How to merge layers in Animate CC (1 Viewer)

[SyntaxTerror]

Hello

I am into breasts for the moment, unfortunately, it is the ones of the SDT girl...

As shape tweens quickly become very shitty as the shapes become complex, I separated them on different layers.
But then, how can I merge the 151 frames together without having to do "Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Shift+V, go to next frame" 151 times?

I have a found a trick in the comments of YouTube:

1. Copy the layers to merge in a new FLA
2. Save it and publish it
3. Create a new layer
4. Import the SWF to stage (File > Import > Import to stage)
5. Et voilà madame !

The only issue is that every keyframe is changed into a symbol, but then, select all keyframes (with the little corresponding button pushed and all the frames selected in the timeline) and break them apart (Modify > Break Apart).

The thing is it will change every shape tween in frame-to-frame animation, but concerning the breasts shape tweens, it is only 6 different frames, so this trick is usefull only for complex shapes.

Maybe there is another technique, but after a quite extensive search over the web, I couldn't find anything better.

I hope it may help some modders, even if we are few to make breast adaptable costumes!
I'll soon create a little tutorial in the dedicated section with this or with a better technique is someone here have one.

 

[Faceless]

I don't understand what you're even trying to do. Why would you ever want to merge layers?

 

[SyntaxTerror]

Why would you ever want to merge layers?

For example to paste the line over the fill to get the fill go to the edge of the line:

It may be easy for a single set of frames, but when I have 151 sets it gets useful.

Also, it seems preferable to use the less layers as possible to get a better FPS rate as stuntcock have been doing when he made a Loader mod out out my pair of torn stockings:

The only substantive change was merging each pair of Shading and Outline elements into one shape -- a tiny optimization for the sake of runtime performance.

 

[stuntcock]

I don't understand what you're even trying to do. Why would you ever want to merge layers?

Also, it seems preferable to use the less layers as possible to get a better FPS rate as stuntcock have been doing when he made a Loader mod out out my pair of torn stockings:

One caveat: I don't recommend actually replacing the original stuff. If I have two layers ("Fill"+"Outline" or "Fill"+"Shading" or whatever) then I wouldn't merge them into one. Instead I'd convert both of them into guide layers, create a third layer ("Merged") and then paste the vectors onto the new layer.

But that's a personal thing. I've sadly abandoned several hair-modding projects after running into performance decay, so I'm very nervous about optimization. But hairstyles are inherently wasteful; they're often going to push 15 or more independent sprites onto the stage. An unoptimized hairstyle can multiply that number (to 45, 60, etc) which will degrade the game experience. It can easily reach the point where the hairstyle mod becomes barely usable on its own, and totally unusable in conjunction with clothing, semen strands, etc.

For a normal modding project, you can probably just ignore this stuff. A costume might put 4-5 layers on the breast. Chopping that number down to 3 is an admirable achievement ... but not if it forces you to spend a lot of time performing repetitive tasks in Flash (which cripples your output and frustrates your creative impulses) or requires you to destructively merge/simplify your work (so that future revisions or updates become infeasible).

I merged the layers in your stockings file because there was no timeline stuff involved. It required only a few seconds of work, had no foreseeable long-term adverse effects, and yielded a tiny improvement in runtime performance.

You can apply both approaches in a single project: use multiple layers for the breast stuff (for ease of tweening and ease of revision) but then merge the sprites on the Torso, Chest, Arms, etc (for the sake of performance).

For example to paste the line over the fill to get the fill go to the edge of the line:

I probably wouldn't bother merging the shapes. Let's ignore the square example; for the actual use-case (breast shapes) it's easier to just use two layers.

​

Consider the outline "edge" of the breast. It's a complicated shape which has a differing number of vertices depending on the size of the breast. At some breast sizes it acquires sharp corners; at others it's very smooth. Animating this thing (via tweens and Shape Hints) requires a lot of work. A minor change in the shape (e.g. correcting the outline thickness at a particular keyframe) can suddenly cause the tween to get confused, and the outline will contort itself into self-crossing knots.

You can workaround that difficulty by defining 151 keyframes, but it's a huge effort. And doing so means that you can't really edit your work afterwards; it's "set in stone" because any change would need to be painfully copy-pasted onto each of those keyframes.

Instead, take the lazy approach: don't use any lines. Don't merge things. Just draw two overlapping fills (on separate layers) like @Konashion did (he added a few more layers for nipples and glare, but let's ignore those for now). I can provide a more detailed explanation and/or diagrams if you need them, but the overlapping fills themselves can easily be found in Faceless' template (or by decompiling the game).

 

[SyntaxTerror]

If I have two layers ("Fill"+"Outline" or "Fill"+"Shading" or whatever) then I wouldn't merge them into one. Instead I'd convert both of them into guide layers, create a third layer ("Merged") and then paste the vectors onto the new layer.

I do that also, or keep another version of the FLA with the basic layers so it doesn't get too messy.

To avoid dealing with breasts shape tweens, I am currently trying a new method: as I want nipples to point through the fabric, I merged the Breast Reference layer and a Nipples layer I found in a decompiled SDT.swf, changed their colour to black, copied it, expanded the fill of 4px (Modify > Shape > Expand Fill, I love this tool), pasted in place the thing and changed its colour to pink (for example).
I get this:

(note that the pink part is covering exactly the breast)
Then I have some little work to do to remove the central part (I do this with a macro doing "click, delete, next frame" x 151, it takes 2 min) and to arrange the lines on the left (I do some shape tweens with lines, then erase the unwanted part with the same macro.

This can seem a lot of work, but I can reuse this in many mods, and in fact it is less hassle than having to deal with crazy shape tweens and shape hints.
Anyway, I have lots of free time, and I think that it is better to learn to do the things right from the beggining (even if I do not often do this).

 

[Faceless]

Quite honestly, this is a suboptimal approach. You're merging layers to try to improve performance, but that creates more complex shapes that are terrible for tweening, which is why you're forced to use 151 separate frames instead of tweening 6 keyframes. That's honestly a ridiculous amount of work for very little gain, especially since rendering complex shapes with more vertices will eat into any potential savings from rendering fewer sprites. If you really want the nipples to poke through, just add a couple of tween layers with nipple sprite objects on them. One for the fill sprite, and one for the outline sprite.

 

[SyntaxTerror]

If you really want the nipples to poke through, just add a couple of tween layers with nipple sprite objects on them. One for the fill sprite, and one for the outline sprite.

Your "nipple top test" looks really nice.
I am not capable to do the same for the moment, that is why I am asking many questions on this forum, to try to learn the best techniques.
I am still quite a big noob in Animate CC, especially when it comes to tweens: I never really used a classic tween before and do not exactly now what are its uses.

By the way, how do you manage to make the line layer? In fact, how do you modify the "fill" shape to get this "line" shape a bit bigger on the right?

 

[Faceless]

The nipple template included with the vanilla template file consists of two adjacent shapes: a light gray shape corresponding to the fill, and a dark gray shape corresponding to the outline. For the outline sprite, I made the light gray shape the same color as the dark gray shape, then expanded the whole thing by 2px. If you're really worried about performance, you can then select the expanded shape and optimize it via Modify->Shape->Optimize, but this was just a proof of concept, so I didn't bother.

Classic tweens are just that: for situations where all you're doing is the "classic" transformations—rotate, stretch, skew, translate.

 

[SyntaxTerror]

For the outline sprite, I made the light gray shape the same color as the dark gray shape, then expanded the whole thing by 2px.

Okay, I didn't thought of using the template references to do this. But actually, I need to use the Breast Reference and not the Top Reference, because my mod has a cleverage and must be close to the breasts.

Spoiler: The mod I want to make

The problem is the Breast Reference doesn't have this dark grey outline:

The Breast Reference is the dark grey shape in the middle.

optimize it via Modify->Shape->Optimize

Usually, Animate CC is pretty bad at optimizing vector tracings. Handling bezier curves seems to be a flaw of Animate CC, but konashion's shapes are usually well traced, with the minimum achor points.

Thank you for your help, I will try to apply this to my next creations.

 

[Faceless]

Use the Breast Fill Reference and Line Reference layers from the file I attached. It's why I included them.