How do I remove hidden characters under words

[takuya]

I'm using spinning text scripts and wanted to animate the words and tried the following:

Converted text to vector.
I used create shape to convert characters to words.
I want to remove hidden characters under words, how do I select them?
I can't select these characters.

[Greenlaw]

Hi Takuya,

Some comments about your video...

I noticed that you're creating duplicate shapes on top of shapes multiple times. I think what you meant to do is change the color of the styles for the existing shapes. For this, you should be using the Select Shape tool, not the Create Shape tool. The Select Shape tool lets you change the selected shapes using the Style window, whereas the Create Shape tool will create new shapes on top of the shapes.

One concept that new users tend to misunderstand is that Curves and Shapes are two completely different items in Moho. When using the Create Shape tool, you're not selecting and modifying shapes, you're selecting curves and creating new shapes from the selected curves.

To be clear, creating duplicate shapes on top of themselves can be a valid technique for achieving certain effects, but in a normal animation setup doing so can overly complicate the project and affect performance.

Anyway...on to Spinning Text.

From what I see in your video, the script is working as intended. The script breaks out each closed curve to its own layer and applies a layer animation to it using the settings you've chosen. If you select any of the layers with an individual letter in it, you will see it's keyframe. (In this case, it will be a two Transform keyframes.)

What may be confusing you is that the script preserves a copy of the original 'unbroken' text artwork at the bottom of the layers stack, and the script has hidden this layer so it doesn't interfere with the animated layers. This a backup for when the animation is not what you want and you wish to try another script setting.

To do this, you would select and delete every 'letter' layer above this layer and then select the original layer and run the script. Note that before you run the script again, you need to make sure the original layer is unhidden, otherwise all the new layers will also be hidden. You can unhide the original layer by clicking in the visibility column to the layer's left (the 'eyeballs' icon.)

I hope this helps. If I've misunderstood your request, let me know and I'll try again.

[takuya]

Thank you for your response.
I want the disjointed shapes to be one shape.
letters ---> word

the Create Shape tool will create new shapes on top of the shapes.

I want to erase the shapes under the top of the shapes.

the top of the shapes= word
the shapes under the word = letters

[Greenlaw]

Oh, but then you won't be able to animate it using that script because it keyframes the animation on the individual layers, not the curves/shapes. This is how you would normally animate something like this.

But if you really want to animate the letters inside a single layer, you can probably bind each letter to its own a bone and then animate the bones the same way the layers are animated. IMO, however, there's no benefit in doing it this way...it's much easier to animate the individual layers as the script does automatically.

[takuya]

Sorry for not being able to convey it well.
This is what I wanted to do.
Edit --> Clear

[Greenlaw]

Ah! Thanks for clarifying. I understand now that you only wanted to delete the top shapes.

Yes, you can use Clear, and pressing the Delete key will also do that. (The latter might be quicker.)

As mentioned earlier, you just need to first select the Select Shape tool and use it to select the shapes, not the Create Shape tool. After selecting the shapes, you can change their style settings instead of creating new shapes on top of the old ones.

BTW, you can select multiple shapes when you hold down the Shift key, and delete them all at once. This should be much faster than selecting and deleting each shape one at a time.

Bonus tip: There's a new Select All option in the Select Shape tool but this will of course also select the underlying shapes. It's good when you really want to delete all of the shapes or change their style together.

Hope this helps.

[takuya]

Since I selected ”select points” and pressed the DEL key,
the lower layer(shape) also disappeared.

I solved it by doing "select shape" first and then doing pressed the DEL key or clear.

[Greenlaw]

Yes, as mentioned, a Shape is an entirely different object from Points and Curves. Points and Curves are the non-rendering wireframe structure that give a Shape its form, and the Shape is the renderable surface that displays a given Style (Stroke, Fill, and Style effects.)

If it helps, think of Points and Curves as the unseen skeleton inside a Shape, and the Shape is the visible skin wrapped over the skeleton.

As you discovered: you need to use the Select Shape tool to select and edit Shapes, use the Select Points tool to select and edit Points and Curves.