I sure hope I'm missing something here but I doubt it.
I'm constructing my characters by creating heads and clothing parts separately. All well and good, except that the heads I've drawn tend to be in one scale and the body parts in another. When I go to combine them I've having a terrible time getting things sized up.
Because my head parts need to be separate (that is, I have pupils, eyelids, mouths, etc) I can't simply select the head and resize it. Same goes for the clothing, which is constructed so the arms and legs can be easily detached -- they exist on separate layers.
The easiest thing to do is group the clothing and the head and then just move and size that group layer... except that I need to move the various parts out of that group layer when it comes time to construct a general bone layer (trust me -- I've done it the other way and it's a mess). But when I move stuff out of the group layer the size and transforms vanish (natch) and I'm back to where I began.
Right at the moment the only workaround I can think of is to collapse all the layers and then size everything by selecting it all, and then trying to select out the parts again for putting on different layers. This works but is tedious -- is there any other way anyone can suggest?
Is there a way to collapse group transforms?
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
I've run into that trap myself. At one point I was so frustrated that I decided to normalise all the stuff corectly. I did it like this:
- create a new vector layer outside all groups
- copy all stuff from vector layers inside this one and scale the actual selection to the size it had inside the composition
- duplicate the new layer as often as needed, erasing stuff inside as necessary
- put these new layers into the groups.
Of course this is tedious work, but it pays. I left out steps like switching layer's visibility on and off and shifting the new layer before you paste something inside (create empty space in the middle, so you can easily select what belongs together).
If your artwork has lots of points, you may need to save the file after each pasting action. I recommend that.
- create a new vector layer outside all groups
- copy all stuff from vector layers inside this one and scale the actual selection to the size it had inside the composition
- duplicate the new layer as often as needed, erasing stuff inside as necessary
- put these new layers into the groups.
Of course this is tedious work, but it pays. I left out steps like switching layer's visibility on and off and shifting the new layer before you paste something inside (create empty space in the middle, so you can easily select what belongs together).
If your artwork has lots of points, you may need to save the file after each pasting action. I recommend that.
Thanks, ST -- that's kind of what I've been doing now.
It's a PITA because the whole concept of grouping things is seductive -- it would be SO much nicer if you could preserve these transforms when you take them out of the groups. I guess the good thing is I only have to do this process once for my characters, but as I have about 20 characters (so far) I'm slogging through them all.
I guess I should be happy I found this out before I got TOO far into my workflow (I had started constructing a whole bunch of things, like multiple sets, clothing, body parts... and then ran into this issue and had to start ungrouping and copying and pasting left and right. Yipes).
It's a PITA because the whole concept of grouping things is seductive -- it would be SO much nicer if you could preserve these transforms when you take them out of the groups. I guess the good thing is I only have to do this process once for my characters, but as I have about 20 characters (so far) I'm slogging through them all.
I guess I should be happy I found this out before I got TOO far into my workflow (I had started constructing a whole bunch of things, like multiple sets, clothing, body parts... and then ran into this issue and had to start ungrouping and copying and pasting left and right. Yipes).
I too have been burned by this in the past.
My rule of thumb now is to NEVER use groups until the character is finished, either drawn all on one layer or different parts on several layers. After the character is completed THEN if I need to group stuff I know the layers will work "on their own" and they are at the same scale and position.
That is the point I start to add the bones and do the rigging... put the head in a separate bone layer, deal with eyes and masking etc.
Think of grouping as a an "animation task" only because that's it's main purpose. I NEVER use group scaling of elements within a character (head, arms etc). The drawing of the character is the first step and grouping isn't necessary. You can always group later at any time.
-vern
My rule of thumb now is to NEVER use groups until the character is finished, either drawn all on one layer or different parts on several layers. After the character is completed THEN if I need to group stuff I know the layers will work "on their own" and they are at the same scale and position.
That is the point I start to add the bones and do the rigging... put the head in a separate bone layer, deal with eyes and masking etc.
Think of grouping as a an "animation task" only because that's it's main purpose. I NEVER use group scaling of elements within a character (head, arms etc). The drawing of the character is the first step and grouping isn't necessary. You can always group later at any time.
-vern
Yeah, my problem is I was looking for a more generic solution of building characters. So I was creating clothing and heads separately, and not worrying too much (or at all :>) about the scale.
I thought I'd just be able to "pull some clothing off the rack" fit a head to it, and be good to go. Well, that didn't work, so I have to redo all my generic parts so they all match. It's a PITA but I learned my lesson to always draw based on a set scale (or just copy and paste and rescale as I go).
Another item on my wish list <bg>.
I thought I'd just be able to "pull some clothing off the rack" fit a head to it, and be good to go. Well, that didn't work, so I have to redo all my generic parts so they all match. It's a PITA but I learned my lesson to always draw based on a set scale (or just copy and paste and rescale as I go).
Another item on my wish list <bg>.
It is a PITA but it's not that much of a PITA.
In the past when I made this mistake I just duplicated the grouped layer so I had it as a "reference". I then dragged out all of the layers from the other group and scaled the vectors using the group layer copy as my reference.
Of course this can be problematic if you have already put in bones at a different scale (I use to do THAT too!) that IS a PITA! You have to redo the bones.
-vern
In the past when I made this mistake I just duplicated the grouped layer so I had it as a "reference". I then dragged out all of the layers from the other group and scaled the vectors using the group layer copy as my reference.
Of course this can be problematic if you have already put in bones at a different scale (I use to do THAT too!) that IS a PITA! You have to redo the bones.
-vern
Ah, vern has mentioned that thing which I didn't think of mentioning:
Use something as a reference.
Don't know why I always forget about this - maybe because I work with references all the time for decades now. But it seems the concept of a sketch, of a guide, of some reference, is totally unknown among the younger animators of today ...
"Listen, grasshopper. Do you believe the beautiful painting on the wall was done in one day? Do you believe it was done directly on the bare wall in the moment the inspiration hit the artist? Do you believe the artist got every stroke perfectly right? Then you believe in god-like artistry and know nothing about art. The good artist is the one who trains his skills, who plans his work, who does sketches first before he feels ready to start the final work. Listen, grasshopper, and learn."
If I need to change something within AS, I duplicate it first and use the duplicate as reference, as vern said.
There's even more to that. Imagine you need to do several characters for a project, each in its own file. How do you maintain their relative size and make sure they will fit together when you import them one by one into a scene?
One proven way is to make a sketch (on paper or wherever) of all characters in their correct size relationship to each other, make this a bitmap and import it first into AS. (You can tweak the resolution settings in a way that the imported image in AS is bigger than the blue screen border.) If you now start building the character, you have a reference for its size.
I already mentioned it somewhere: I found it a good habit to create body parts in a size that while using the layer resize tool (2) the red square is something between 0,5x to 2x the size of that part. This avoids having the square handles out of reach later, especially when working not in original size.
And did I stress the importance of where to place a layer's origin?
Use something as a reference.
Don't know why I always forget about this - maybe because I work with references all the time for decades now. But it seems the concept of a sketch, of a guide, of some reference, is totally unknown among the younger animators of today ...
"Listen, grasshopper. Do you believe the beautiful painting on the wall was done in one day? Do you believe it was done directly on the bare wall in the moment the inspiration hit the artist? Do you believe the artist got every stroke perfectly right? Then you believe in god-like artistry and know nothing about art. The good artist is the one who trains his skills, who plans his work, who does sketches first before he feels ready to start the final work. Listen, grasshopper, and learn."
If I need to change something within AS, I duplicate it first and use the duplicate as reference, as vern said.
There's even more to that. Imagine you need to do several characters for a project, each in its own file. How do you maintain their relative size and make sure they will fit together when you import them one by one into a scene?
One proven way is to make a sketch (on paper or wherever) of all characters in their correct size relationship to each other, make this a bitmap and import it first into AS. (You can tweak the resolution settings in a way that the imported image in AS is bigger than the blue screen border.) If you now start building the character, you have a reference for its size.
I already mentioned it somewhere: I found it a good habit to create body parts in a size that while using the layer resize tool (2) the red square is something between 0,5x to 2x the size of that part. This avoids having the square handles out of reach later, especially when working not in original size.
And did I stress the importance of where to place a layer's origin?
I never fiddle with layer origin. What is the importance of that?slowtiger wrote:
And did I stress the importance of where to place a layer's origin?
(grasshopper is not here, oh wise blind master. He is in the city getting mugged by bandits since he hasn't learned kung-fu yet. I am called "Giant hissing cockroach".)
-vern
I've noticed that a cleverly placed point of origin provides additional flexibility in animation, as well as a badly placed one causes lots of trouble. This learning came while I was working with characters built not by me.
Bad:
- origin placed far outside a body part - if I need to rotate or resize the layer, strange things occur
- origin not oriented to body part's axis - not possible to squash and stretch parts correctly in animation
Clever:
- origin placed at where the joints are
- origin lined up to axis/bone
- origin placed at ground line of character - makes scaling while walking easy, enables to rotate character according to ground (think of car on hills), makes very good squash and stretch in jumps
- origin placed at vanishing point - makes walks in perspective easy
- origin placed at center of gravity - objects thrown rotate convincingly
Bad:
- origin placed far outside a body part - if I need to rotate or resize the layer, strange things occur
- origin not oriented to body part's axis - not possible to squash and stretch parts correctly in animation
Clever:
- origin placed at where the joints are
- origin lined up to axis/bone
- origin placed at ground line of character - makes scaling while walking easy, enables to rotate character according to ground (think of car on hills), makes very good squash and stretch in jumps
- origin placed at vanishing point - makes walks in perspective easy
- origin placed at center of gravity - objects thrown rotate convincingly