Rotate a group of points without shrinking the shape?

[Noirlac]

Hello.

I am a Newbie here, so I must apologise if this is a silly question

I've been trying to animate a group of points in a vector layer with the rotate tool. The result looks more like a translation movement from the starting position to the end position of each point of the group than a real rotation (where each point would have kept the same distance from the centre of the group). So the group of points seems to shrink in the in-between frames.

Is there a way to avoid that shrinkage without “counter-scaling” the in-betweens; or without having to rotate the whole layer or to rotate a bone instead of rotating points? Is there something in AS which allows to lock up the selected points in their relative positions?

I hope this is comprehensible, as English is not my native language.

Thanks

[slowtiger]

If you do a rotation of a shape just by point rotation, the software will always shrink the shape in the middle becaue it doesn't know that you want a curved path between the points' positions instead of the straight line it will produce automatically.

You need to use layer rotation or bind that shape to a bone and rotate this to get a real rotation of your shape.

Of course you also could put more keyframes between your extremes and adjust the points in each of them. This way is easiest done by copying the last keyframe, rotate the points just a bit (less than 10°), then copy this keyframe, and so on. Although this technique is the most ineffective and slow one, and the worst in flexibility, it has a legitimate place in animation which is the field of metamorphoses. (Example: a protozoa under the microscope, moving slowly, and emerging pseudopodiae here and there)

[Noirlac]

Thank you for your reply.

Your explanations confirm what I figured trying to use AS.