consistent lines, styles/color palette, etc

[AlanPS]

1. I would like to see consistent lines that don't break at the ends.
Lines that remain a constistently comparative size regardless of zoom. As it is a line can fade into nothing when the camera is zoomed out.

2. A palette maker would also be nice. I know we have a styles menu, but it would be nice to drag those styles onto a palette. The palette could have selectable features like: keep line width/color? keep color? keep effects? It would also have a duplicate, delete, and arrange by abc or manual function.
This way you could reuse custom colors with or without effects, you could also duplicate existing styles but then change the color without affecting a scene.

3. A group-layer masking function. I found out the very difficult way you can't really mask a group layer, you can only mask a vector layer.

4. Selectable interpolation for switch layers, not just vectors.

[heyvern]

1. I would like to see consistent lines that don't break at the ends.
Lines that remain a constistently comparative size regardless of zoom. As it is a line can fade into nothing when the camera is zoomed out.

I agree that strokes need an optional mitering of corners and rounding of end points. I don't quite understand the second part about line consistency and fading to nothing. If scale compensation is on and you zoom or scale the layer the line weight will shrink or enlarge.

2. A palette maker would also be nice. I know we have a styles menu, but it would be nice to drag those styles onto a palette. The palette could have selectable features like: keep line width/color? keep color? keep effects? It would also have a duplicate, delete, and arrange by abc or manual function.
This way you could reuse custom colors with or without effects, you could also duplicate existing styles but then change the color without affecting a scene.

I agree 100%. A better style palette is needed (Although I would prefer more scripting options so I could build a better style palette myself. )

3. A group-layer masking function. I found out the very difficult way you can't really mask a group layer, you can only mask a vector layer.

Not true. You can mask group layers. A group layer is the same as any other type of layer. The problem I think is a common one, masking of groups sometimes won't display in preview, you have to render to see the masking.

4. Selectable interpolation for switch layers, not just vectors.

Can you explain this one? Switch layers do have interpolation but each vector layer in the switch has to have the same number of points. Just like animating a vector layer each switch layer has to be an exact "copy".

-vern

[slice11217]

1. I would like to see consistent lines that don't break at the ends.
Lines that remain a constistently comparative size regardless of zoom. As it is a line can fade into nothing when the camera is zoomed out.

I agree that strokes need an optional mitering of corners and rounding of end points. I don't quite understand the second part about line consistency and fading to nothing. If scale compensation is on and you zoom or scale the layer the line weight will shrink or enlarge.

Hey Heyvern,

I think what he means here is something like this: in Flash, if you set your line to "hairline", no matter how much you scale up or scale out the line width will always remain the same thickness. If the line width gets thicker as the character gets bigger, and gets thinner as the character gets smaller, then the effect can sometimes be a dead giveaway that there's a digital element involved.

In the old days when people had to animate by hand, if a character was say, growing (multiplanes and camera zooms excluded here) then the character's growth might be drawn frame by frame and since the artist was using the same pen to ink all the drawings, the line width would be consistent throughout the shot.

Does this help to explain the issue?

Also something I'd like to add to this request:

*more brush varieties. I'm talking something like Illustrator or MS Expression. Something to help in giving more of a hand crafted look to a animation. Variable line width are nice but ultimately they're really quite limited.

Slice

[mkelley]

If the line width gets thicker as the character gets bigger, and gets thinner as the character gets smaller, then the effect can sometimes be a dead giveaway that there's a digital element involved.

Not quite OT but I it's kind of funny when you see this in cartoons that are obviously NOT digital.

Take a look at the classic "Grinch" cartoon to see this -- in the scenes where the Grinch is carving the roast beast at the end it's pretty obvious they used a very different line width (and much less detail) than in the closeup scenes. It's so glaring it looks like a background artist did the shot (although it's animated). You don't see this in the big studios like Warner's or Disney, but throughout cartoons of the 50's and 60's it was very common to have much different line widths depending on the size of the character.

So perhaps in one way the different widths could be seen as proof it *wasn't* digital <bg>.

[heyvern]

I've posted about this before. I think the line weights in animation are important to show scale and depth. Something large and/or in the foreground should have a heavier line width than something small and/or far away.

Whenever I see illustrations or animations with a random mix of stroke weights it looks odd to me. This is why there is a scale compensation in AS.

When the line weights stay the same thickness... I think it looks odd... not in all cases but especially for a character who is walking away or towards the camera.

-vern

[human]

I've posted about this before. I think the line weights in animation are important to show scale and depth. Something large and/or in the foreground should have a heavier line width than something small and/or far away.

Whenever I see illustrations or animations with a random mix of stroke weights it looks odd to me. This is why there is a scale compensation in AS.

When the line weights stay the same thickness... I think it looks odd... not in all cases but especially for a character who is walking away or towards the camera.

-vern

I'm glad to see this discussion! It's something I have been wondering about.

OK, so far we have a few voices pro and con on changing line width. I feel it would be nice to get a few more opinions.

[AlanPS]

heyvern,

when referring to consistent line width I should have been more specific- When using lines with effects like "sketchy" to get that somewhat pencil look, the lines totally disappear from a distance. I'm trying to get a great pencil look like some hand-drawn rotoscoping (Ralph Bakshi) or Chuck Jones stuff. Any suggestions are welcome.

Selectable Interpolation for Switch Layers- I am a switch-layer freak now- You can only do linear or smooth interpolation by default right? I want to do some ease-in, ease-out, etc.

Group layer masking- I'll have to give that one a shot- Previously I had to build a composite vector layer of all the components in the group layers to get the masking to work. Thanks for the tip.

[heyvern]

Ah yes! Interpolations for switches. That is why I had to stop using switch layers for more than simple lip sync or hands. No ease or smooth interpolations. Very annoying.

Group masking... yes, all the layers inside any group are used for the mask. A group can be a mask or be masked. The only trouble with this that I've found is that is bone layers... if you want to create a complex "grouped" mask from a lot of layers that are ALSO moved by bones it gets very tricky.

-vern

[jahnocli]

I'm trying to get a great pencil look like some hand-drawn rotoscoping (Ralph Bakshi) or Chuck Jones stuff. Any suggestions are welcome.

I seem to remember a forum user developing a brush shape for exacty this. Search the archives for "brush"... (The only down side for me about brushes is you can't export them to Flash).

HTH
J