animate hide edge

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:08 am

i now hide edge is not animatable. and so far i have never really need it was.
but yesterday in my classes (i'm teaching anime studio for free around 35 people) a student ask me how to do that.

i thought and thought and i said her that making the color edge totally transparent and being very careful with keyframes it should work.
but it didn't work, i couldn't paint the line transparent, because the before edge color still being there (i could paint transparent the hole edge, but no just a part of this).

can somebody help me?
thanks.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:28 am

Just a guess without testing it: after animation, duplicate the shape in question, have it once with an outline and the gap which is needed, once with complete outline. Switch visibility as needed.

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:20 pm

The trick is to separate the fill from the outlines.

See my quick attempt to do some facial expressions (not very impressive or stunning, I know):

The facial lines (folds of skin) are separate curves, so the outline color can be manipulated independently.

Like so:

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 4:23 pm

thanks.
but i now this can be done.

my question is (sorry, i'm not good to explain ideas a little bit complex) what you must do when you want to hide just a part of a line and you have not painted it separately of the entire shape.

for example, your circle edge was painted in the second 0 by part, so you have different edge shapes in the same circle. then you just paint one edge part again but now with 0 opacity. so this part dissapear.

but when you have the entire edge shape created, with a longer animation made, this becomes complex.

i can to create a new shape selecting two points and pushing space bar, ok, i can to change the color of this shape, but when i give transparency to this part, the first edge, which is down, still being there.

i hope my bad english let you understand.

thanks.

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 4:59 pm

You need to use Select Shape, not Create Shape, to change the outline color. It is a common mistake to use Create Shape to change the outline color. However, if you use Create Shape, it creates an extra outline and the existing outline doesn't seem to go away.

Another common mistake is when you are using closed curves, e.g. with points A, B, and C. You only want to create an outline A -> B -> C, but not C -> A. Well, that is not possible, unless you put an extra point between A and C (see image below).

If you forget to insert the extra point, you will get an unwanted closed outline. If you have created the outline mentioned earlier, you can then select the points A, C and the extra point to create an outline between A and C. You can hide the outline between A and C by changing the transparency in the outline color of the resulting outline.

If you hadn't added the extra point between A and C, and you would create an outline using points A, B and C, and an outline using points A and C, you would still see an outline if you would make the outline between A and C transparent.

I think something like that has happened in your case.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:59 pm

Not a perfect solution... but...

I will often add in an extra point and animate the line width on the points in the area I want to "hide".

In most cases the line width at 0 will be "almost" invisible and suit my needs.

Like I said... not perfect. I use this mostly during quick animated sequences like turns... where the imperfection isn't as noticeable.

-vern

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 9:43 pm

Rasheed wrote:You need to use Select Shape, not Create Shape, to change the outline color. It is a common mistake to use Create Shape to change the outline color. However, if you use Create Shape, it creates an extra outline and the existing outline doesn't seem to go away.

thanks rasheed and heyvern. but i have made all you said, it's frustrating can't explain well the problem.

so... this means that "animatable hide line" should be a feature request?

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 10:13 pm

I understand very well what you want, you want to be able to rub out part of the line during animation, without having to plan ahead, or having to resort to all kinds of elaborate tricks. However, apart from doing your animation in switched images or vector layers, I can only see a complex solution like animating the line width, opacity of the outline color, or using an invisible mask, as is shown in the animation below:

Flash has the built in option to rub out parts of a drawing, but AS does not. OTOH in AS you can manipulate the nodes and in Flash you cannot. If we only could some parts of Flash in AS...

Bones3D · Post by **Bones3D** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:57 am

It's not really that complicated. Just create the base object with the outline disabled, then create two copies of it... one with a whole outline, and one with part of the outline hidden... both with their fill disabled.

Then just put all into a layer group and enable/disable the visibility of the edge layers where needed.

Here's an example of it in action:

And here's a moho file:

- edge visibility animation demo
(7KB Moho 5.3 document)

Hope that helps.