Moho Forum

Would this be doable with scripting?
Sounds trivial maybe, but would save
me going through and deleting all the
shapes when setting up dup layers for masking.

No biggie, but anything to lube workflow and
save a little time here and there is a bonus.

I have to do that a lot. Until one of us gets around to scripting a solution, I usually just zoom way out. It makes pretty quick work of deleting shapes, except for any really small ones.

Actually, now that I think of it, a "delete all shapes script" would be really easy to write. Give me some time on it.

I'm confused about this -- are you saying you want to delete *all* shapes on a vector layer? Why not just Ctrl-A (select all points in the layer) and Delete using the edit shapes tool?

I'm sure I'm missing something here -- because even if that's what you want to do there must be something more to it (otherwise why not just start with a new layer?). What's the point that I don't get?

AS doesn't allow multiple shape selection. You can only delete one shape at a time. Selecting all only selects points and you can't delete the shapes.

I know the feeling as well. You want to make the mask shapes "simpler" and unique for a mask layer but with a complex vector layer deleting or changing all of the shapes is a pain. You don't want shaded or halo effects in a mask layer slowing down renders.

EDIT: The confusion is in the terminology... vector "shapes" and fill "shapes". I make mask vector shapes from duplicates of the actual layer needed to be masked. But I usually want to simplify the shapes and make them all the same color so I can see it's the mask.

-vern

http://www.mediafire.com/?mwmyzctjuyj

Here you go Madrobot! I'm just using this as a menu script, but you could make it a button. Just use it on the layer you want to delete all of the shapes from.

Whoah, thanks Synthsin!

4hrs 14mins. That's quick, from whim to button!

Luckily it was a simple one to implement. I make no promises expressed or implied as to the replies to future requests.

Synthsin - That's outrageous! I expect you to improve upon that time!!

mkelley - Yes I was looking for a shortcut to go to a vector layer and just delete all shapes in one go, without losing geometry. Your idea made sense but I can't work out exactly what you mean, when you select all points you have no shapes selected. Which edit shapes tool do you mean? There's the delete shape tool, but then you have to go through and manually click on each shape.

I was finding that when I dup a layer and then use the geometry for masking (because then I know that the mask shapes will move how I need them, their points will follow those of the master layer) I would often have issues finding every shape - once I had a few stacked shapes, lots of layers turned on and subtractive or other masking hiding shapes, I was burning time fiddling around, and thought it would be good to have a button to "kill shapes" on that layer, then just create the shapes I want for masking.

(ditto also what Vern said about masking layers)

I could start with a new layer sure, and that might be tidier some times for some masks, but more often than not I'll be masking something moving, probably bone or action driven, with overlapping shapes and other shennanigans.

Hey Wes, it works perfectly!!
Thankyou.

I added it under the "draw" script menu,
but also made a "kill shape" icon, rename that
to match the script, and added both to the tools
folder, for for some reason can't get it to work
as a button? The button shows up, and I checked
the tools list but the other new scripts aren't listed
in there either, so I can't understand why it's not
working as a button? Have I missed a step?

Buttons have to be added to the tool list in order to work as buttons. AS just assumes it's a tool otherwise, and it's not made to work as one so it does nothing. Just add this line to your tool list and you should be good to go:

Synthsin - That's outrageous! I expect you to improve upon that time!!

Maybe one day we'll have enough scripters, hopefully better than me, and script access to have races for who can fulfill script requests.

Haha, "Shading tool suite, timeline markers, on your marks! GO!"

Thanks for the tip, I set it all up beautifully now, works fine.

It's interesting that other scripts are being treated as tools
and working fine without being mentioned in the tool list.
Like all Fazek's and also some of your own, including syn_create shape.