Better Drawing and Painting Tools

[Cowabanga]

Hey,

Why not making a better drawing and painting tools, cause the current one are a little bit... pain.

Why not just like in Flash, for example? You create a circle and a line with some of its part on it, then use the paint bucket, voila!

In AS, you have to draw the circle and the line then you have to connect the points so you can use the paint bucket and that's pain, even it sometimes doesn't let you use the paint bucket on complex shapes. While Flash can?

AS is the best! but the weakest point is the drawing and painting tools.

[Mikdog]

Been saying this for years.

Meh. As a result I've switched over to Toon Boom Animate for much of my work. I somehow don't see them revamping the drawing and painting tools anytime soon. Still though, it'd be great and it would breathe new life into AS for me.

[Cowabanga]

Hmm... I might give Toon Boom a try! *pokes the developers*

EDIT: Meh, ToonBoom is sh**, I might switch to Flash.
Or I can use Flash to draw then export to AS. But WHY CAN'T THEY MAKE GOOD TOOLS FOR GOODNESS' SAKE?

[Cowabanga]

Okay, I'll use Flash for animation from now on until they improve the tools.

[RATHAHONNI]

I would like to see a grid available,to better judge the size and length of drawings.They have this feature in toon boom and i found it handy.













http://www.youtube.com/user/RATHAHONNI

[madrobot]

I would like to see a grid available,to better judge the size and length of drawings.They have this feature in toon boom and i found it handy.

Dude, they have a grid already

[RATHAHONNI]

I searched for one where is it,how do i access it????? thanks.














http://www.youtube.com/user/RATHAHONNI

[sbtamu]

I searched for one where is it,how do i access it????? thanks.

View tab, You will see enable grid and grid settings.

[RATHAHONNI]

Ah ha,found it,thanks.














http://www.youtube.com/user/RATHAHONNI

[PARKER]

I dont see the problem with the drawing and painting tools.

[Rudiger]

The drawing tools in AS are fine for construction type drawing, but not so great for freehand. The problem with trying to implement Flash's drawing features in AS is that Flash handles vector drawing very differently. It seems to me that Flash works by first creating a bitmap version of the line or fill then converting it to a vector, whereas AS creates the vectors directly. Even so, AS could still let do some of the same things as you can do in Flash by implementing boolean shape operations. This would be good anyway, as it would let you combine shapes without having to delete the existing shapes and creating a new one.

[Matsuemon]

I agree with the original post. I think the drawing tools in AS are it's weakness. When you try and draw freehand, especially with a tablet, the spacing and clumping of the points is sooooo frustrating. If they don't improve the tools directly, I wish they'd at least allow you to import vector drawings from other programs, then you could just add the points to them. Maybe you can already do that, but I don't think I've seen it. Sorry if I'm mistaken.

[Rudiger]

I agree with the original post. I think the drawing tools in AS are it's weakness. When you try and draw freehand, especially with a tablet, the spacing and clumping of the points is sooooo frustrating.

Not sure what you mean by this. The AS Freehand tool tries to be adaptive so it'll space the points out when you are doing large, sweeping curves, but clump the points together when you have more detail. Before AS7, you could tweak the pixel and angle tolerances to customize this behaviour, but this feature has inexplicably been removed from AS7. However, if you search around the forums, I'm sure you will be able to find a version of the freehand tool where these parameters have been put back.

If they don't improve the tools directly, I wish they'd at least allow you to import vector drawings from other programs, then you could just add the points to them. Maybe you can already do that, but I don't think I've seen it. Sorry if I'm mistaken.

Actually AS already lets you import Adobe Illustrator (up to version 8 ) files, but the effectiveness of this feature will depend a lot on the structure of your source geometry and what you intend to use it for. AS will never be able to do a 1:1 conversion as it calculates curves differently to Illustrator, but I'm sure if you searched on this forum you would find plenty of tips to get the best result. It's possible that the new way AS7 calculates curves will make the importing of ai files more accurate, but I haven't tried it.

[Matsuemon]

Hey Rudiger,
Yah about the freehand drawing/points thing, I see what you mean about the greater detail areas having more points put down, but it seems like a lot of times, even in the not so detailed areas( a slight curve, etc) it lays them down really bizarrely. I'm not the only one to notice it, because I've heard other people say it, too. But in truth I haven't done a whole lot of drawing yet (with my tablet) so maybe I'll get used to it. That's interesting what you said about the freehand tool, though.

Also, I don't have Adobe Illustrator, unfortunately, but I did try to import a vector drawing I had done with that open-source vector drawing program (and I'm totally drawing a blank on the name!) and it didn't work. Maybe I'll see if I can download a trial of Illustrator and test out the import/export thing with AS.

[Rudiger]

You could also try importing eps instead of ai. I'm not sure if the open-source vector drawing program you were talking about was Inkscape or not, but this program can export eps, but not ai (since 0.47 onwards, I believe). We're all hoping that AS will eventually support svg import/export one day.