Tapering a bline outline

Hi diddly ho!

When I taper the end of a bline outline, I usually want a fairly short taper. So far, the best way I’ve found to do that is to add one more vertex beyond what would otherwise be the end of the line and set that last vertex to a width of zero, like so:

----A-------------------------------B—C
…short taper

Where B is the “end” of my line, more or less, and C is the vertex with the zero width setting. If I leave off the C vertex and set B to zero width, I get a longer taper, which is not usually what I want:

----A-------------------------------B
…long taper

Of course, the downside to the way I do it is that I end up with extra vertices to account for when animating. So I was wondering: is there any parameter that I can set to tell a taper to happen mostly at one end or the other of a segment? Sort of like easing in or easing out of a width change?

----A-------------------------------B ( set B width to “ease in” )
…short taper

'Cause if you could do that, it would be a work saver!

Thanks,

Matt

PS - Whoa! I made the 4000th post!

By default you need to add a vertex to control the width of the bline. I’ve been working on a independent system of the widths not linked to the vertexes. I had some problems to end it for this release so I delayed for the next release. It is in my mind and I know perfectly what you mean.

So better than create ease in/out for width interpolation between points it is better to detach the width form the point and make it independent.

youtube.com/watch?v=mQbqh_A2P9Y

:slight_smile:
-G

Hey Genete, now that you mention it, I was wondering something about your enhanced outline layer…
Would this make it possible to link the vertex points positions to a curve gradient or a plant layer, but have the width behave independantly of each other?
I ask this because I recently linked a curve gradient to an outline, and then wanted to mess up the outline widths to make it look more hand drawn, but the curve gradient got messed up with it

make it possible is the same complex than make the movable width points possible. And sincerely the movable width points is much more flexible because you can overlap or cross the width points in animation mode, one thing that you cannot do with bline points which are always ordered as they are conceived by now.

-G

Thanks, Genete.

Matt