User Manual

The Stroke and Polyline strokes are
editable and last for the entire comp.
The Stroke Tool
One of the most flexible editable stroke types you’ll use for many tasks is the Stroke, because it
is fully animatable and editable. You can animate all elements of the Stroke, and you can use
the Write-on/Write-off parameters to control how the stroke appears onscreen. You can also
connect to a tracker from the Center point of the Stroke if you want to make the stroke follow
specific onscreen motion.
By default, the Stroke type does not expose control points for the shape of the path. You can
move and track the center and rotation of the Stroke, but the individual control points that
create the spline are hidden. To reveal the control points, you can open the Stroke Controls at
the bottom of the Inspector and click the Make Editable button.
The Stroke’s control points can be revealed
using the Make Editable button.
Although the Stroke type is the most flexible, that flexibility can come at a performance penalty
if you’re painting hundreds of strokes on a frame. For larger numbers of strokes that do not
need to be animated, it’s better to use Multistroke or Clone Multistroke, as these are more
processor efficient.
The Polyline Stroke Tool
The Polyline Stroke acts more like a drawing tool than a paintbrush. It includes the same
functionality as the Stroke tool, except that it is created not by dragging or “painting” like a
paintbrush, but by clicking to create a spline path, as you do with masks and motion paths.
Without even creating a stroke in the viewer, the Polyline Stroke can connect to existing
polylines like a mask or a motion path.
If a motion path is published, right-clicking on the Shape Animation label at the bottom of the
Polyline Stroke’s Stroke Controls allows you to use the Connect To menu to assume the shape
of a motion path or mask. You can also use this method if you import SVG graphics and want to
“paint-on” the outlines.
Chapter – 72 Paint 1461