"cracks" in stroke lines around bends

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:12 am

I created a drawing with some rounded rectangles. Some of them have thick stroke lines. At the corners of these boxes, the stroke lines have thin angled cracks in them. It looks like the bends are made up of straight line segments, but there aren't enough of them to fill in the gaps.

Is there a fix for this?

I managed to make it slightly better by giving the stroke a soft edge of 1, except I don't want a soft edge line.

Boxes without stroke look fine. I could get rid of the strokes, but then the boxes would change size drastically. Is there a way to select all boxes and resize them all from their individual center points?

Here is the animation. It's hard to see it this small, but when it's rendered full size, it's very noticeable.

http://youtu.be/OfSUxlyphcY

drumlug13 · Post by **drumlug13** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 2:51 pm

You should be able to fix the cracks by adding the rounded end caps. If you're using AS 8 you should be able to select the shape and then turn on "Round Caps" in your stroke options.

If you're using a previous version there's a script on this site for adding round edges
http://animestudioscripts.com/scripts.php

I'm a total moron when it comes to scripting so thank god these guys know what they're doing.

AS far as resizing the multiple shapes from their individual center points, if you figure that one out let me know. I run into that issue a lot

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 3:15 pm

Thanks, but rounded end caps is already on.

Today I had another rendering error. I added some points to a shape, and now I get very faint thin diagonal cut lines running from those points.

drumlug13 · Post by **drumlug13** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 5:41 pm

I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a clue about scripting or the nuts & bolts of AS, but I can't really think of too many factors in play here.

I think what you may have going on here is two or more shapes stacked on top of each other, but they were created using the same points.

Try Q selecting the shape.
Hit your delete key.
Then choose your color and stroke settings with round caps
Then re- create shape

I wish I could be more help. It's hard to tell what's going on without the file to work with.

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 4:30 am

Where can I upload the file?

jonbo · Post by **jonbo** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 12:23 pm

look at DROPBOX or MEDIAFIRE. Both have free accounts.

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 9:42 pm

Okay, here it is.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46294039/Cell-p ... 0hand.anme

Check the keyboard on the phone

Thanks!

drumlug13 · Post by **drumlug13** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:25 pm

That is a little crazy. I don't think it's a problem with your style settings and it's not the stacked shapes issue I was talking about earlier.

It looks like the points are overlapping in the curve. (I'm assuming it's the same thing as having part of a shape disappear as it overlaps itself). I've run into it working with text a few times, especially if the camera is zoomed in too close.

I did find a fix but it's kind of a pain in the butt. (I turned off the soft edge and changed the stroke to black so I could see it better). You can barely see the cracks in the line in the "I" in this picture but they were more visible as your animation was in motion.

Each corner curve is made from 6 points. You could remove 3 points from the middle of the curve. I did that to the 4 corners of the "O". From there you'd have to copy & paste for all of the keys. That's a pretty time consuming fix though. There's got to be a better way.

jonbo · Post by **jonbo** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:37 pm

If you select the corner points and select smooth, the cracks disappear. You might have had sharp corners option on when you added those points. You would have to fix the shape a little afterwards.

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:49 pm

Thanks!

I drew this originally in Inkscape, because AS doesn't have good tools for drawing such things and duplicating in an array. So, I didn't have control over how many points the corners had.

This problem of overlapping points causing holes is a big one. Most times, I don't want that behavior. There should be a way to just turn that off.

There also should be a tool for duplicating shapes in an array with a fixed interval of space in between each one. It's an essential tool for drawing.

If I could automatically reduce the number of points in a group of selected objects while keeping the shape as similar as possible, that would fix it as well. I don't really understand the Simplify Curve script. It never seems to do what I'd like it to do. It either removes too many, or not enough points, or removes the wrong points. It deletes points that are necessary to keep the shape, while leaving points that are totally unnecessary.

drumlug13 · Post by **drumlug13** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:59 pm

Jonbo's fix is definitely quicker and looks like it works great.

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:09 am

jonbo wrote:If you select the corner points and select smooth, the cracks disappear. You might have had sharp corners option on when you added those points. You would have to fix the shape a little afterwards.

Oh, I didn't see this. Thanks!

Yes, when I originally imported the drawing from Inkscape, they were all misshapen due to wrong curvature. They were puffy marshmallow shaped. I selected all and set curvature to sharp to fix it. Looks like I'll have to select only the points on the actual curves, not the ones at the corners that should be sharp.

jonbo · Post by **jonbo** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:10 am

SpaceBoy64 wrote:
There also should be a tool for duplicating shapes in an array with a fixed interval of space in between each one. It's an essential tool for drawing.

I use the grid and ctr+c and ctr+v to do this. The grid settings can be adjusted to get the spacing for snapping the shapes into place.