IF Component - Bug or Intention?

I have been playing with the IF Component to use as a color replacement Tool in a script and came about this funny situation.

The attached screenshot shows two almost identical setups. All are same colors and operation type. Except for the ELSE result. The ELSE result map is set to a none Alpha in TEST 1 and to a Alpha in TEST 2.

I am aware of that comparisment is done on a bitwise basis on the Source input maps and therefor values here is not just as using the RGB values to test with.
But that is not really the issue...

The issue is: IF (Source A < Source B = TRUE) in TEST 1 then it should also be in TEST 2 and because of that just return the THEN Result.

What am I missing here?

Yes. Exactly what I thought. And in other operation modes it makes similar results.

It seems like the bug is only there if Alpha is set to other values than full opacity on the ELSE input map.

Actually, I just checked the alpha-channel separately, and everything seems to be in order. I'm attaching the test filter. Open it in the editor and go through all operations: everything seems to work as expected.

AlphaTest.ffxml

My point is that the IF component gets 2 different results of the same math.

it is like saying that 2 +2 = 4 only returns true sometimes.


in the following code sample the code should always goto label a. Never to label b. And that is what my example is about.

var q = white

IF (2+2=4) then
label a
ELSE
label b
END

Zep, the correct pseudocode for your examples is this:

Code
function iffy(truth, falsehood)   if (2+2=5) then     return truth   else     return falsehood end function // now let's call the function a couple of times // this call will return 1.0 because // the value for falsehood is 1.0 example_1 = iffy(1.0, 1.0) // this call will return 0.0 because // the value for falsehood is now 0.0 example_2 = iffy(1.0, 0.0)

Edit: corrected an obvious error.

I'd rather say

Code
function iffy(SourceA, Operation, SourceB, Truth, Falsehood)   if (SourceA Operation SourceB) then     return Truth   else     return Falsehood end function

(you can't use THEN and ELSE as argument names, they are reserved keywords.)

Quote
If that is the case the component and its parameters namings are "slightly" misleading

What naming and parametrization would you suggest?

Here it outputs Source B - RED where I would expect it to output either WHITE or BLACK.

As I said it might not be the purpose of the component, but I think most would expect it do either output what is input in THEN or ELSE.

I read the articles and help before creating this thread, but it still doesnt make sense.

But lets leave this by it. We will probably never agree on the interpretation of logics here anyway.

Quote
I read the articles and help before creating this thread, but it still doesnt make sense.

Umm... hi. Maybe this might be a bit helpful. I'm hoping I read what the problem was exactly, it's a bit hard following up on a conversation. So sorry if didn't contribute.

The screenshot shows what the if component would be doing for each channel. The blend node simply generates a color, where each color is broken into R, G, and B channels (example doesn't show alpha but the same thing happens). In this case the operation is A < B. For each channel, if A is < B then it'll output 1 (or white).

Yes I already figured out how it Works and also see that it can probably not Work different with channel wise processing. It is just not the way most would expect it to Work.

Especielle the outputs can be confusing because many will see this as a bug since they (and I) will not think about that the output can be a pixel put together from rgba values from both THEN and ELSE.

I DO see the logic in that now after reproducing this component with a LUA script)

Maybe there should be an option on the component to compare on color integer values per pixel rather than channelwise.

Thank you.

Quote
You're probably talking about comparing colors as-a-whole, not channelwise

Yes I mean color values. Not ARGB values.

I made a LUA script for this.

The Alpha should not be an issue. Add it as the most significant value and then thats it. In addition just make an option to disregard Alpha values in the sources and it Works.

This leads to a wish of some features added to a future version of FF like creating enum input controls.