Moho Forum

It would be very nice to get a more natural drawings if we could control alpha point by point in lines, just like in line width.
Also, to include that alpha value as an option when working with freehand tool and pen pressure.
What do you think?

I think a feature like that could be very useful when i work with brushes.
You can use brushes for creating clouds and bushes so everytime you press hard you get strong whites or greens and when its the contrary you get weak and almost tranparents colors, so at the end you could get bushes, clouds or trees with diferent tones and alphas which would give them a more interesting look.
Im not sure if this is what you mean but this is really the only idea that comes to my mind rightnow.
On the other side, im not sure if i would like to have the outlines of my character with different alphas.

Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Of course it would be decision of each animator where and when want to add alpha to the points.
I'm just thinking about natural lines in softwares like photoshop, painter or sai, where transparency can depend of the pen pressure. Transparency is very important, for example, to emulate a sketch with pencil.
I really like the control you have with line width over each point. The same behavior could be applied to transparency. I read this request thinking on your work, Parker, I guess you would be one of the happiest guys with this feature

selgin wrote:Parker, I guess you would be one of the happiest guys with this feature

Yes, i would like AS to have it .
I didnt thought about that but actually this feature combined with the sketchy effect could really make our characters look even more handrawn.
Any way we have been asking for better FBF and other improvements for a long time and nothing so i guess this is just another feature with which we can only dream about .

I think the line width tool is one of the coolest feature in AS, combined with an alpha value control would be the best!

Uolter wrote:I think the line width tool is one of the coolest feature in AS, combined with an alpha value control would be the best!

No doubt !

For brushes it can be "easily" implemented but for regular outlines... hmmm.
Did you know that the variable outline is in fact a polygon around the curve with variable width? The polygon looks smooth because it uses a lot of vertexes when it renders the outline. But look carefully to the screen when the outline is in the working area. To be quickly rendered it uses a small set of lines so the polygon is visible if the curvature is high.

To implement a variable alpha for a closed shape (the outline is a closed polygon) it should render each piece of polygon with a different alpha or use the same thechnique than the raster applications what its simulation is the brush feature...
I don't think it could be easily implemented using the current renderer of Anime Studio. It would represent a radical change on it.

Neat idea anyway
-G

So if it is just a polygon, THEN WHY CAN'T WE STILL NOT HAVE ROUNDED CAPS AND CORNERS?!?!?!?!?!

Also I think there should be a line width option for line curvature so you can taper the size of the curvature where you would like.

selgin wrote:It would be very nice to get a more natural drawings if we could control alpha point by point in lines, just like in line width.
Also, to include that alpha value as an option when working with freehand tool and pen pressure.
What do you think?

I've been making this request for years now, often directly to Mike, but not heard any response. My idea was to store a 4 color channel for each point so you could control the line's color as you went along it line as well as it's transparency, ie good for gradient effects that follow the line.

I downloaded the trial version of Adobe Fireworks for the first time a few weeks ago, as I had heard good things about their vector natural media engine, and liked their take on it even better.

What they do is store the tablet input parameters (eg pressure, speed, tilt, etc) with the line and then let the brush decide how these parameters should be converted into actual line characteristics. So simple, yet so flexible!

So to translate this idea to AS, you could add a pressure parameter to each point, then you could use a style effect or brush to convert it to line attributes such as width, color, and transparency for preview and or render.

Also Genete, I agree that any such feature would most-likely have to be brush-based, but that's OK, since AS already has the foundation of a pretty good brush engine. I can only imagine the possibilities if it was as powerful as the Fireworks vector brush engine.

Genete wrote:For brushes it can be "easily" implemented but for regular outlines... hmmm.
Did you know that the variable outline is in fact a polygon around the curve with variable width? The polygon looks smooth because it uses a lot of vertexes when it renders the outline. But look carefully to the screen when the outline is in the working area. To be quickly rendered it uses a small set of lines so the polygon is visible if the curvature is high.

To implement a variable alpha for a closed shape (the outline is a closed polygon) it should render each piece of polygon with a different alpha or use the same thechnique than the raster applications what its simulation is the brush feature...
I don't think it could be easily implemented using the current renderer of Anime Studio. It would represent a radical change on it.

Neat idea anyway
-G

If I understand this correctly then the outline is a polygon with points. Since the hide edge tool can turn off edges between those points, couldn't a modified hide edge tool change the alpha too? It's not the freehand tool but might be easier to implement.

maybe