Animate Hide Edge?

[strider2000]

I'm afraid this can't be done. Is it possible to animate hide edge? I don't think so. I know I can animate stroke exposure, but that assumes I only want to hide one segment. The reason I'd like it is to hide/show overlapping edges near shoulder and/or elbow joints when I animate layers of a body turn. For example when the body is in front of the shoulder I want to hide the body shoulder edge. When the body is behind the shoulder I want to show the body edge. I have tried a number of work arounds with different levels of success, such as patch layers, but it would be great if I can animate the hide edge and I just don't know it.

Thanks

[slowtiger]

For stuff like this I use an independent stroke of which I animate one or two points. For being invisible I just put the points near each other.

[strider2000]

Thanks slowtiger. It's good to know what different people are doing. I've tried that and had some success, but I always have trouble when I'm trying to deal with an edge near a moving portion. (ie it's easy for me to animate a contour/stroke for like a nose or muscle definition, 'cause the background fill is always there. I get confused when I'm trying to deal with the edge of the body turning and the shoulder moving up and down.) Maybe it will just take more practice for me to get use to it. But, come to think if it, maybe I've never just left the edge off of the shoulder completely and only render with a separate stroke. I'll go play some more

[funksmaname]

another way is to animate the stroke width, as long as you have an extra point close to either edge of the line you're trying to hide, you can change their widths which will thin/hide the line you want hidden without changing the adjoining lines... hope that makes sense!

[hayasidist]

This might work for you (ASP11): use point colour (which you can animate) on the points at the end of the relevant segment(s) to transition from "stroke" to either "fill" or transparent.

[strider2000]

I've tried the line width and usually have the situation that the points are not close enough. I haven't tried point color. That's a great idea to try. I may run into the same issue as for line width, but will try. The ideas also make me think that I can try adding more points again, because I think the last time I tried that I wasn't minimizing point movement for the shoulder.

I have realized that one way to help resolve the multiple point interaction is to try to keep movement as independent as possible. For example, in the body turn I try to have the shoulder points only move horizontally. If I don't do that I can easily have a situation where two points "race each other". If the move relative to each other I get all kinds of weirdness, as expected, because of curvature. Bottom line, multiple bone interaction is hard for me

Anyway, thanks for the ideas

[willf]

I've had good luck with animating the line width down to 0.

I found that if I add two extra points inside the area i want to disappear - right next to the points which I want to be regular width, where the line becomes visible again - then It's easy to control where the line disappears and reappears. (Although it still shows up on the work screen, don't worry it won't render.) It helps if you assign the points into a point group, then if they are moving around a lot you can still find them easily.

[strider2000]

I just tried the line width approach again and right now I think patch layers for the shoulders seem to be the easiest for me, but perhaps I'm missing something.
Here's the kind of thing I'm doing/trying in case anyone is interested.


Thanks for the ideas. I'm still tying to figure out the balance between complexity of the rig and flexibility for animation. Unfortunately my imagination is more powerful than my rigs

[funksmaname]

Another idea... how about a new stroke shape (over existing lines) and using line exposure? that way you can easily have it animate from 0 to 100% then back... rather than thickness, it will look like the line is drawing itself in from the armpit (or make harsh changes to hide/show the line if required)

-- just trying this, it doesn't work 'out of the box' (stroke exposure appears to work on the entire line, not just a stroke shape) but is a prime candidate for a reference layer. if you reference the layer, delete all fills, and then just create the single segment as a stroke you can do it.

Alternatively, just create a new set of lines on the original layer, not part of the original shape, but this would be harder to manage to match the main shapes silhouette.

here is a test file.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/25cex ... line.anime



(this is quick and dirty, you'd want to add a bulge etc, but it works! - hold alt with the exposure tool to start from the opposite side)