Head turns and flattening in AI

[Freshman@56]

In the  Character Animator Tips & Tricks (January 2017) at 10:38 Dave begins to mention how to smooth the head turn by having two flattened interim layers.

First question is how do you flatten layers in AI...or, what is the equivalent in AI?  It's a very quick transition from center to right profile ... yet it seems one has to pick a face expression (like neutral) instead of what's being said or the expression at hand. I'm imagining a flattened layer is a still compressed image. 

So what's the best practice for this.

Thank you.

Evan

[angie_taylor · Accepted solution]

Hi there,

In Illustrator you can duplicate the Head elements. Move them to their new positions etc. Then select all of the elements and group them (Command G). This has a similar affect to flattening the layers. All the elements will be placed on one layer. Rename this and delete any leftover layers.

I hope this helps 🙂

Angie Taylor | Creative Cabin UK

[Freshman@56]

Hi theangietaylor.  I followed your first direction and duplicated the head elements so I could make right and left profiles as well as right and left quarter profiles.  But... Command G doesn't work as you described it in AI. It does nothing to join or flatten layers. Photoshop and Illustrator have their differences. I appreciate the suggestion.

I've left the hope to have smoothed head turn transitions to a later time... or if someone can speak to this technicality sooner than later.

Thanks.

[oksamurai]

So yeah, Angie is right - we do some auto-flattening with AI files in CH. You'll notice in AI you might have groups that are filled with <Path>, <Shape>, etc - but those don't show up in CH. Otherwise your puppet panel would stretch on for a mile. So when we see those default names, we essentially flatten them into one. But if you rename any of those, they will show up as individual layers.

So basically we try to be smart about this and in general, you don't have to "flatten" anything in AI.

[Freshman@56]

I think the answer is that AI is flattened in transit to CH. And that Angie's suggestion of "deleting any leftover layers" in AI sets up the flattening in a clean determined way.

Thank you both.