Minor tweak to ASP6's freehand tool

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 11:34 pm

Hi Blue. Yeah, I've been reading a lot of papers on least-squares fitting of curves to points lately, so it would be great to try and implement one of these approaches for Anime Studio's curves. Also, I agree that it would be cool to incorporate the curvature adjustment into my freehand mod, and this might be a good thing to start with to refamiliarize myself with Mike's code.

Hi rogermate. I didn't mean that the strokes should be able to be merged with the shapes. It's just a convenience thing really, ie fewer tools to clutter up people's tool palette and a reduction in code duplication to make development and maintenance easier.

And I think it would make sense for non-overlapping shapes to be merged into a single shape. There don't appear to be any methods available in the scripting interface for merging two shapes together, however, so it would probably involve the tool automatically deleting the two separate shapes and creating a new combined shape.

rogermate · Post by **rogermate** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 12:04 am

Rudiger wrote:it would probably involve the tool automatically deleting the two separate shapes and creating a new combined shape.

Two non-contiguous shapes could be considered a single shape?

Or, there would be some sort of bridge automatically created from the old shape to the new shape?

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 12:18 am

rogermate wrote:
Two non-contiguous shapes could be considered a single shape?

Sure they can. In AS, you could have a circle of points on one side of the screen and a completely unconnected circle of points on the other side and you could still have a single shape that covers both of them.

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 1:45 pm

OK, a couple of weeks ago, someone very kindly donated half of their intended donation and that was enough to motivate me to get the first part of the fill brush done, so it is now possible to use rt_freehand to paint with fills instead of strokes. However, before I post it, it would be great if anyone else who wants this feature can donate half of their intended amount as well. That way I'll definitely be motivated to tackle the tricky shape merging stuff.

I don't think I've mentioned it in this thread, so my PayPal email is alexical at internode dot on dot net.

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 8:37 pm

Rudiger wrote:OK, a couple of weeks ago, someone very kindly donated half of their intended donation and that was enough to motivate me to get the first part of the fill brush done, so it is now possible to use rt_freehand to paint with fills instead of strokes. However, before I post it, it would be great if anyone else who wants this feature can donate half of their intended amount as well. That way I'll definitely be motivated to tackle the tricky shape merging stuff.

I don't think I've mentioned it in this thread, so my PayPal email is alexical at internode dot on dot net.

Hi Rudiger, I am absolutely interested in this tool, it sounds awesome, you're talking about half of their intended donation, what is that? Is there something I have missed in some posts, however I'm interested in donating for all your work you have made for us with all your great tools.

Ulrik

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 10:23 pm

Sorry Rudiger, know I remember, forget about the last post from me.

Blue · Post by **Blue** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 3:08 am

How do I email you money? Do I need a Paypal Account? I use Google Checkout and have an account there...

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 4:11 am

Blue wrote:How do I email you money? Do I need a Paypal Account? I use Google Checkout and have an account there...

I do have a Google checkout account, but I'm not sure if I have to register as a seller or something before I can accept payments. PayPal would definitely be my preference as it's so simple.

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 3:42 pm

OK I posted the latest version of my modified freehand tool to the front page of this thread. As you will notice, it now has a "Stroke-Fill" option that creates a fill shape for a stroke instead of an outline. The actual work is done by a standalone menu script, which you can also use to expand existing outline shapes.

I know it's a long way off the all-purpose brush tool that you guys have been requesting, but progress is progress, right?

Let me know whatcha think of it!

Rudiger

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 4:44 pm

Thank you, Rudiger!
It works just like I thought it would. This tool will be fantastic for frame by frame work. There is only one problem I'm pretty sure won't be hard to fix... I hope.
When I work with this script for frame by frame
viewtopic.php?p=78235
with your script new filled lines assume the last created fill, so, as the script become the last fill absolutely transparent, new filled lines appear transparent too.
It's hard to me to explain it, but you'll understand if try with both scripts. Is there any way to avoid new lines to assume the fill keyframes of the last created one?

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 11:48 pm

selgin wrote:Thank you, Rudiger!
It works just like I thought it would. This tool will be fantastic for frame by frame work. There is only one problem I'm pretty sure won't be hard to fix... I hope.
When I work with this script for frame by frame
viewtopic.php?p=78235
with your script new filled lines assume the last created fill, so, as the script become the last fill absolutely transparent, new filled lines appear transparent too.
It's hard to me to explain it, but you'll understand if try with both scripts. Is there any way to avoid new lines to assume the fill keyframes of the last created one?

Glad you like it, Selgin!

With regards to the problem you are seeing, I'll check it out when I get the chance, but note that it just uses the existing auto-fill feature of the standard freehand tool and then just adds some points, so surely you would have this same problem use the standard freehand tool in auto-fill mode as well. Perhaps the problem is that the frame-by-frame tool is not resetting the fill type.

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:05 am

Rudiger wrote:With regards to the problem you are seeing, I'll check it out when I get the chance, but note that it just uses the existing auto-fill feature of the standard freehand tool and then just adds some points, so surely you would have this same problem use the standard freehand tool in auto-fill mode as well. Perhaps the problem is that the frame-by-frame tool is not resetting the fill type.

Uhm, that's true, on version 6 that script works only with fazek's tools. So the frame by frame script is whom should reset the fill propieties?
I will take a look on that, but I never have had success on scripting

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:07 am

Rudiger wrote:
selgin wrote:Thank you, Rudiger!
It works just like I thought it would. This tool will be fantastic for frame by frame work. There is only one problem I'm pretty sure won't be hard to fix... I hope.
When I work with this script for frame by frame
viewtopic.php?p=78235
with your script new filled lines assume the last created fill, so, as the script become the last fill absolutely transparent, new filled lines appear transparent too.
It's hard to me to explain it, but you'll understand if try with both scripts. Is there any way to avoid new lines to assume the fill keyframes of the last created one?
Glad you like it, Selgin!

With regards to the problem you are seeing, I'll check it out when I get the chance, but note that it just uses the existing auto-fill feature of the standard freehand tool and then just adds some points, so surely you would have this same problem use the standard freehand tool in auto-fill mode as well. Perhaps the problem is that the frame-by-frame tool is not resetting the fill type.

Hi Rudiger and thanks a lot for this tool, I also will find it very usefull. I like Selgin, also use the frame by frame script a lot and I found the same problem as Selgin is talking about.
I don't know if it's the frame by frame script that needs to be modified or what, anyway, cool script!!

Regards / Ulrik

Blue · Post by **Blue** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:43 am

Scour the animatorsforum.com, I believe Synth explained the issue with the FBF script.

A bit sick at the moment, but when I am feeling better I'll check out the freehand tool improvements--excited!

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 2:41 pm

After playing with the new stroke-fill feature a bit after I posted it, I found quite a few annoying bugs that required fixing. As usual, you can download the latest version from the front page of this thread.

You should find that there is now no distortion for large line widths, lines with only two points are supported, as are the taper start and taper end options, and expanding multiple lines at once, using the rt_fill_stroke.lua script, should also now be working properly...phew!