Tiles / Layers

Delah

Aug 28, 2014 at 10:34 am

I have a layer with temparary helping lines. Above this layer is the layer I draw in. If I press the draw layer there is a "0" in the top-left corner of my tile. But if I press the temparary layer again the "0" becomes a dot again. Can a tile only have one layer? Am I missing something? Or is it a bug?

Danik

Sep 3, 2014 at 6:24 pm

Yes, tiles only have one layer (tiles are in a layer). This is intended to make it possible to have a background layer with background tiles, for example.
However you can draw over a tile on a different layer, and then apply the changes to the tile by pressing the button "Apply to below" in the layers panel.

Delah

Sep 14, 2014 at 5:37 pm

Ooooh cool. Thanks.

Grofit

Nov 13, 2014 at 12:20 pm

I am still a bit puzzled by this in the context of animations, so I first of all went through and had a body layer and did all the animations, now that I have some placeholder animations I want to be able to create a new layer and put some shading in there for example, or armour, or a weapon.

Now in my mind the "Body" layer should contain the body and nothing else, and the "Weapon" layer for example should only contain the weapon, however this is not the outcome, it basically just treats all layers the same, so I basically end up painting over stuff and do not get the benefit that layer bring (isolating certain details).

So is there a way for me to be able to have animations but have the layers separate? as its a major pain for me if when animating I can only really have 1 layer as then I cannot erase on individual layers nor can I tweak layers individually making it more frustrating.

Danik

Nov 16, 2014 at 10:41 am

I'm not sure I understand you correctly, but you should definitely be able to have different layers in the animation, one for the body one for the weapon etc. At the moment you have to move the tile in each layer separately when moving a frame though, which is a pain. Maybe you figured it out my now (sorry for the late reply), otherwise could you explain a bit more?

Grofit

Nov 16, 2014 at 3:07 pm

Hey no worries, so what is the workflow you expect for someone who wants layers + animations (via tiles)?

Currently my workflow is:

- Create main canvas

- Create all tiles for the animation frames

- Set all the tiles onto the canvas

- Create animations based upon tiles (lets say 4 per row)

- Paint onto the canvas in the relevant places (in each tile)

- Add new layer then paint over the existing canvas

However this doesn't work as if I add a new layer all tiles seem to get lost (I am not sure if that is just for that layer though, not revisited the app since). Could you describe how you see the correct workflow?

Danik

Nov 17, 2014 at 4:34 pm

Aha, I think I see what you mean. The tileset tiles are separate from the animation frames that use the flattened graphics of "tiles" in the canvas, so you don't need to make tileset tiles in order to make animations. You can however use tileset tiles to your advantage also with animation.

Say for example you have a base character animation. You can then make the frames into tileset tiles, and place them as multiple identical rows for animations, and add clothes or gear on a separate layer. That way the base character is syncronized for the animations, so it's easy to make variations.

Grofit

Nov 21, 2014 at 9:57 am

Ah so I dont need to use tilesets at all then? if I can just paint onto the canvas in layers directly and animate off that then it makes my life much easier.

Danik

Nov 21, 2014 at 1:17 pm

Yup, exactly. :)