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brammelo
12-30-2003, 01:17 AM
A question for the Sketch and Toon crowd...

When you drag the Sketch Style Tag to the XPresso environment, you have access to different ports. One of those ports is the opacity of a line. If you change this opacity value, nothing happens - the opacity of the line in the render doesn't change. If you want to change the opacity of the line in the render , you apparently have to change it directly in the Sketch material settings.

The obvious question is: if the opacity port on the Sketch Style Tag doesn't do anything, then why is it included? Same question of course for all the other ports that don't do zilch. Is this for future development?

And a second question, perhaps not so obvious: if I cannot modify the line settings (like opacity) on a per object basis by using the sketch style tag, then what other options do I have - other than using a different sketch material for each object? Can this be solved by using the COFFEE option in the sketch material?

Cheers,
BaRa
LucentDreams
12-30-2003, 06:27 AM
not having rewally used Xpresso with sketch yet It seems a bug must have been missed, whether using a material or a tag all sketch settings show up in the list of ports, which shouldn't be right.
LucentDreams
12-30-2003, 06:32 AM
oh, and for the second question, coffe would allow some sorts of things to be controoled I guess, but your best way is to use a material per object if you need. Trust me, for the one character I"ve been working on I"m using slight variations of the same sketch material all over a single character, probably have 20 some line materials for one character :)

I know seems like a poain in the ass, but how is it different then using normal materials?
obeardy
12-30-2003, 08:05 AM
Originally posted by brammelo
A question for the Sketch and Toon crowd...
Cheers,
BaRa

The ports should not be showing up for the style tag since those options are not available for the style tag (they do nothing and are hidden for the tag).

Those parameters (opacity etc.) are only available in the material, just drag the material over and use a material per object just as you would do if you were keyframing the parameters.
obeardy
12-30-2003, 08:10 AM
Originally posted by Kaiskai
not having rewally used Xpresso with sketch yet It seems a bug must have been missed, whether using a material or a tag all sketch settings show up in the list of ports, which shouldn't be right.

They should be hidden, but are not. Whilst this makes it a pita to find the parameters since you have even bigger lists, it doesn't stop it working. If the parameter is available to manually change/keyframe in the AM then you can use that parameter for XPresso, e.g. Opacity does NOT exist for the style tag in the AM, but does for the Material so can be used by XPresso for the material only.
brammelo
12-30-2003, 12:38 PM
Thanks guys. So it's a bug, not a hidden or future feature (did you pass this on to Maxon?).

Kai: if I had only 20 linestyles, it would be OK. But I have around 1.500 boxes that appear over time (display tag controlled by XPresso, scheme from Per Anders), so making a linestyle for each box is not really an option. Guess I'll have to drop the line rendering for those boxes.

Cheers,
BaRa
LucentDreams
12-30-2003, 05:11 PM
is the main reason you need a new line for each because of the animate feature?
obeardy
12-30-2003, 05:34 PM
Originally posted by brammelo
Thanks guys. So it's a bug, not a hidden or future feature (did you pass this on to Maxon?).
Cheers,
BaRa

Yes its been reported, although its more of a limitation than a bug, really the ports should not be visible to make it clearer, but nothing is broken or not working (usual bug type).
brammelo
12-30-2003, 09:49 PM
Originally posted by Kaiskai
is the main reason you need a new line for each because of the animate feature?

Animate is not what I'm interested in (although I considered it in this case). As the camera is moving, I couldn't use it even if I wanted to. I only want to animate the visibility of each object, and each object becomes visible in turn, and if you use Sketch and Toon, the only way to do this is by animating the opacity of the line style (as far as I know).

I think I will be able to use an in between solution. The boxes (around 1500) are organized in layers (and grouped as such). I think it will be possible to animate the opacity of the layers (groups) without loosing too much of the animation logic.

Cheers,
BaRa
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