Suggestion: More traditional animator tools

condepablo

Apr 18, 2015 at 11:31 pm

Hi, im a traditional animator, and i wrote down some tools that i think they will be really nice to have:

- Onion skin: the ability to see more than one frame (backward and forward)

- Timeline frame edit: some tool that allows move the frames (in the timeline). i know there is the "tile placer tool" and the "offset tool".but i think there is need a more specific tool to move frames in the timeline.

- 2 add new frame button: add one frame before the current frame - add one frame after the current frame (moving the rest of the frames, not replacing anything!)

- Draw tool: draw and paint behind the existing lines.

- Paint: close gap

- Selection tool: add laso

- Once you make zoom (in the frame edit), when you go to other frame, the screen moves! this is really annoying!

By the way, i think this soft is the best for pixel animation! that's why i suggest this upgrades, to be even more great!

My regards from Argentina

Danik

Apr 19, 2015 at 3:31 pm

Hi Condepablo,

Thanks, it's nice to know what is important to someone with a background in traditional animation!

As you have found the animation tools are pretty limited. I haven't spent much work on it apart from the basics so there are a lot of things that could be done to improve the workflow. I have limited time to work on it and right now I'm working on drawing and tile tools, but I will move on to improving animation after that.

Onion skinning: I didn't think more than one frame for onion skinning would be useful. How many do you think would be appropriate? Do you often switch between how many you use, or could this be a setting in the options dialog?
Timeline: A timeline might be good, but if it's possible to get the same functionality in a nice way using only the canvas I would like to avoid adding more UI elements. If it's very important I might reconsider.
Add frame: I have thought about a frame organizing tool that you can use to insert, remove frames, move and swap frames. It should also make it possible to copy a frame including all layers. There could also be buttons and hotkeys for easy access to some of these operation.
Draw tool: There is a trick you can use to draw "behind" the existing lines. You can use the Color replacer tool, and set the background color to transparent black (it has to be 0 for all inputs, R,G,B and A).
Paint: With "close gap", do you mean drawing a line between the line start and end points when the stroke is finished?
Selection tool: Yes, this would be nice.
Zoom issue: This has been fixed in the coming release.

Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad you found the program useful so far!

condepablo

Apr 22, 2015 at 6:22 pm

Hi Danik! thank for read me!!!

Onion Skinning: the most use is one after and one forward. but many times you need to see more than one (especially if you make the breakdowns of the keyframes. i mean, if you have in the frame 1 the first pose, and the next is in the frame 5, and i want to draw the frame 3, i need to see 2 draws behind and forward)

i switch often, maybe a popup menu in the onion skin button to select the amount (attached a picture: https://mega.co.nz/#!7spVSbJL!tyjzn5O7i7kP3fXTPuuobVF0z7qUlzUtzr37Vf5f_7U).

Timeline: as you can see in the time lapse that i uploaded in another post, i use the canvas as a timeline, and works really good.

is more timeline tools than a timeline itself what i think it's more needed.

Add Frame: great features what you telling me about!

Draw Tool: nice trick! i will use it. but if the "behind" option could be add it, it will be more powerful.

Paint: "close gap" i mean that if i want to paint a circle for example, and the circle is not completely close (has a gap)the paint bucket will paint everything, with a "close gap" the paint will not go out of the circle. many programs has a "close gap amount" to determine the strong of the close gap.(attached a picture: https://mega.co.nz/#!zsQUkY6Z!Tn_sEUd98d85ecK_uUHq6l8aJK-Ze5AnQ4ONYj1srF0)

Selection Tool: great!

Zoom Issue: thank you!!!

Sorry for take me so long to answer, but im from Argentina, and i dont handle the english very well, so took me some time!

If you want to know or you have any question about traditional animation, please let me know, im glad to help you!

Danik

Apr 24, 2015 at 8:45 am

Thanks for the response Condepablo! I will refer back to this thread when I get back to working on the animation tools, and maybe I'll have more questions then. :)