Masking a symbol instance masks all instances

[Devil_Inside]

I have 2 instances of 2 different symbols in my scene (4 objects total).

I applied 2 different masks to the 2 instances of the first symbol and it worked as I expected, each symbol instance was masked appropriately by its mask.

When I tried to mask the 2 instances of the second symbol, however, whenever I apply the mask to the first instance, the other instance immediately inherits the mask, so I'm unable to set a different mask for each instance.

 

I tried to test this in a new empty document, and I couldn't make it work the way the first symbol worked (separate masks for each instance).

This is quite confusing and counter-intuitive. I think the mask shouldn't be part of the symbol.

 

[MEB]

Hi Devil_Inside,

I'm not sure how you have applied two different masks to two instances of the same symbol (without turning sync off). Are you sure the sync wasn't off? I will try to reproduce this.

 

Since the mask is applied/nested directly to the symbol layer it affects all the instances of that symbol. This is also reflected in the Symbols panel although i agree in certain cases this may lead to additional work and having it "detached" from the symbol would eventually be more intuitive.

In any case, to achieve what you want, select each instance individually, turn sync off, add the mask to each one, and turn sync on again. All instances will have different masks and will keep the rest of its attributes in sync.

[Devil_Inside]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Yes, I figured now that "sync off" is the solution to my issue, however I hope that this behavior will be changed in the future.

 

It feels that all the operation that are done to the actual instance (and not it's internal objects) should be applied to that instance only. They shouldn't propagate to the symbol and other instances. Mask is one example. Layer effects is another example, then goes the layer opacity and even layer visibility. IMHO all these make no sense whatsoever.

[tritone]

Agreed.

 

I want to update content of certain elements, but maintain the view s on a per instance base.

Separate content, structure and style sort of speak. This way we can achieve consensus with client on the content first, without sacrificing flexibilty and time along the line regarding the final visual tweaks

[R C-R]

It feels that all the operation that are done to the actual instance (and not it's internal objects) should be applied to that instance only. They shouldn't propagate to the symbol and other instances. Mask is one example. Layer effects is another example, then goes the layer opacity and even layer visibility. IMHO all these make no sense whatsoever.

I am not sure how this could be implemented without compromising the reason I use symbols to begin with -- I do usually want everything to propagate through all instances; otherwise I would not use symbols or turn sync off to edit any property I did not want to be propagated to other instances.

 

I can see maybe adding a feature that exposes each property of an instance of a symbol in the Layers panel, with the ability to enable/disable them individually on a per instance basis, but that could get very confusing very fast.

 

How would you like to see what you suggest implemented that still retains the ability to propagate anything to all instances?