Shape Behaviors

This behavior is designed to be applied to a paint stroke created using a stylus and graphics tablet. After you create a stroke, this behavior allows you to affect the width, opacity, spacing, angle, or jitter of the paint stroke based on the pressure of your stylus on the tablet when the stroke was created.

Note: These parameters are identical to the Pen Pressure parameters in the Advanced pane of the inspector. You can choose to use the Advanced pane parameters or this shape behavior to apply the pressure data to the paint stroke. You can use a combination of Pen Pressure parameters in the Advanced pane and Apply Pen Pressure shape behaviors to affect more than one parameter (such as Opacity, Width, or Jitter) of the stroke using the same pressure data.

When using a stylus or mouse to create paint strokes, this behavior allows you to affect the width, opacity, spacing, angle, or jitter of the paint stroke based on the speed of your pen strokes.

Note: A paint stroke created by using a mouse can be affected by the Apply Pen Speed behavior.

The parameters in the HUD are identical to the parameters in the Inspector.

Note: In the Paint Stroke Tool HUD, you can select how the speed of the stylus affects the stroke before the stroke is created. Applying the Pen Speed behavior allows you to affect more than one parameter (such as Opacity, Width, or Jitter) of the stroke using the same pressure data. The Pen Speed parameter also appears in the Advanced pane of the Shape Inspector.

When you use a stylus to create paint strokes using the paint stroke tool, this behavior allows you to affect the width, opacity, spacing, angle, or jitter of the paint stroke based on the tilt of the pen while creating strokes.

Note: You can use a combination of Apply Pen Tilt shape behaviors to affect more than one parameter (such as Opacity, Width, or Jitter) of the stroke using the same tilt data.

The Oscillate Shape behavior animates a shape by cycling its control points between two values. You can customize how wide apart the high and low values are, as well as the number of oscillations per minute. This behavior is useful for creating fluid shape movements (think shape yoga) that would be time-consuming to keyframe.

When the Oscillate Shape behavior is applied to a shape, all control points of the shape are affected by default. When the behavior is selected in the Layers list, affected control points are highlighted in white on the blue shape behavior spline. To disable control points, click the control points. A disabled point appears blue.

The Randomize Shape behavior allows you to animate the control points of a shape by applying a random offset to each point of the shape. This behavior is useful for creating rapid and varied effects on a shape.

When the Randomize Shape behavior is applied to a shape, all control points of the shape are affected by default. When the behavior is selected in the Layers list, affected control points appear blue with white dots in the center of the point on the blue shape behavior spline. To disable control points, click the control points. A disabled point is a darker blue with a dark dot in the center of the point.

The Sequence Paint behavior allows you to animate the individual dabs of a paint stroke in sequence over time. This is the only way to animate the dabs individually—keyframing the stroke parameters or applying other behaviors affects all dabs in the stroke uniformly.

The Sequence Paint behavior is very similar to the Sequence Text and Sequence Replicator behaviors, which allow you to animate the Rotation, Color, Opacity, Scale, and Position parameters in sequence through the characters of a text layer or the elements of a replicator pattern. The Sequence Paint behavior adds Width to that list of parameters, allowing you to create sequenced animation through the dabs of a paint stroke.

For an example of using a sequence behavior, see Using the Sequence Replicator Behavior.

This behavior works similarly to the Randomize behavior, but with a slower effect (think of a shape that’s had one too many espressos before dance class).

When the Wriggle Shape behavior is applied to a shape, all control points of the shape are affected by default. When the behavior is selected in the Layers list, affected control points are highlighted in white on the blue shape behavior spline. To disable control points, click the control points. A disabled point appears blue.

The Write On behavior provides a quick way to draw a paint stroke or outline on the Canvas over time. This allows you to create a handwritten text effect, create the ever-popular old serial travel map effect, create a hand-sketched alpha mask for a transition or reveal, create an animated graph for a business presentation, produce graphics to prevent monitor burn-ins, and so on. The behavior can be applied to a paint stroke created with the Paint Stroke tool or added to an existing shape. You can have the shape draw, erase, draw and erase, draw in reverse, and so on, over time.

When Write On is applied to a filled shape with an outline, only the outline of the shape is drawn.

Note: You can manually animate the First Point Offset and Last Point Offset parameters in the Style pane of the Shape Inspector to achieve the same effect as the Write On behavior.