Moho Forum

As we make layer appear and intervene by checking visibility on and off, can we do anything similar for individual shapes within a layer.

Ex: I'm animating a flower so that it grows. I make the stern grow with exposure but I need to keep the other elements like leafs hidden until they appear.

This is just an example but I've encountered this problem many times.

I usually work around it by putting the shape off frame or setting zero opacity until i want them visible but that's a lot of keyframes when there should be a quicker way.

Is there something I'm missing?


Thanks

Nicohk92 wrote:
I usually work around it by putting the shape off frame or setting zero opacity until i want them visible but that's a lot of keyframes when there should be a quicker way.

That's pretty much the only way to animate visibility with shapes.

You could put each shape on its own layer and then use layer visibility.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdH0069VKS4 ... this was a pliot for a similar animation that gives you another approach to the question.

I drew the seedlings in their "finished" state on frame zero. This is the last layer in a switch.

I copy that layer, and in the copy I move all the points so that they make very very small versions of the leaves / stems etc and that becomes the first layer in a switch.

I set "interpolate" on the switch; and have just two keyframes: one for when the transition starts ("first layer") and one where it ends ("last layer").

That usually gives a growth pattern that isn't right; so copy the "last layer" and push the points around to make an intermediate layer... and so on.


If you have (as I did) several plants to grow, I made variations of intermediate and final stages (a total of 9 different drawings), I used 6 or 7 per seedling and staggered the timing.

finish it off with bones in the switch layer to add some sway etc..

Inspiring use of switch layers. Thanks for the intel. I've been having fun with the freehand tool so I think I''d rather have some fun with it and stroke exposure and see how it goes.

enjoy the experimentation!

the other option you have for making things invisible is to use masking. e.g.

group: mask- hide all
> vector - leaves etc: "mask this layer"
> vector - masking shape: "add to mask but keep invisible"
> vector - your stem with stroke exposure: "do not mask this layer"

The shape(s) on the masking shape layer can be designed and animated to reveal the leaves in any way that you need.

true tho I try to keep masking at a minimum, I notice it burdens my cpu quite a bit, when not simply crashing asp

heyvern wrote:

Nicohk92 wrote:
I usually work around it by putting the shape off frame or setting zero opacity until i want them visible but that's a lot of keyframes when there should be a quicker way.

That's pretty much the only way to animate visibility with shapes.

You could put each shape on its own layer and then use layer visibility.

There is a third way which is much easier when it's about making things pop into existence: Scaling it down all the way. setting it numerically to zero makes it of course disappear totally.