How do you maintain stroke width while animating using parent/child?

[carolyneo79236725]

I'm trying to make an animation where all shapes retain their stroke width, even with parent/child relationships.

I have a little guy whose head/hair/face/arms need to follow his body, and then other little people follow his body as well. I can remove the stroke from each general shape group, pick whip each shape's individual scale to match that of the body, and readjust every single anchor point to match it, but this seems so tedious. I've applied a constant stroke expression to the stroke width but every time I build the artwork and then start to pick whip it, strokes start to get larger or smaller to match.

Has anyone made something like this that can help me?

[Szalam]

You need to keep the layers from scaling in order to do what you are asking. That means the shapes themselves need to grow/shrink/etc., but not the layers containing them. This means a lot of work on building up expressions to make things follow without parenting any layers to each other.

Alternatively, you could also apply the stroke later using something like Effects>Generate>Vegas, setting it to use the alpha and then tweaking the settings to make it a solid stroke instead of many feathered lines.

[jerryw48492253]

The way to maintain the weight of the stoke on layers is to apply it after any scale. By far the easiest way to do this is to use the Layer > Layer Styles >Stroke item in the menu. This will apply a Photoshop-style adjustment to the layer after it has been manipulated.

[email.henriquearaujo@gmail.com]

Jerry I was looking for days on the internet for a solution and they all involved expressions that only solved part of the problem. That was the most simple and elegant solution I found. I completely forgot about Layer style. Genial Thank you very much.

[RyanScammell]

Works great. Perfect solve.  Been looking for something like that for a long time.

[Guest]

thank you a lot ...i search this problm with severel solution but not effectively and so much painto do it and not a solution for all cases.. you solution is the best quick and  precise thank you a lot.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi CarolyneO,

Did either of these suggestions help you achieve the results you wanted? Please let us know if you solved the issue or if you need more help.

Thanks,
Kevin

[carolyneo79236725 · Accepted solution]

Project was completed using different stroke expressions. It was tedious but not much other choice.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Project was completed using different stroke expressions. It was tedious but not much other choice.

Thanks for letting us know.

Thanks,
Kevin

[andyt121]

Do we still not have an option to maintain stroke width in AE when scaling up/down?!

[Jaqueline5E38]

It is indeed frustrating.