Hi there. I was wondering if there was an easy way to do this. I’ve been looking at the documentation and general searches and haven’t come up with anything. It would be great to be able to convert my drawings that I’ve already done to advanced outline layers. And can anyone advise me that they’re stable enough to use in work? I saw a mention that deleting widths can be an issue.
Thanks in advance for any help! The more I work with Synfig, the more I’m amazed.
S:)
It’s in the planning but unfortunately there’s no way to do this yet.
When I have an Outline layer that I want to convert into an Advanced Outline layer, I do this
i) Create a new Advanced Outline layer (right-click on canvas, Layer -> New Layer -> Geometry -> Advanced Outline)
ii) In the Params panel, right click on Vertices of my Outline layer and select Export
iii) In Children Panel select the exported Vertices
v) Make sure the Advanced Outline layer is selected in the Layers panel
iv) In the Params panel for the Advanced Outline layer I right-click on the Vertices and click Connect
Then to break the link between the two layers, you can disconnect.
Advanced Outline layers work just fine in my experience. If you go to my YouTube channel you’ll see several examples of work I’ve done using them (youtube.com/stupidrubbish)
There is one thing about Advanced Outlines (from now on AOs) that is not documented in the wiki. It is not needed to know by the user normally but I will explain here because it could confuse some advanced users:
As you can see the BLine of the AOs does have the ‘link’ icon near the Type name on the parameters panel (the chain icon). This means that the BLine parameter is linked to BLine Value Node. If you try to right click ‘Disconnect’ or right click Convert -> BLine can see that it doesn’t work at all. The BLine always remain linked.
This is because the BLine is internally linked to a non visible member of the Widht Point list and it is designed to always relink to it when the code finds that they are not linked. If the code doesn’t act like this, the user might break the linkage of the Width Point list to the BLine parameter and so, the Width Points ducks could not be placed in the canvas.
When a Layer with a BLine parameter is going to be linked to another BLine Layer type (Outline, Region, Advanced Outline, etc.) you can normally select both layers and in the parameter panel right click and ‘Link’ both BLine parameters (that is greyed meaning that the parameter is shared by more than one layer and they are not the same value node). Usually it is not needed to export the BLine parameter first. But in the case of Advanced Outlines the BLine parameter is always linked to a BLine Value Node (from the Width Point List) as mentioned before. The ‘Link’ operation takes some decision on which value node is going to be preserved and which discarded in the link operation.
Notice that when you link two or more values you have to discard all except one of them where the rest are linked to.
So if one of the value nodes is already linked, it has preference over other not linked. On the other hand, exported value nodes has higher preference than simply linked, so that’s the reason why it is needed to export the AO BLine parameter first, before link them.
I hope I can code the Convert to Advanced Outline action soon.
Cheers!
-G
Thanks so much everyone! This is all great info with a speedy reply. I really appreciate your help:)
Steph