mode of the image editor (which displays the viewer node) to “mask”, then click on “new” to create a new mask, then probably name the mask (if you dont want to end up in a mess), then start drawing the mask, then you have to add a mask node in the node editor and select the desired mask. Thats a huge amount of steps needed for a simple task like adding a quick roto. In some other compositing software it works like this: you press “r” which creates a roto node and you immediatly can start drawing the roto in the viewer … that’s it.
And to make things worse Blender has to recalculate the comp (viewer node) on every change of the mask even if you dont use the mask.
Try this: add a picture to your comp, blur it 100px, and then connect the viewer node to it. Now try to make a mask while viewing the blured image, every time you move a point of the mask, Blender needs to recalculate (even though you are not doing anything with the mask yet) … thats completely nuts. And the hack to untick “use nodes” doesnt help here either.
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