Is there a way to separate lines and fills?

Question

I was wondering if it is possible or if there is a way to flaten the animated rig and and have lines (black outlines) and color seperated on two layers?
The idea is to give the two layers a different treatment later in after effects.
Saw the powful Find and Repace Stroke Comand - so I thought there might be a "find an place stroke on a other layer" - Comand ?

Answer 1

Hi Erik,

The separation of lines and fills as such wouldn't be difficult even without any extensions: you just duplicate the layer, go Edit Multiple Frames and for one layer choose None as the fill color and for the other None for the line color.

The trouble, as I see it, is the merging and breaking apart of the rig elements down to simple shapes. Often in rigs there are masks and other invisible elements used inside the symbols.
So, if such separation is to be attempted, one has to design the rigs in a very specific way; only use lines for the outlines and then when the rig animation is complete do the following:

1. Convert all animation to frame-by-frame
2. Merge layers (I believe that you can do this in Animate)
3. Break apart as many times as needed to get to raw shape level (the rigs should be designed with this in mind)
4. Duplicate this layer
5. Lock the bottom layer, activate Edit Multiple Frames, Select All and from the swatch palette choose None for the Fill
6. Lock the top layer, activate Edit Multiple Frames, Select All and from the swatch palette choose None for the Line

With this you should end up with having the lines above the fills on separate layers.

It's only 6 steps, and only needs to be done once when all animation is complete, so it's not that much manual work.

It should be possible to make it into a command. We'll think about it.

Hope this gives you some idea how you can approach the problem!

Comments

ps.
One problem that I can see with this workflow, however, is that upon breaking apart of symbols you will lose the scaling information from the symbols, and the outlines will most likely become either too thick or too thin, depending on how the symbols were transformed.

To avoid this, you would have to convert the lines to fills prior to breaking apart, but then you can't separate them based on the line/fill distinction, but rather on some other property such as color (if only the outlines are black).
This may still be possible, but is a completely different issue altogether...

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Thank you so much for the detailed answer it was more the helpful for my work here.

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You are most welcome, Erik!