Can't find and delete by colour

[johnd84]

In old versions of Adobe Flash you could use find and replace (ctrl f), select the swatch of the find colour and click 'Find All' and it would select/highlight all the shapes with that colour swatch in your scene/document. You could then simply delete those selections with backspace. So if you had a purple spotted red rectangle you could use this to delete the purple spots and leave transparent holes.

But in Adobe animate, when you click the find button it clearly finds the shapes with that colour but it doesn't actually select them in your scene, or at least not in my case. I can still find and replace ie. change the a colour to another colour. But I have no way to find and delete.

Does anyone know why this no longer works as it used to? It's something I would find really useful.

[Preran · Accepted solution]

If this feature was present in Flash Pro CS6, you can install that on your computer using your CC desktop application. There have been many changes to Flash Pro over the years, and I am not sure if this feature was intentionally removed. Will check with the team. You can place a feature request using this link Feature Request/Bug Report Form

[spderweb]

Never addressed.

[kglad]

what wasn't addressed?

[spderweb]

The feature was never added into Flash. I just noticed that there's no way to mass delete a color.  You aren't even allowed to select the empty swatch as an option for the find and replace.   I work in an animation studio.  I have characters that require outlines be made when parts intersect.  To do this quickly, we duplicate the upper symbol (like the head), then onion skin select all frames, break to raw art and make it all one solid color.  Then add the outlines manually (since there's no way to add an outline to every selected automatically), then we have to go through and delete the solid color from every single frame, before finally being able to delete the parts of the outline we dont need.  It's extremely tedious and could be made way easier if we were had access to a Find and remove, or find and replace with empty swatch option.  An ink bottle to all selected would be nice too.  

[n. tilcheff]

If on the duplicated layer you only have shapes with one solid color and outlines, you can lock everything else, activate Edit Multiple Frames for the whole span, and then click on the blank/no-fill swatch in Tools.

This will remove all fills and you will end up with only lines.

ps. Also, I believe that you can easily automate the first part by having a JSFL which will go though all keyframes in the broken apart selection and convert them to Unions/Drawing Objects. If all of these are Drawing objects you can give them outlines with one click using Edit Multiple Frames, instead of having to go one by one with the ink bottle.

Actually, the whole process can be done, most likely, with one JSFL, and the only manual work will be removing the unneeded parts of the outlines with the faucet tool.

[spderweb]

lol. i'm an idiot.  I didnt think about using the swatch itself.  Thanks!  That saves some time for sure. 

I'm not sure what you mean by JSFL. If you mean a command script, i havent been able to find one that does it. I use edit multiple frames to break the symbols down to raw art.  Ink bottle wise, it'll only affect one frame at a time, even if you're seeing them all at once.  

[n. tilcheff]

Yes, that's what I meant.

The studio should get someone to write a JSFL command for you to automate the tedious process.

It should be able to work with a timeline selection and cycle through the frames:

- break apart 

- fill with a solid color

- convert to union/drawing object

Then you go Edit Multiple Frames, apply a stroke to the drawing objects with one click* and remove the fill with a second. Then erase the unnecessary strokes manually.

*When you have drawing objects, you can apply stroke to multiple selected frames as opposed to having raw shapes where you need to click each one with the ink bottle. You select multiple frames and just click on the stroke swatch to apply stroke.

[spderweb]

In the studio I work in, I was the one to provide all the commands.   They typically use Flash as digital hand drawn animation.  I've been doing symbol animation since 2005.  Most projects I've worked on don't require the outlines, so it's not overly common to use.  It's all good.  You just pointing out my stupidity with not using the no-fill, saves me a good chunk of time, so thank you for that.  

[n. tilcheff]

I understand, mate!

Glad I could be of some assistance.

Good luck with your projects!

[spderweb]

Oh, I should mention that the show I'm on uses textures, would only be able to add the outline.   When I break, I need to grab all the bitmaps and delete them (luckily they're big enough to select away from the artwork).