trouble with shapes and styles functions (version 9.5 pro)

[exile]

I'd like to save created shapes and styles as shown in the manual and tutorial 2.7, but I can't make it work. I save each shape with a unique name and make styles such as "skin", "hat" and "eye white" for the color fills, but at some point every single shape on every layer turns one color. When I try to correct this by selecting the shapes, sometimes I see the checkered field to show the shape is active, but the fill bucket has no effect even though the colors I want are shown thanks to the style selector. I've tried Ctrl+Select und Alt+Select (Windows 7) but can't control the changes of color to the different shapes - does someone have an idea what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks,
Steve

[synthsin75]

Brief styles tutorial: http://www.kelleytown.com/forum/animato ... PIC_ID=997

[exile]

Brief styles tutorial: http://www.kelleytown.com/forum/animato ... PIC_ID=997

Thanks for the quick response, synthsin, that helped! It's a bit embarrassing, but I was so fixated on the upper part of the window that I didn't get the role of the lower part for choosing the active style. So hat, eyeballs, everything turned skin color and I didn't know why. That was cool stuff on combining styles and being able to choose which elements to apply by activating shapes instead of the global style.

All the best,
Steve

[synthsin75]

Glad I could help. Like I think I mentioned in that tutorial, even some old hands at AS have had problems learning how to use styles effectively.

[exile]

After watching the video twice and trying it out, I still have some questions! Is it better to create sample shapes to define styles, and then move these out of the work area? Also, is it better to automatically name styles and shapes? Some styles I created were not available later, even on the same layer. I mostly had to directly edit a shape, I couldn't just change the style and apply it to a selected shape. When I edited the shape directly, other shapes in the same style changed also, which surprised me.

So it's kind of working, but I can't work efficiently with it yet, and wonder if the older style of a separate layer for most shapes isn't safer. Thanks for your patience.

Steve

[heyvern]

Start with a very very simple file with and easily selectable shapes (no overlapping shapes first). Use a very very very simple vector layer with easily selectable shapes and create some easy to recognize named styles and shapes and then experiment with this set up to see how all of this works.

Some styles I created were not available later, even on the same layer.

This is not clear. It doesn't actually... make any sense. Are you talking about named styles? Or named shapes? If you create and name a STYLE it's always going to be "available" unless you delete it using the "Styles" menu after selecting the style in the menu FIRST.

If you name a SHAPE (Shapes menu on left top of the style palette) that named shape can easily disappear at any time, if the shape is deleted for any reason, selecting and deleting the shape, breaking the points making the shape causing the shape to be deleted. If a shape is deleted the named shape is deleted.

When I edited the shape directly, other shapes in the same style changed also, which surprised me.

If you edit a named style all shapes with that style will change. Editing a single shape's base style will not have any effect on any other shape. Editing a shape will NEVER effect any other shape. You must have been editing a NAMED STYLE not a shape.

Don't confuse named shapes and named styles. These two things are completely unrelated. I wonder if having both of these in the same palette might be why it gets confusing.

A named shape (left menu in style palette) is just an easier way to access shapes by name in a complex layer. It does nothing else at all. Simply adds a name to a shape that already exists. Without a name, shape is still there.

Named styles (right menu in style palette) are unrelated to named shapes. Named styles is a way to quickly update many shapes on many layers with the exact same style, for example "Pants". If you created a style named "Pants", you would apply this named style to several shapes that make up the pants of a character. Later you select the named style "Pants" from the right dropdown of the style palette, change the fill color of the style and all the shapes using the "Pants" style updates.

This ONLY happens when editing a named style applied to multiple shapes.
(to apply a named style to a shape you use the "Style 1" or "Style 2" dropdowns in the style palette with a shape selected.)

Look at the CHECKBOXES of the styles as well. The checkboxes are VERY important. A named style has checkboxes for fill, stroke, stroke weight etc. If you UNCHECK a box on the NAMED style that means that attribute will NEVER apply to the shape using it. If you check the boxes on the SELECTED SHAPE the shapes BASE attributes override the named style. If you check the Fill box on a selected shape, that color for the fill will be used instead of the fill color assigned by the named style applied to that shape.

Keep in mind, a selected shape and a named style are two completely different things. They look "almost" exactly the same in the style palette but are completely different.

Some additional info on creating shapes...

When creating a new shape, it's style will default to whatever the style is of the last shape selected or named style selected in the style palette. It will use the current settings in the style palette to fill a newly created shape. If you were editing a named style and then created a new shape it would automatically apply the named style to the new shape. If you had selected a shape, then created a new shape, it would use the settings of the last selected shape.

I hate to say it but I would not use the paint bucket tool for shape creation. Learn how to use the create shape tool with point selection. The paint bucket tool does things "automatically" and is not always correct in how it chooses to apply shapes. You may end up with shapes in places you don't expect. It's best to create the shapes by hand first to better understand the process.

[synthsin75]

After watching the video twice and trying it out, I still have some questions! Is it better to create sample shapes to define styles, and then move these out of the work area? Also, is it better to automatically name styles and shapes? Some styles I created were not available later, even on the same layer. I mostly had to directly edit a shape, I couldn't just change the style and apply it to a selected shape. When I edited the shape directly, other shapes in the same style changed also, which surprised me.

Shapes and saved styles are two separate things. Saved styles are the ones you create using the "New" option in the "Styles" dropdown. These exist for the whole document whether they are applied to any shape or not. You have to delete them using the style dropdown for them to every be unavailable. Regular styles (the ones you normally create in the style palette) are only stored in the shape they are used on.

When editing a style, you need to watch what the text below the shape and style dropdowns says. If it says "DEFAULTS (For new shapes)" then you are editing the default style that will be use for any new shape. If it says "SHAPE" then you are editing the style of the selected shape. If it says "STYLE" then you are editing a saved style.


Review the Style window section of the user manual, as I wrote that bit and it explains all this in detail.

[exile]

Thanks, guys, I appreciate your suggestions. It's not that I don't know the difference between styles and shapes, but I guess I've been doing it the wrong way, by using all three tools (Q, U & P) for every shape. That caused the things that "didn't make sense" to happen. I took your advice and experimented with simple shapes and styles, it worked better just using the Q tool and leaving the other two out of it. It was possible to switch between styles, update the style and even raise or lower the shape just by selecting its name without using the point select tool.

Didn't mean to make a storm in a water glass, it's better to experiment first instead of trying new stuff in a running project.

By the way, my first real project is more than half done and I hope to post it in a couple of weeks. I'm glad this forum is there to help when I get stuck.

- Steve

[exile]

Two months later - styles drove me crazy again today. For some reason there was no way to get rid of the black lines, even after changing the style and applying it. On the verge of a mental breakdown I stumbled on the line width tool - lo and behold, by increasing the width and reducing it again, the black lines disappeared and the ones I had chosen in the check box finally appeared. Could this be a bug in the program?

I'll anticipate some of your answers - yes, I tried rendering to see what the export would look like. Yes, I saved, closed and reopened the file. Yes, the box next to "lines" was checked. Yes, the styles were saved and the shapes responded to them, but the line was just not affected until I used the line width tool.

All's well that ends well but I don't really understand this.

- Steve

[synthsin75]

You should probably post an example file with any problems, as all we can do is guess otherwise. With an example file, we can tell you exactly what is going on.

[exile]

I'll be glad to do that as soon as I re-create the problem - then I'll save the file at that point for future reference. The file in question now has all lines in the desired color. Meanwhile, the workaround with the line width tool might help other users who get stuck in the same way.

By the way, happy 3rd Advent to all animators!

- Steve