Moho Forum

I'm trying to learn off of the 'Making of Rose' flash files and for starters, the eyes have me totally confused. I thought he/she was creating the eye vector lines and inside mouth vector lines, turning them into shapes first, and then using those shapes to make holes/cutouts in the overall face shape.

I've created the vector objects, one inside the other to cut out a hole but it doesn't seem to work if I make the inner object an actual shape first. Am I wrong, are the whites of the eyes and the whole mouth just sitting on top?
And how does the eyes cornea end up being masked out and by what?

On another note, what are groups, how are they created, and why. I thought I could create a 'face' with holes, create eye elements and group them together, then move the group downward, behing the face. That idea doesn't seem to work either.

Without seeing the "making of Rose" tutorials I can only guess.

It sounds like you need to lower/raise the shapes.

Groups don't control the layering of shapes. Groups only are for creating easy to select groups of points. For instance in a very complex layer it may be hard to select a set of points when mixed in with all the other points and meshes. So after carefully selecting a bunch of points you may not want to do that again in the future so you make it into a group to be quickly selected later.

To change the order of shapes you need to select the SHAPE (fill and stroke) and use the lower or raise shape tool or menu commands to change where they are in the layer order.

Shapes are "independent" of the mesh. The points and lines that make up a mesh have no "order" (they do sort of but it's irrelevant for your concerns).

-vern

Hayvern, Thanks for the reply. Quirky is my word for the day. So, if I've got it right:

-You can draw points, but to give them stroke or fill, the points must be closed and then must be made a shape. (I'm not sure what you mean by "mesh")

-You can move points and group points but you cannot move or group shapes. (Except as points.)

-You cannot change the stacking order of points, only of shapes.

OK so far?

Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out the eyes/face realtionship in the Rose figure, to no luck.

A mesh is a collection of points that create the "lines". I suppose that is the wrong word but it's what it's called in the scripting reference.

It is hard to discuss because you could call a "mesh" a "shape" but then some one might confuse that with a filled shape.

So... a mesh. You draw connecting points to create a mesh. Then you select points or a mesh or whatever you call it, and create a shape.

The shape is defined by the mesh. All a shape has as properties is what you see in the style palette, fill color, stroke weight etc etc. A shape can be named.

Shapes exist on "layers" within a vector layer. One shape can cover another shape. You can move shapes up and down in the stacking order.

I STRONGLY advise turning on autonaming of shapes in the preferences or at least naming shapes by hand. A shape at the bottom of the "stack" is very hard to select. By naming the shapes you can select them easily in the style palette.

The MESH on the other hand does not have a staking order. The mesh is just points that define what the shapes are "attached" to.

This concept is difficult to get the hang of coming from experience with Adobe Illustrator or similar programs. In those programs everything is... all in one... the fills and strokes are the mesh. In AS shapes for fills and strokes are independent of the lines that they are applied to. In Adobe Illustrator you raise or lower the "whole thing". In AS you raise or lower just the fills... the shape.

I had a really hard time understanding this at first... I thought it was "weird"... now it's second nature.

Groups are just named groups of points. That's it. A group of points that can be selected by choosing its name in the pull down menu using any of the edit point or vector tools. Groups have nothing to do with fill shapes. As a matter of fact they have a tendency to "vanish" when copying and pasting... at least that's been my experience.

-vern

Vern's given you heaps of good information that should help you a lot.

I'd like to comment on one particular aspect of your original post, and perhaps give you an analogy to work with.

VidE wrote:I thought he/she was creating the eye vector lines and inside mouth vector lines, turning them into shapes first, and then using those shapes to make holes/cutouts in the overall face shape.

I've created the vector objects, one inside the other to cut out a hole but it doesn't seem to work if I make the inner object an actual shape first. Am I wrong, are the whites of the eyes and the whole mouth just sitting on top?
And how does the eyes cornea end up being masked out and by what?

I haven't seen the "making of" either, but if you want to make holes in an object, you're going to have to make unfilled mesh loops first, both the outer and the inner, with auto-fill and auto-outline turned off, then select all the mesh curves (the outer shape and the hole/s) and add the fill/outline shapes. It will fill the outer shape except where the hole loops are.

The you can make the eyes float behind the "face with holes" shape.

However, you could also float mouths and eyes on top of a face and use masking or simple shape order to control the visibility of the iris/pupil shapes and the eyelids, or the teeth/tongue.

VidE wrote:I thought I could create a 'face' with holes, create eye elements and group them together, then move the group downward, behing the face.

As Vern has said, you can move "shapes" (fills and outlines) up and down, below a face shape for example, but not the construction curves (the points and curves of the mesh that specify where the shapes exist) which are all on one level.

Two separate eye circles could be given a single fill - you'd have 2 sets of curves in the mesh but only a single fill shape that happened to be in 2 different areas - by changing the fill shape colour you would change the colour of both eyes simultaneously.

Think of the points and contruction curves as one of those constructions sets of magnetic rods/balls that stick together. Now make a flat cartoon-flower-like pattern with the magnetic rods/balls and dip the whole lot in soapy water.

The soap bubbles are the fill shapes, outlines are edges of the bubbles, the magnetic balls/rods are the points/construction curves/mesh.

Now because the magnetic rods have some thickness, if you turn the magnetic rod flower edge on, some of the petals might have soap bubbles on either side of the loop, forming a thin lens of air trapped between two soap bubbles and giving some thickness to the petals.
Imagine one side has a green bubble, and the other side has a red bubble.

You can move shape fills up and down - in effect, exchanging the locations of the soap bubbles in that petal/lens, which is where the analogy starts to break down even more - but the magnetic rods themselves haven't changed.

Regards, Myles.

Thanks Vern & Miles for taking the time...This seperate existance of construction points and shapes IS Weird! But your descriptions are helping me wrap my mind around it. I really like what's done with AS Pro, I jsut have to cozy up to it a bit more.

And in all fairness, after years of being a video shooter editor on a PC, I'm also trying to get up to speed with Apples' Final Cut Studio and learning Flash and Dreamweaver. (Built my first site the other day). So my brain is already on overload.

Anyway, what you've pointed out reinforces my experience of AS Pro and as a result, I fell more comfortable with, what to me are its' quirks. so again, thanks.