Frame Management Improvements

inkBot

Sep 28, 2016 at 7:43 am

As much as I love how intuitive animating in Pyxel is, when you get to a certain point the animation system is somewhat cumbersome. Look at this nonsense here, for example:

This animation is pretty huge, and I've got several layers for planning out animation for certain parts. At a few points I've wanted to add frames in between frames to smooth out movement and make similar changes. Every time that means I have to move everything around piece by piece.

To get to the actual point: To address these issues with handling frames I would suggest adding an alternate version of the Tile Placer tool (maybe rename it to Frame Placer? Iunno). It'd essentially do the same thing, but affect all layers at once, making shuffling frames around a smoother process. Maybe have it only affect visible layers as well, in case you're storing animations in layers?

I don't know how feasible this would be to implement, but a solution to moving frames around is something I sorely want/need in Pyxel.

The animation in question, in its current stage, for the curious:

CandyFace

Sep 28, 2016 at 12:58 pm

Yeah this is one of the few things that I too still find tedious. I recall having mentioned something similar to Danik before and discussed what could be done about it.

The functionality of frame placer tool could be narrowed down to: Click on the tile you want to add a new frame in-between, then all the content inside tiles to the right would be moved to the neighbour tile. when a tile would exceed the width of the canvas, it would move the content of that tile below. Likewise if you wanted to remove the content of a tile again, you would hold down ctrl/cmd and the tiles would be moved backwards or the specific tile cleared.

@Danik what are your thoughts on this request?

Rad animation btw!

inkBot

Sep 28, 2016 at 1:13 pm

Thanks!

I like the idea of a function that simply moves frames around creating empty space, but I'd also want the copy+paste functionality of the tile placer tool, if possible. Specifically to make copies of recurring frames, like some of the frames in my animation there, notably the last part with the energy pillar.

Were I to pick between the two, your idea would probably be the one to go with.

Danik

Sep 28, 2016 at 9:32 pm

Yes, this is definitely a big issue when making long animations at the moment. A frame management tool is probably the best short term solution. Like you say, it would be similar to the tile placer: right click to pick a frame (stack of tile contents), left click to place it, and some way to support inserting and deleting frames.

Awesome animation by the way!

inkBot

Sep 29, 2016 at 12:01 am

Thanks! :)

Glad to hear that we might be looking at a solution to this down the road. Maybe the insert/delete frames function could be relegated to Ctrl+Click the way mapping tiles are for the tile placer?

Waxtor1

Sep 29, 2016 at 7:26 am

From what I understand is that your problem is its slow right?Im thinking of doing a fairly long animation as well and I really don't want it to affect me as well.

inkBot

Sep 29, 2016 at 7:33 am

The way I'm doing this animation is with several layers, animating different parts. That means that if I want/need to add a frame to smooth out the animation, I have to manually copy each frame, on every layer, and paste it further ahead, resulting in a lot of time spent going back and forth. That's not taking into account when you accidentally misplace a tile or similar either, which inevitably happens from time to time.

Waxtor1

Sep 29, 2016 at 7:36 am

would you be able to explain what issues you are experiencing because im quite lost at the moment, like are you experiencing lag while animating or bugs?

inkBot

Sep 29, 2016 at 7:44 am

If this was about bugs or performance issues, I'd have posted it in the Bug Reports category.