Difference between a shape's outline & lines?

rogermate · Post by **rogermate** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 7:38 am

Trying to learn AS approach to drawing, and I'm getting stuck when
there are shapes for which I can't change the rendering of the outline by using the Style palette.

What is the difference between a multi-segmented line and a shape? Is the only difference that a shape has at least one closed region?

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 11:03 pm

Any coloring you add is considered a shape. There are two types of shapes. Fill and outline. Fills require a closed shape, while outlines can be created for closed or open shapes.

You can always change the attributes of any shape. I'd have to know more details to tell you why you're not being able to change something. Perhaps you have a saved style applied, or you have changed a line width with the line width tool.

rogermate · Post by **rogermate** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 8:14 pm

synthsin75 wrote:or you have changed a line width with the line width tool.

That's what happened, but I didn't do it on purpose so it took that much more time to find the problem.

The other problem was that some erroneous lines were on the shape crossing over part of it and making a closed region which I couldn't see because it was too small.

So a line width is different from a shapes attributes which include outline and fill.

I suppose that the line's which form a shape can have settings for both width as well as an outline style.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 7:07 am

Yeah, that part can be a little confusing. I only recently ran into it. The line width tool is the only way to animate (create keyframes for) line width. The outline width setting sets an initial width, but changing those with the line width tool creates a keyframe (even on frame zero) that overrides the style setting. (But only for the changed points)

I really think that outline width in the style window should also create keyframes, since this is what the style fill setting does.

Basically you've got it right. The outline style defines the color, and it is this part of the outline style that is animated (has an animation channel). The style's line width keyframes all points on frame zero with that width. Any line width changes to the style only affect frame zero points that haven't been altered by the line width tool.

Luckily, when in doubt, you can always select all points and select Draw>Reset line width.

rogermate · Post by **rogermate** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:10 pm

By the way Synthsin, from another post I was directed to your masking tutorials. Very well done. I only knew something about the concept, you made really understanding it easy, plus I could drink coffee at the same time.

Thank you so much for that. I'm sure it will have saved me not only hours, but frustration.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:43 pm

Thanks Rogermate! I'm always thrilled to hear someone else finds them useful.

I've been thinking about doing an AS drawing tutorial since there always seems to be a need for help learning to draw with AS. The only problem is that I don't think I could do one with the original drawing tools. I really don't think I'd know how to use them anymore.

I'm guessing I'll need to do an intro tutorial explaining how to add new tools (Mostly Fazek's).

rogermate · Post by **rogermate** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 4:47 am

synthsin75 wrote:Thanks Rogermate! I'm always thrilled to hear someone else finds them useful.

I've been thinking about doing an AS drawing tutorial since there always seems to be a need for help learning to draw with AS. The only problem is that I don't think I could do one with the original drawing tools. I really don't think I'd know how to use them anymore.

I'm guessing I'll need to do an intro tutorial explaining how to add new tools (Mostly Fazek's).

That would be great. My project is limited to image manipulation, but of course used some text for titles. Wouldn't you know it I had to manipulate the text a bit - so ran into the drawing tools. Very disorienting at first because they seem non-intuitive to me, but I'm not really a computer graphics guy to begin with. I haven't really ventured into used the tools created by other users because I feared the learning curve, but maybe I should and things would be smoother.

I would think many would benefit if you did find the time. "If a tree grows in the forest and noone hears it" - if more AS users learned of the value of these other tools there's bound to be more people drawn to using them.

Thanks again.