Moho Forum

how come some shapes just won't fill? When you try to fill them the checker board doesn't appear like it should. (Or rather, like I want it to.)

When creating shapes, any two adjacent points (points that are next to each other on the same line) that are selected also selects the line that joins them. Adding a point in between these points will allow them to be selected, and without this middle point selected, will not select the joining line.

I'm not sure I have explained the problem properly.

When you click on the create shape tool, most things fill by just clicking on them, while other things (seemingly at random) just highlight but don't turn into shapes.

For instance, when I try to fill this space, it doesen't allow me to.

Ah - because it (the program) can't decide which shape it is supposed to fill. If you look closely, you have 2 closed areas "back to back", the white one and the already brown one. Something went wrong when you constructed those shapes, I think. Often it is that there are two lines between points instead of a single line, but you can't spot the cuprit. Sometimes you can heal it by erasing one point at a time, but often it's faster to erase the whole bunch and draw the shape totally new.

Also I wonder what effect you're going to create. If the areas all have the same colour, I'd do one big shape with a fill, and place black lines on top of it.

A little trick for a good workflow: sometimes I do one part of a drawing on one layer, the next part on another layer, and only after I successfully filled all shapes I would copy them from all those different layers to one final layer. This way I avoid unintentionally welding points or connecting lines where I do not want them.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. In your example, you see that that far right vertical line is selected, even though it is not a part of the shape you want to create.

If you add a vector point to the middle of that line, you'll be able to create that shape. If two adjacent points are selected, their joining line segment is selected. Adding the middle point, will allow you to select your shape without selecting that line that is not part of the shape.

How do you place black lines without them being the edge of a shape?

Edit: Ah, I see what you meant now Syn.