Ever hate just guessing you got the scale on something right and start animating only to find something isn't right? Yeah, me too which is why I put this together. While I was animating Project Landfall Episode 4 I found the scale of some characters in the same shot was off, I decided enough is enough with estimation, and now it's time we fix that, for everyone. All the rulers are scaled nearly perfectly with each other. They all are at the default scale of 1.00 so in animations, you can change that as needed. Depending on the level of accuracy you need, there is rulers for everyone to use. If you ask me, I have some tips on how you should use these.

1: Add the rulers first through a movieclip. This way you can remove the unnecessary node usage of them when needed in just a few taps. Like "delete movieclip from project library."

2: Scale everything on the first frame before you animate, this is what I made this for. Your scale can vary based on depth but this should provide a "base scale" for the figures on screen to follow.

3: Don't bother with conversions. SNs scale system is already limited as it is and you can't quite edit the 3rd decimal place of scale so you will pretty well always be off. Imperial and Metric units are both already calculated to be accurate of each others size so long as you don't change ones stickfigure scale and not the other.

4: Use the notches to count units. Like for the foot ruler, 12 inches are what the 12 notches are. It is all said in the names of the rulers. Use what you need.

5: Need a few more figures added but the ruler is blocking you from adding more? Copy the frame of the movieclip containing the ruler, create new movieclip, paste that frame, and save movieclip as "cache." This movieclip will hold the information of the ruler and in fact, any other single frame stuff of yours in that frame without pulling away from your node limit. Then when you need this stuff again, paste those frames all back into the movieclips that are in the project and you have broken the node without any sacrifices.


#SmartStretch #ruler #measure #measurement #tool