Working with vector points headaches

[Diana Kennedy]

Hi!
I do a lot of animation by moving the vector points in a a layer. Two main headaches make this work not easy:

* click and miss = mess. When I click on a vector node and miss it, the whole shape's points get selected. This is very annoying. Is there a way to prevent AS from automatically do a "select all" when one accidentally clicks on the shape outside a node?

* Posthume change: Sometimes, I manipulate the nodes in every frame; doing a frame-by frame animation. When I reach the last, I must sometimes - well, often - realize that the nodes were changed in the first frames, or between. They don't look the way I arranged them, anymore. Why does AS change node arrangement despite of the fact that there were manipulated by me and that there is a keyframe. It should respect my work.

[neeters_guy]

For your first issue, Fazek's translate points script addresses that behavior. Mkelley also has a fix at the Animator's Forum in the Innovations subforum.

For your second issue, there could be some interpolation that you're not aware of. The keyframe nodes on the timeline doesn't mean every point has a keyframe. In order to do that, you would need to keyframe every point in each frame, again, using a script.

[Víctor Paredes]

1- I think it could be solved unchecking "shape select" on the options of translate points tool.

2- You must know how keyframes works in AS.
Each point has its own independent keyframes. Even if you key all the points of a shape you will have several different keyframes marked on the same place, not a big whole keyframe. The same thing happens with bones and shapes.
On almost all the channels you have two lines, one gray and another red. The gray one shows you the keys whenever one or more points has a key. It doesn't care which point exactly has the key. Wherever there is a key, it shows you.
On the other hand, the red line shows you only the keys of your selected point(s).
I explain it, because to know this is very important at the moment of animating with AS.

Now, your problem is you are assuming that creating a key for one or more points automatically generates a key for all the points. That's not the way AS works. If you want to key all points of your layer, go to the gray line in timeline, right click on the frame you want and select "add keyframe". This way you will be sure all your points will have a keyframe on that moment.

[Diana Kennedy]

Well, this was very helpfull.

Neeters Guy and Selgin: Yes, I was absolutley not aware that the keyframes on the timeline work like this. You explained it very well and I now undertand a lot better how the programm works. Thank you so very much!

I will now also see the mentioned Forum. Again thanks, this really made a lot of things clear.