Transparency issues with overlapping shapes in symbols

[Puppetbrain]

I have a graphic/movieclip that I want to fade into an animation. But there are transparency issues on overlapping shapes. I cannot use a bitmap for this as I want to animate the objects in the movieclip and have it transition into another scene. 
This does not happen in Illustrator where you have a group of shapes and set the opcaity to 50% the whole group is set to 50%. without any overlapping issues.  Is there another workaround for this?

[n. tilcheff · Accepted solution]

Make sure you use frame effects and not instance effects; give your frame a null filter and alpha and you will get the desired result.

[Puppetbrain]

Thanks man! Solved the problem. I had quite some scenes where this was happening. 

[kglad]

@n. tilcheff 

that rabbit in the object-effect layer is a symbol (eg, movieclip) and you apply an alpha to the movieclip and see that?

[n. tilcheff]

@kglad 

Yes, both are instances of the same Graphic Symbol, which is a container of a character rig, containing symbol instances each one on its own layer.

The one on the left has 50% alpha applied to the instance; the one on the right has 'advanced layers' frame effect and filter.

Explanation:

In the pre so called 'advanced' layers era one could use the Layer Blending Mode on a Movie Clip and apply 'object' alpha to get this result.

Since the introduction of the so called 'advanced' layers, Layer Blending Mode does not work any more. (This is a bug which has been reported multiple times over the years and ignored, like many others.)

A workaround is to use a null frame filter. Filters render as bitmaps, therefore serve a similar purpose as the Layer Blending Mode, by non-destructively turning the container into a bitmap.

[kglad]

rigging is a key part of the problem?

[n. tilcheff]

No.

[kglad]

i've never encountered this problem.  i create a movieclip that consists of a variety of overlapping shapes, add that movieclip to a parent timeline and assign an alpha to the movieclip instance.  everything looks as expected.