Out a hole

[Tradley]

I created a shape with holes in it. To make the inside of the hole look darker, I made another dark colored shape and put it underneath the first, beneath the holes.

Now what I want to do is be able to have those yellow circles I made able to fly out of those holes. How do I do that? How do I have the circles be under the first large shape and then over it when they are exiting through the holes?

[slowtiger]

I assume that you're asking about how to make the yellow shapes appear half inside the hole and half over the purple shape.

Easy: create a second purple shape which only covers half of the hole on a new layer. Put the yellow shapes on their own layer and put this between the two purple layers.

Remember: it doesn't need to be a hole, it just has to look like one.

[Tradley]

Two issues with that.
1) The purple shape has a halo effect, so overlapping with half a duplicate shape wouldn't hide it.
2) How do I cut down the excessive mass without distorting the hole shapes or even the shape of the shape in general?

If there is no simple way to animate something as basic as this, I demand that a future feature provide a way.
Also, I don't have Anime Studio Pro 10...yet.

[slowtiger]

You have to learn to think in terms of layered shapes. What you see as one object in the render might be in fact composed of lots of shapes stacked and overlapping on top of each other.

The halo/differently coloured/blurred outline changes the game. In this case you need to mask the yellow bits. Create a mask which covers all the holes (you may just simply copy the holes and paste them into a different layer), over that create a shape which covers the area the yellow things are going to move inside. Give this layer a blur of the same radius as your halo. Layer setup should be like this:

- group layer (masking enabled)
- - yellow bits (mask this layer)
- - mask (add to mask, but keep invisible)
- - purple shape (don't mask this layer)

[Tradley]

Well, okay. The yellow circles are now visible through the masked holes. But what do I do now to have the circles go through the holes from beneath the purple shape and then above it once they are outside.

"...make the yellow shapes appear half inside the hole and half over the purple shape."

Yes. Exactly this.
I apologize for sounding so newb-ish.

[Tradley]

Nevermind. I figured it out...for now.

I simply copied and pasted the points of the holes into another layer (within a group layer) and finished connecting the points into a shape that I could use as a mask.

-Mask (Reveal all)
--Circle (Mask this layer)
--Cover (Subtract from mask [this layer will be invisible])
--Foreground (Don't mask this layer)

Though I'm very sure that sometime soon I will need more assistance with tricks like these.