Moho Animation Forum

This is something that has annoyed me for a while, and I've found ways around it. Now it's becoming an issue.

SaY I select a group of points in a vector layer. Any group of points, a shape, a group of shapes, whatever. If I do a 'rotate points' on them, instead of just rotating, like you'd think the points seem to shrink, or contract, during the rotation. It's weird and I can't figure out why it happens, but every time I can think of that I've tried to spin anything, I always get this morphing/shrinkage.

What's up?

You are just using the wrong tool.

I assume you want to achieve an animated rotation during which the points involved don't change their relative distance to each other. If you do that in point rotation with only two keyframes, think about what you don't tell AS: the software doesn't store information about the pivot point, and it didn't get a command to rotate stuff around that pivot point. So AS does what it does with all point animation: moves each point separately from start position to end position.

If you want to rotate a group of points while maintaining its shape, use bone or layer rotation. A bone and a layer have a defined pivot point, so AS understands the concept of "rotation".

I get what you mean. . .it's deceptive because while you're actually rotating it. . .the size doesn't change. It's only when you play through the keys that you see it.

A lot of times this has made me, out of necessity, create a new layer since I can't just rotate a shape as a group of points without this happening.

I guess I thought I was doing something wrong.

Bones would be the way to go in this case rather than layer rotation. If you use layer rotation but only want to rotate a small section of points you would need those points on a new layer. If you use a bone and bind those points or just use the bone strength, you can rotate points within a layer without needing to duplicate it.

This is one of the reasons I tend to avoid LARGE point motion changes, because the motion is linear. I would do large movements with bones and use point motion for subtle tweaking (yes, Vern has started using some point motion instead of bones to save time )

-vern

Ah. I hadn't thought of boning things after the fact like that. Well, I just put it on a new layer and rotated the layer, so next time the issue arises, I'll consider it.