STYLE PALETTE - Looking forward to next incarnation

madrobot · Post by **madrobot** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:18 am

I'm starting to get the hang of the shape effects and so on, but also coming to terms with their limitations.

When my arm is broken up into seperate shapes for wrist, forearm, fingers, I can't shade them as a whole arm. I've tried making a seperate shape from the whole arm to layer over the top, just for the shading, but when you drop the fill colour alpha to zero you take the fill effect opacity with it - so you can't see the effects. (Dial up the opacity and you have a fill on the whole arm but no part of the arm can then overlap itself.)

It would be great for the opacity of different elements to be more discrete, that would enable a lot more shading.

Also, I dont know if it's just me, but when I have one end of a gradient trail off to zero alpha, it doesnt fade nicely into the fill colour, but seems to band. Is that me, or the way the alpha in the shape effects is implemented?

(I imagine that I'll really get my act together with shading in AS 5.6 just in time for AS 6 release, with superb new implementation of colour, shading, effects. Doh!)

Would also be good to have finer tweakage available on things like "shaded" effect - maybe a pop out window where you can tweak or mask within the effect. There are workarounds like another shape to 'mask' by covering unsightly edges and overspray, but hey, wouldn't it be great?

The GI hack on this forum is also promising, I'm not brave enough to have tried it yet...[/b]

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 4:23 am

..., but when I have one end of a gradient trail off to zero alpha, it doesnt fade nicely into the fill colour, but seems to band.

I think this is more an effect of the quality of codec/resolution used.

GI hack? Are you talking about the global lighting with gradient trick?

madrobot · Post by **madrobot** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 5:11 am

synthsin75 wrote: GI hack? Are you talking about the global lighting with gradient trick?

Yes I am

patricia3d · Post by **patricia3d** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 5:15 am

In AS pro when you create 3-4 shapes like shape1, shape2 and shape3

When I fill some gradient in Shape1 and some other gradient in Shape2 like this some other color in shape3. It should automatically create Action names, so when we select all the points in Shape1, the Style I have created for that shape should automatically be selected. There should be no need to save Styles with different names. The styles should be saved internally in anme file and keep a link to the shape.

madrobot · Post by **madrobot** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 12:30 am

What about a "shelf", (got the Toon Titan demo video in my head right now) where you get an eyedropper which can sample not just colour but the layer styles - shading, gradient etc, and store them in the shelf.

So when you close and open a different scene (effectively a different shot) you have a library of the colours and shading you are currently using.

Because right now it's a convoluted workflow of copying colour codes to clipboard, and if you want to take shading between files you have to import a layer which has the shading from another file.

Correct me if I'm wrong (I often am) but the STYLES don't carry between files? (Doh!)

EDIT -
what about an eyedropper tool
which sampled (and could drop to shelf) colour
and if you held CTRL (or whatever) sampled effect (only)

What do you guys think would be good for colour and shading tools?
What would you like to see?
What scripting access is there currently?

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 5:15 am

Saved styles are very useful and powerful. If you use named saved styles for everything it saves a ton of time later. It's a bit of extra work upfront but it's worth it.

Also importing AS files also imports USED saved styles form the imported file. It won't import the style unless a shape on the layer imported actually uses it. What I do is to create a single layer with boxes that hold all of my saved styles. This layer or AS file can be used like a template for styles.

Importing saved styles has one big problem. If you have the same named style in the file you import to, the imported styles get "renamed".

Another trick to bring in fill shapes is "copy/paste". Open a document, copy a mesh/shape on a vector layer. Open another document, paste into a vector layer and any fill styles are included. However saved styles are not copied this way. The style colors and settings must be in the shape and not in a saved style.... BUT if you have the SAME named style in the copied mesh document AND the pasted document the named style will be used from the current document... phew.

-vern

The Modax Jago · Post by **The Modax Jago** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 8:01 pm

heyvern wrote:Saved styles are very useful and powerful. If you use named saved styles for everything it saves a ton of time later. It's a bit of extra work upfront but it's worth it.

Also importing AS files also imports USED saved styles form the imported file. It won't import the style unless a shape on the layer imported actually uses it. What I do is to create a single layer with boxes that hold all of my saved styles. This layer or AS file can be used like a template for styles.

Importing saved styles has one big problem. If you have the same named style in the file you import to, the imported styles get "renamed".

Another trick to bring in fill shapes is "copy/paste". Open a document, copy a mesh/shape on a vector layer. Open another document, paste into a vector layer and any fill styles are included. However saved styles are not copied this way. The style colors and settings must be in the shape and not in a saved style.... BUT if you have the SAME named style in the copied mesh document AND the pasted document the named style will be used from the current document... phew.

-vern

None of those should be tricks but standard features.