Hiding edges during an animation

[Lost Marble]

A feature request has come up a few times recently about hiding and showing edges during an animation. This can be useful if you have body parts that overlap and you sometimes want an edge there and sometimes not. Until we add some specific feature to support this, it can still be done by animating the transparency of an edge. Here's how.

Here's a very simple example of edges that disappear and reappear during an animation:

http://www.lostmarble.com/misc/hiding_edges.swf

And here's the Moho file used to create it:

http://www.lostmarble.com/misc/hiding_edges.moho

To do this, you need to create the outline as multiple shapes: one outline shape for the regular part of the outline, and another shape for the part that is supposed to disappear at times. Make both outlines the same color and width and it will look like one solid outline.

Now, when you want to make part of the outline disappear, first select that part of the shape using the Select Shape tool. In the style window, set the line color's alpha value to 1 (not 0 - if you set it to zero the shape will get deleted). In the timeline, set this new keyframe's interpolation mode to step. To make the outline reappear, set the alpha back to 255. Be sure to set all the keyframes in the Selected Line Color channel to use step interpolation so that the shape snaps on and off instead of fading gradually.

[Sevenmile]

Smart! Moho really has a life of its own... functions that doesn't exiskt suddenly pops out of nowhere. Why can't the rest of the world be like that?