Flipped shape & now geometry is all screwed

Feb 10, 2021

Hi folks. Like many here, I'm frustrated by the lack of bespoke tweaking we can perform on shapes within Storyline360. Particularly when it comes to those really weird shapes with rounded or (gasp) snipped corners. The ability to select a specific corner and round, snip, bevel or whatever would be a very welcome feature.

Instead, I have had to rely on creating my shape and either rotating it or reflecting it in order to get the 'exotic' effect on my shapes corner. This has been working for years (though I do remember glitches occasionally) and was fine. Until recently.

Now, for whatever reason, when I invert my shape, and move it, or create a new state, or some other arcane manoeuvre, the geometry is all out of whack. It seems to remember where the top XY axis was BEFORE the shape was modified and I now have to play a guessing game as to where it ends up on the screen.

But, particularly annoying is that after managing to nail the elements to where I want them to be, if I decide to make the shape disabled until some later interaction is triggered, the shape breaks apart when previewed or uploaded online.

Please see attached because I know I am not explaining myself properly.

Any help or guidance or workaround or hack would be greatly appreciated.

As it should beHow it is

6 Replies
Leslie McKerchie

Hi Diarmaid,

Thanks for reaching out sharing what you are experiencing in your project.

I've not witnessed this behavior, but since you mentioned that it was working as expected before, it sounds like something we need to take a look at.

With your permission, I'd like you to share your project file with our support engineers to investigate what's happening. You can share it privately by uploading it here. It will be deleted when troubleshooting is complete.

Diarmaid Collins

Thanks, Leslie. My client is anxious that this gets resolved ASAP but I am at my wit's end trying to figure out what has gone wrong.

I have submitted the file to the support engineers as requested but I have also taken time out to just create a simple version to show it's an ongoing issue which I am attaching here.

How it looks on the slide:

As it should be

 

How it looks in Preview:

How it is

Diarmaid Collins

And just to note, if I try to click on the greyed-out 'disabled' state, whilst working on the slide, the shape does not select. 

However, if I click the space just above it (ie, the negative space that's uh... visible... in the second screengrab, it will be recognised as being selected within the timeline.

So, while it looks as if the shape is at XY point on the slide, its actual coordinates are XY minus the height of the shape.

Maria Costa-Stienstra

Hi, Diarmaid!

Thank you for following up, and for starting a support case. I see you are working with my teammate Jose, and working together you identified a bug where extra space is added to a disabled shape when a flipped shape is used. For additional information, this is how we identify and tackle bugs

I am glad you and Jose were also able to find a workaround:

  • Save the flipped shape as an image.
  • Re-import back into Storyline 360

We'll be sure to update this discussion when we get more information!