Animating Stroke Width

[ggoblin]

Is there a list of which properties can be animated and which can't ?

I was surprised that I couldn't animate the Stroke Width whilst Stroke Colour for example animated fine. Perhaps I an doing something wrong?

Similarly Hide Edge doesn't seem to animate.

I has to use Line Width and Stroke Exposure (both of which do animate) to try and get round it, but it was not ideal.

[Greenlaw]

You can animate Stroke Width. In fact, you can animate the widths differently for each point in the shape. For animate the line width for the entire shape, change the Stroke Width in the Style window; to animate the widths for specific points individually, animate it for each point using the Line Width tool.

Before you can change the line width for the entire shape, make sure you have the shape selected with the Shape Selection tool.

Hide Edge is not keyframeable but you can fake it using Syntsin75's Animated Hide Edge tool...

https://lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic. ... +hide+edge

The trick is to stack edge segments as separate shapes and to use a Smart Bone Dial to animate their visibility and/or stacking order. This can be done manually without scripts, but Wes's tool helps simplify/automate this.

Yeah, being able to animate Stroke Exposure to erode a line (like in arm/leg/clothing folds) would be ideal. It's currently possible to do this but IMO takes too much effort to set up.

it's easier to animate the visibility of edge segments in sequence instead. The downside with this approach is that you need to add more points to your paths to create enough segments for animation.

[Greenlaw]

Here's another idea: You can use a Switch Layer to switch between different versions of a shape that have different line segment lengths and/or widths for each version. I don't think this is the most efficient method but it may be simpler to understand and set up for some users.

[synthsin75]

For animate the line width for the entire shape, change the Stroke Width in the Style window...

You can animate stroke color but not stroke width from the style window. Animating the line width can only be done by point width.

[ggoblin]

For animate the line width for the entire shape, change the Stroke Width in the Style window...

You can animate stroke color but not stroke width from the style window. Animating the line width can only be done by point width.

Yes that was my experience.. the hard way

[ggoblin]

Thank you Greenlaw for the different possible fixes.. food for thought.

Stacking edge segments and then setting up a smart bone to control them seems like a lot of work for something that should be simple.. maybe in the next version both Hide Edge and Stroke Width will be animatable

[Greenlaw]

You can animate stroke color but not stroke width from the style window.

Ack! You're absolutely right! I thought that was the case, but for some reason I believed had done that the other day and was even surprised about it. I think I need more sleep. (Or more coffee.)

Anyway, yes, use the Line Width tool to animate it.

[Greenlaw]

Stacking edge segments and then setting up a smart bone to control them seems like a lot of work for something that should be simple...

Yeah, I agree, it's more work than it should be...but it's not too bad once you get the hang of it. The result can look good for animating eroding lines in edges and folds using a Smart Bone, so I think it's worth the effort.

Tip #1: you'll want to learn the shortcuts for moving and selecting shapes, mainly the Up/Down Arrow Keys (move 1 level) and Shift Arrow Keys (Send to Front/Back). The tricky one is selecting a shape through another shape.

Tip #2: Get Wes' Stacked Shape tool. It helps make creating and managing stacked shapes easier.

[ggoblin]

Thank you Greenlaw, I will check it out.