Paul,
I'm enjoying your course and seem to be plodding along with some success but I've encountered an issue with setting up the dotted lines on the inner-two rectangles. On my first attempt, I noticed that the two inner rectangles changed to gray but yours did not. On my second attempt, I encountered the exact same thing but also noticed that the outer rectangle seemed to have inherited a dotted pattern (see image). I'm working in V 3.3.1 and noticed that the interface was a bit different but I didn't recognize anything to be notably different. Am I missing a step or two?
I assume that the update has nothing to do with this but in the interest of covering all the bases,....
Thanks!
F.
Hi Forrest! I don't mind revisiting these issues here at all.
The interface is the same in the latest version, so there should be no issues there.
From 18:14 onwards, I go through the process of creating a separate layer called "dotted lines" and moving just the two interior strokes to that layer, leaving the outer stroke on the original "lines" layer. When I apply the Dot Dash modifier, I make sure that under "influence" I select "dotted lines" from the Layer drop-down. This will isolate the modifier to only strokes on the "dotted line" layer.
Further, it's only when you have enough subdevisions on your strokes that it looks correct.
Can you elaborate on the "changed to grey" point? As in they were greyed out, like they appeared onion skinned? Or they changed to a different color all together?
Paul,
Thanks for such a quick response! Looking back at my question, I think I was a bit vague in my explanation. I followed the course all the way up to subdividing in edit mode and then again when I didn't get the desired outcome, and when I selected the two inner panels and assigned them to the dotted line layer and applied the modifier, the lines became "grayed". I assumed that (because you had explained about nothing showing until the subdivisions needed to increase) I would see dots after about 5 levels of subdivision but both times I tried, the same thing happened.
I reloaded the template and went all the way back to the beginning on the second try. All went well until I began the dotted line layer part of the process. Hard to say exactly where, but I looked over all the details you've illustrated above before I made my query. I feel almost certain I'm missing some small detail but I did follow very closely and did adjust appropriately with the layer assignment as well as the influence.
I would reiterate that the "gray" lines didn't appear until after I applied the modifier. I did consider the possibility that I may have inadvertently activated something in the dope sheet but visually, I could see no difference between our screens.
Also (on further inspection), I believe the dotted line I saw on the outer panel was just the marquee and when I increased the opacity in onion skinning to 1.000, the lines turned green (see above).
Thanks so much for your patience and I very much appreciate this course! I look forward to completing it successfully!! :)
I see something from your screen-grab which is hinting at key-frames being the problem. There are 2 on the Dotted Lines layer (check the Dopesheet). Try deleting the key-frame at frame 0 on the Dotted Lines layer; move the key-frame for Lines up to Frame 1 (unlock the layer, select the key-frame, hit G-Key to move and either manually move it, or hit X then 1). Make sure auto keying is disabled (see the activated blue record button?) This is just some trouble-shooting. The greying is because it added a new key-frame to the Dotted Lines Layer and you're observing the onion skinning.
Paul,
Thanks so much for the suggestions! It wasn't the keying that caused the issue but that was the indicator that lead to the root issue. At some point, I didn't recognize that you had gone back into object mode before moving forward with the modifiers. Once I picked up on that, the rest fell right into place!
Item of note: I noticed that once the dots were established and colored blue, when in Material Preview, the onion skinning still shows up between dashes but in Rendered mode, it doesn't. If you mentioned that previously, I likely missed that too! :)
One more question,
When I move on to the Text portion of the tutorial, I don't see the "hold-out" Material in my drop down menu. I downloaded the source materials but was not sure if this was inherent to the Illustration startup file or if I would need to populate myself. Any ideas?
Thanks!