Illustrator brush stroke - Character arm rig

I found some fantastic tutorials on how to animated cartoon characters going from Adobe Illustrator to Flash. Very useful.
One tip that was tantalizingly mentioned by not spelled out was how you can create a character's whole arm as a brush stroke in Illustrator and then animated it in Flash. See for yourself at the 06:45 marker.
http://www.youtube.com/user/PeaceLoveAnimation#p/u/0/ywONJam2dSg
Anyone have any idea how you can take this brush stroked arm into Flash and have it be as flexible & keyable?
Mahalo for sharing!

Still no reply from anyone here.
I continue on in the wilderness alone.
So I experimented with my last theory. Attempted to use the Puppet Pin Tool in After Effects to achieve the flexiblity I'm looking for. FAILED! It essentially creates a rastered video when exported as either FLV or XFL. The XFL version creates an alias halo as well.
Next I attempted to use the very dodgy IK bone tool in Flash. That created all sorts of overlapping compound path problems.
The solution is out there somewhere!
We've seen it work.
Still it eludes me.
Mai Tai to anyone that can help a fellow animator out!

Similar Messages

Illustrator CC keeps snapping back to one point brush strokes

I select the brush stroke tool, the first time I use it, no matter what thickness or thinness I select it snaps back to 1pt, after that first stroke it works properly, but I cant undo it without it snapping back to 1pt again.

Oatler,
I wonder whether this is a strange effect of Align to Pixel Grid.
With the first stroke selected, is Untick Align to Pixel Grid ticked in the Transform palette?
If so, what happens if you select everything and untick Align to Pixel Grid and also untick the setting for New Objects in the panel options (flyout)?
If this makes it work, you may avoid that particular document type or change the default setting for it.

Need info about making brush strokes into objects

I have been using a Wacom graphics tablet and Freehand to create my illustrations for many years (since Freehand v.2). Since Freehand's days are obviously numbered, I have finally decided to make the switch. So far, it hasn't been that difficult, but I seem to get stuck on one problem, and for me, it is a pretty big one.
In Freehand, I select the "variable stroke" tool in order to make a variable width line. It actually doesn't make a stroke, though. It makes a shape. I can then select the points anywhere on the edge of the shape and make adjustments.
In Illustrator, I do basically the same thing. I make a stroke, and the more pressure I put on the tablet the thicker the line gets. So far, so good. But, I can't do any adjustments to the thickness, make the ends of the line taper to a point, etc. So in order to make that stroke into a shape (with points along the outside edge) that I can adjust, I have to select the stroke, go to Object, then Expand Appearance for each stroke I make. This is a tremendous timewaster for me.
My question: Is there any way to make the "Expand Appearance" function stay on so that every stroke I make is automatically converted to a shape? Or, is there another function in Illustrator CS1 that I can select that will make all of my strokes shapes as I draw them?
If it will help, you can look at some of my work to see how I use the Variable Stroke tool and how essential it is to my style of illustration at: http://www.norrishallstudio.com

Norris,
Illustrator 7 and earlier drew all brush strokes as filled shapes. (It only had calligraphic brushes.) The live centerline arrived in AI 8, along with the other brush types.
While Illustrator does not have any "auto Expand" option, and one could theoretically be added, I wonder if it might not instead be preferable to give direct user interface control over the data collected by the tablet.
For example, take the following brush stroke:
If expanded, it would look like this:
But even though the individual anchor points of the fill shape would then be editable, it would still not be convenient to do most kinds of editing. The centerline kind of edits would become very difficult. But even doing things that preserve the centerline, such as thickening the stroke or adjusting the apparent pen tilt, you would have to move anchor points on both sides, possibly adding some, adjusting handle lengths, etc.
What if there was an option, possibly available via a button on the Control Palette when a brush stroke was selected, to show control handles for the pressure and other tablet data, something like this:
The controls would have sensitive regions that activated different kinds of variation, similar to how the Bounding Box transform controls do. Possibly it would be workable to control them via the Direct Select tool, but if that turned out to interfere too much with other Direct Select tool operations (such as adjusting the direction handles of the centerline, which would be likely to often be near the pressure controls), then there could be a dedicated tool or mode for adjusting them.
There are up to 5 kinds of tablet data that are collected at each sample point: pressure, tilt, bearing, rotation, and stylus barrel pressure. But only at most four can have meaning for any brush stroke, since there are at most four brush options that can be assigned tablet data to vary by. (For calligraphic brushes, the options are angle, roundness and diameter. For scatter brushes, they are size, spacing, scatter and rotation.)
If the tablet data controls had the I-beam shape shown above, there are four easily distinguishable aspects of the control: its length, its angle relative to the centerline, the width of the crossbars, and the tilt of the crossbars relative to the I-beam vertical.
(One could imagine assigning more variation, such as controlling the two crossbars independently, or moving the I-beam offcenter, but the more variables one allows, the trickier it gets to manipulate.) One could say that the length controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the diameter or size of the brush, the I-beam angle controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the brush angle or rotation, the crossbar width controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the brush spacing or roundness, and the crossbar tilt controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the scatter distance of a scatter brush. (One could also imagine calligraphic brushes having a symmetry setting, that controlled whether the brush shape was elliptical or squashed like a pear, and attach that to the crossbar tilt.)
Since there would be way too much visual clutter to show every sample point, I think it should be sufficient to show them at anchor points, and possibly at max and min values for the variable data. If the user wanted to gain control at a position where there was no marker displayed, they could always add an anchor point.
Although I am calling it "tablet data", a path drawn with a mouse or with one of the shape tools could still have the controls. It would start initally with all "average" values since no data was collected, and tablet data would be artificially constructed by moving the controls and then saved.
If controls like that were available for live brush strokes, would you still prefer to auto-expand your brush strokes on mouse up instead of leaving them live?
(For all I know, there may be some third-party plugin that already provides some such controls. The tablet data can be accessed and modified through the AITabletData suite in the public SDK.)

Scale Brush Stroke?

Hello... New to Illustrator...
I'd like to scale a brush stroke. How do I do this? Please see below.
Left is original stroke
Right is resized by pressing shift then pulling box to upper right.
I found on the forum to tick preferences - scale strokes & effects but still not working?
Thank you,
RF

This is the default behavior of brushes. They are "live" and are simply reapplied to your path as you adjust your path (scaling or otherwise). This has nothing to do with scaling strokes or effects -- this is a brush, not a stroke, and not an effect.
To get what I think you want, you will need to do one of the following before you scale the path:
- Select the path and choose Object > Expand Appearance. This will reduce the brush to actual art that will scale as you would expect.
- Turn the path into a Symbol. Then scale the symbol.
- Select the path and click the Options Of Selected Object button that appears at the bottom of the Brushes panel. In the dialog that appears, check the Proportional option.
- Double click the brush in the Brushes panel. In the dialog box that appears, choose the Scale Proportionately setting. This will change the behavior of the brush of course.
Mordy

Bug - PDF export missing brush strokes

Can anyone reproduce this apparent bug in FHMX?
1. Apply a brushstroke to an object.
2. Group with 'Transform As Unit' checked.
3. Duplicate object several times. Scale some of the copies
larger and some
smaller.
4. Export document to PDF.
Open exported PDF in Acrobat, Illustrator or Preview.
Unexpected results:
All of the scaled copies of the object are missing from the
PDF.
Judy Arndt
FHMX 11.0.2, Mac OS 10.4.6

Rich Hudgins wrote:
> Confirmed in FH10 - OSX 10.4.x. I tried opening the PDF
back into FH
> just for kicks... very interesting. There are the exact
number of
> originals and dupes directly on top of the original.
i.e. I made an
> original and two smaller and two larger dupes, offset
from the original.
> In the FH opened PDF there were 5 exact copies of the
original item
> directly on top of each other. There were also 5
nostroke-nofill copies
> of the original shape without the brush stroke.
Wow! Yes! Same here.
Any transforms done to an object after being grouped with
'Transform As
Unit', are being ignored by the PDF Export.
This series of steps will produce the same problem described
by Makate.
1. Apply a brushstroke to an object.
2. Duplicate object and move it to another location on page.
3. Group the duplicate object with 'Transform As Unit' (TAU)
checked. Then
scale it larger.
4. Export document to PDF.
Unexpected results:
The duplicate object will be the same size as the original
object.
This will happen not only with brush strokes but with
ordinary strokes. PDF
Export is missing all transformations made after TAU is
applied. If I
remember correctly, TAU, which has been in FH since very
early versions, is
a kind of Postscript envelope. My theory is that because FH
doesn't have a
Postscript interpreter, it's missing the Postsript
transformations.
This limitation in PDF Export is very unfortunate because the
default
preference setting in a new FH installation is "Groups
transform as unit by
default". It is the logical way to preserve the appearance of
artwork with
strokes, brush strokes and vector effects. New users could
not possibly know
that this is one of the many limitations of PDF export. It's
not listed in
the technote, but it may be the reason for 'missing objects'.
http://www.adobe.com/go/tn_13496
Using Acrobat Pro/Distiller is the only safe way to generate
PDF files from
FreeHand.
Judy Arndt

WHY DON'T YOU AT LEAST IMPROVE THOSE BRUSH STROKES?!

I'm a professional digital artist-illustrator for about 7 years now. using photoshop since early years of my career. CS2, CS4, CS5.. on more than several mashines, top line HP workstations and EliteBook.
and one thing that bothers me and most of my colleagues is the quality of the brush strokes that PS provides.
why don't you improve em for christsake?!?
I must admit, this is a software issue, not mashine. neither the resolution, some options or tablet series has anything to do with this.. and it's especially visible on thicker strokes.
we work on intuos3, intuos4, intuos5, apple, win and whatnot. ant it's most obvious that the brush lines are as ugly as hell in this program entirely through all series.
when it comes to non-vector lineart, thats' basically why most of the artists/designers go for other progams, such as paint tool sai, sketchbook pro, manga studio and etc, and do the effects/coloring only in PS.
here's an ex. how the brush lines end. + if you work slower/move your pen more precise they go even worse!
I won't go further, like talking about the LAG with mixer brtushes and etc. most of the CG forums and communities are allready full of those discussions. you cannot even compete on this issue with other products.
that might be also a solution to rise your sales around the globe. cos now - why to buy a <1200$ worth PS program in europe when you'll probably end up mainly using paint tool sai or sketchbook pro for around 90$ and go for GIMP (free software) for effects.

I can understand a certain level of frustration, PAUZAK, but really? Are you a part of the same universe I'm in?
Your answer seems defensive; I'm just trying to help.
Points answered:
>then why other products managed to make it work?
I was only commenting on the points made in the thread YOU linked to. Apparently at least some people see the shoelace thing in the Wacom control panel. Given that evidence, which I doubt was manufactured, your pretense seems to need questioning. I suppose it's possible (actually, a certainty) that some products send different commands to the drivers than others, and that the drivers are doing things wrong only under some conditions. That's why I asked whether the Smoothing setting affected your setup.
>just like this forum.. can't make a reply like in other normal forums, or edit anything
I'm having no problems replying, or editing using any of the major browsers, including Firefox. I can't edit posts on an iPhone or iPad (not allowed to even try), but if you're using an actual computer and you can't even make the forum work, you have problems on your system.
>adobe is. cannot make the most simple things to work right and not LAG
Some operations in Photoshop are complex and when done with big brushes and all kinds of stuff (fuzzy edges, mixing, etc.) turned on they slow down, but with reasonable sized brushes I've been able to paint stuff, and I certainly don't have the world's fastest computer by today's standards. And even so, I'm not sure that's a situation where it's not working right per se... Maybe just one where a better computer is needed to paint with really big brushes and all the fancy stuff turned on. That *could* be a better computer than any invented yet, but that's okay - see next year's lineup...
>looks like the staff is obviously looking somewhere else
Wow, and you posted that *right* after one of the senior Photoshop scientist/engineers at Adobe responded specifically to you. When's the last time an engineer from any other big software company responded to you?
>Photoshop is still a huge and expencive disappointment so far. ask any pro
Yeah, all the pros just avoid Photoshop. That's why Adobe is doing so poorly as a business. They can hardly sell any copies at all!
PAUZAK, I'll go out on a limb and say making things up and trolling for shock value and blaming the world for your own problems probably aren't going to help you reach a solution.
-Noel

How to automatically convert brush strokes to symbols?

Is there any way to just draw a stroke and it becomes a movie clip symbol automatically? Like to draw it in "a mode"?
I do character animation in another program then go into Flash CS6 to shade and draw little touch ups over the animation.
With symbols I'm able to change the opacity (which is the alpha) and I can "Multiply" over animation to create simple shading.
I can't use Flash to save my life so honestly this is the simplest thing I can really do. So is there any way to make every brush stroke I draw be automatically a symbol?
I had recently discovered that Flash isn't like Photoshop to where you can set the opacity for layers down and put modes on the layers, so this is the closest I've gotten to mimicking that.
Don't mention object drawing mode, I thought that made my drawings into symbols but it doesn't? :c

you can use jsfl. This should get you started:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12967890/converting-multiple-shapes-groups-to-movieclip s-symbols-in-flash-cs5

Drawing brush stroke lines w/ tapered ends at any angle

I'm trying to match the style of an illustration done by someone outside my company; all the lines taper at both the ends like an actual brush stroke, but when I used the brush tools I have to change the angle to get the tapered look - is there a trick to this? It's not efficient to have to stop and change the angle of the tool for every stroke -

After you change the angle once, choose apply all strokes.
If that is not working, have you tried using profile in the stroke palette.

Brush strokes disappear upon to Flash

I've created an Illustrator CS3 illustration that includes a few different art brush strokes at different line weights.
The brush strokes that appear small (small in size/shape/width) in the file disappear entirely when I import the file onto the stage in Flash. Thicker brush strokes look fine.
I tried expanding the brush strokes (turning them into polygons) before import but they still disappear when brought into Flash.
Does anyone know why this is or if there's a workaround?
Thanks,
Joe

Hi Wade,
Thanks for your quick response.
I tried importing it as a symbol into Flash but the small brush strokes still disappeared.
A hint to what might be causing the problem: When I enlarge the artwork in Illustrator by 500%, some of the smaller brush strokes that disappeared earlier suddenly appear successfully after importing to Flash. Not all of them. Enlarging the artwork even further adds a few more brush strokes but some of the tiny ones still drop out.
Can I e-mail you the file directly rather than posting it on the public forum?

How to achieve less smoothing with brush strokes and wacom?

Is there a smoothing setting for brushes? When I draw certain shapes with sharper corners (like squares) illustrator rounds them out very excessively. I know there has to be a certain amount of smoothing to convert a stroke made by the user into a vector, but is there a way to reduce the amount. Interestingly, if I draw the shape really fast, I get the desired result, however if I draw slowly, it rounds it tremendously. I would think it would be the other way around because with a slower stroke you are giving more input points and therefore more precision but this is obviously not the case. Basically, I want to achieve brush strokes that more accurately represent my input. Thanks in advance for the help.

thanks so much for the quick reply! It couldn't be any easier. I just lowered the fidelity setting to the minimum and it is behaving perfectly.

CS5 screws up brush strokes drawn in CS4

I have a drawing that was created in CS4 and which uses many brush strokes created with an Intuos4 pen. When I open the file in CS5, everything looks OK, but if I try to make ANY edit to the stroke - whether changing color or moving or re-orienting an anchor point, the complete character of the brush stroke is destroyed.
I might add that often, these strokes had a specified thickness defined with their brush that was later altered with the strokes thickness setting (usually made thinner). But since no such corruption would ever take place in CS4 when making such trivial edits, I can only assume there is a problem with the way CS5 handles this kind of altered brush stroke.
Here is a screen shot:

Monika,
If I change the Options of selected object for one particular stroke in CS4, the same one I showed in the screen shot, here is what happens. The specifications were for it to be 1.7 points. I had manually specified .3 point in the path stroke settings. If I make the specifications .3 point, the stroke loses all its character and is barely visible. I think the expressiveness of the stroke may have to do with the fact that I made this manual tweak.
Also, I have SEVERAL THOUSAND such strokes in this particular file, and they were based on a variety of brush designs and were all manually overriden in this way (not one at a time though; I just kept drawing with the manual override and it maintained it).
I cannot imagine how many weeks it would take me to revisit them and tweak them to fit new brush behaviors (if this is not a CS5 bug). I really want to take this and other files into CS5 because the performance of everything else is so much better.
I hope someone will chime in who knows what's going on between CS4 and CS5 in this regard and has a solution. I don't want to resort to using Expand Appearance or Outline Paths to solve this - I want to maintain their integrity as brush strokes at least until I am completely done drawing...

Illustrator brush question

At one point in time I was shown how to change the option on my CS3 Illustrator brushes so that when you draw a line and end it, it stays that way when you begin to draw again. Now I can't figure out how to change it again. The default setting is set that when you draw a line, and then begin a new line close to it they flow together to form a new path. (This is difficult to explain in words).
How do I make it so the lines are all individual objects when you stop drawing?
Thanks,
Nancy

Double-click the Brush Tool and uncheck "Keep Selected" or "Edit Selected Paths" or both. Either option will basically not mess with strokes you've already drawn.

Erasing portions of brush strokes that have effects

I have made some brush strokes and applied the 'gaussian blur' effect to them. I want to erase the portions of the brushstroke that extend over the outline of the drawing. I have tried the 'expand appearance' command but after doing so it will not let me use the eraser on the selected object. Not sure what to do! Very frustrated- I would appreciate any help, thanks.

Basically, you're thinking of Illustrator brushes as if they were raster or pixel based like they are in Photoshop. They are not. You can not simply erase the "overspray" areas outside the keyline. That's just not how Illustrator brushes work.
You would be better served by either A) using shapes and filling them with a gradient rather than using brushes at all. Or B) add a clipping mask to hide the overspray appearance of the brushes.
The help files will explain Clipping Masks further. Using the brush+mask method will easily double or triple the amount of work needed to color any piece. Not to mention, eventually cause the app to get a bit slower becuase it will have to redraw all teh brush strokes as you add new ones. It's just not an efficient way of working much of the time if you want hard edges on shapes.
Essentially, you're expecting raster-based results in a vector-based application. You need to reevaluate your workflow.
Of course, you could always take your vector keyline into Photoshop and paint color there in the manner you are attempting. That's what Photoshop does.

Saving to legacy format expands custom brush strokes

I don't ever recall ths happening. I have a CS5 file, and if I save it to CS2, CS3, or CS4, the custom brush strokes get expanded. They're very simple brushes, not Bristle brushes. I can understand it happening if I was trying to save to v. 8, but not a newer version. Is there some setting in my save dialog I'm missing?

It seems to be happening with Art Brushes I create, but not with ones that come with Illustrator. In the attached image, the top left object is what I used to make the brush. Undernesth that is a brush stroke. On the right is the Outline view after saving to CS3. The brush strokes below are made with a default Illustrator Art Brush.

Drawing Inside Keeps Painting Behind Other Brush Strokes

I am currently using the draw inside feature on an object of mine. I find that when i come back to it, like if i save and close the program and then come back, whatever new stuff i paint vanishes behind rather than appearing on top. The main solid colored object I always have to send behind before i could paint over it every single time. But now that I have some details over top of that, they are cooperating the same way and need sent behind as well im assuming, with the main object being at the very back. I'd hate to try and select everything because everything around it would need locked and this and that to select what i need and its just allot of hassle, especially if i have to do it every time i re open the program. Shouldn't new brush strokes paint above everything rather than below? Any help would be highly appreciated.

I submitted something similar to this about two version back. I know
when I'm trying to draw a long line, it would be nice to be able to use
some sort of guide. I think I was imagining a tool that you could hold
with a second hand while drawing with the wacom pen. I think they really
could corner the market if they came up with something like this.
Unfortunately, I think they hold back...after all, if they give it all
away, they have nothing to upgrade to...right?
On a similar note, I vaguely remember back when ver 2or 3 of Illustrator
came out and one could fit graphics(text?) in an envelope. At the time,
it was a plugin that was subsequently removed.
For the next 50;) versions I whined about this. Finally, I think it was
version 9 or 10 that brought this feature back to Illustrator.
So given that track record, I think we might get it in version 17. Let's
cross our fingers. ;)

Illustrator brush stroke - Character arm rig

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