Moho Forum

Brace yourself, I'm stupid:

I've been building character rigs and they are going pretty well

The thing is, one character is all line thickness 1
was built with body, so full figure fitting in the frame
looks fine. (Built a few months ago.)

A more recent character, built (yep, here we go, can you smell
a suspicious whiff of stupidity. Hmm, I wonder where that's coming from)
with the head filling the frame, line widths all 2.40
(the default I think?) - looks great.

Awesome. Right.

So I scaled the older character in the view using layer scale, fitting it next to the more recent character, so they are framed similarly,
framed on their heads. They look pretty much the same in terms of line width etc.

However things like layer effects with the same settings look a bit different.

So I'm wondering what the fix is, do I layer scale back, then manually go in and point scale up geometry on each layer, then adjust line widths?
Is there a quicker or better way?

(I wouldn't care but I have a heap of layers, having set up nifty masks and mesh instances for groovy eyes and mouth, seperate nose and ears layers in prep for head turns, and a burning ambition to take shortcuts whenever available.)

Maintaining consistent line widths has always been a chore for me as well. I hate to say this but I find it to be the best way... rescale the artwork to be the same relative size.

There is a trick I use that works pretty fast. The trickiest part is rescaling the bones. I have a copy/paste bones script that fixes that as well.

Here's the steps I use:

First off the key to scaling everything to the same size and position is to make sure the "bounding box" of the points is exactly the same. What I do is draw a large box shape around the points on one layer, making sure it is large enough to enclose the points of all the layers for the character.

Next step is to copy that box and then pasting it on every layer you want to scale. This is not as hard as it sounds. Just click, paste, select all, click, paste, select all, for each layer. The reason you select all is to make the next step eaiser. The key is to limit the number of times you have to select every layer.

The next step requires the use of Fazek's custom scale points tool. It isn't absolutely neccessary but it makes it ten times as fast.

First check the bone or group layer that has been scaled to see how much the vector layers need to be scaled. Then, using Fazek's scale points tool type that number into the x and y scale boxes at the top of the window. Click scale. Select the next layer, click scale, repeat for all the layers. This is why you selected all after pasting the big box so you can just select, click, select, click. Also Fazek's scale points tool keeps the same number in the scale boxes, the original scale too resets to 1.

Then you can delete the boxes from all the layers or, just keep them incase you need to scale again later. If the box you drew is not filled it has no effect on the artwork.

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Scaling bones:

I have a script to copy and paste bones. However it also has the ability to SCALE the bones when copying. It scales everything including constraints and strength, etc. You can find the script in the script forum under my sticky thread for scripts. Just copy the bones of the original layer to a new layer with the percentage to match the scaled layers.

I know this sounds like a lot of effort but in reality it works quite quickly. I used it a lot in the past before I started to make sure all my characters are scaled correctly.

It's been some time since I've done this process so if you get stuck let me know.

When there isn't a way to do something I never give up. I always try to find a solution.

-vern

I'm wondering what does scale compensation in the layer palette do?
Any relation to this issue?

Sort of. Scale compensation keeps the width of a line the same proportionally to the scale of the layer or the pixel dimensions of the project.

So if a line is set to "1" and you scale the layer the line width will "scale" with the layer. If you turn this off the line width stays the same no matter how much scaling is applied to the layer.

This might seam like a solution but it's not really good. When you want to scale down a layer to make something smaller or far away the lines stay the same and look really "thick".

Some people may like this technique but it doesn't work for me. It can really change the look of a character. Plus any "point width tool" modifications won't look right because it doesn't scale the same way.

Play around with it and see what you think.

-vern

Thanks Vern!

I'll try your suggestion first thing Monday morning and let you know how it goes.

Great support on here from you guys, thanks everyone.
I'm learning as much from my mistakes as from my successes

(Looking forward to getting these character rigs all set up and ready to go.)

Cheers

Additional info regarding "scale compensation":

The above info I posted also includes camera zooming. If you zoom the camera and scale compensation is off for a layer, the line widths will not "change", meaning the line widths stay the same width. It will appear as if they get "thicker" as you zoom out, and get "thinner" as you zoom in. With scale compensation on, the line widths maintain their relative thickness when zooming the camera.

As I said, scale compensation turned OFF can be somewhat distracting. It can look strange. My humble opinion anyway. Most of the animations I see on television or whatever maintain consistent line widths that don't change this way over time.

Another consideration specifically to you Madrobot, is that scale and distance can be a factor to line thickness. If you have a HUGE character and a tiny character you may want to have the line thickness reflect this size difference. The smaller character may have thinner strokes. Also a character further away might have thinner strokes than one that is closer.

-vern

I thought it might be something like that, I know I should test this myself Vern , but if you turn off SC and transform, then turn it back on again, do the lines reset?

Yeah Chucky, the lines aren't actually altered, just the way they are displayed. And since scale compensation is not animatable, it changes everything globally.