Alpha 3 up for grabs

NielsUncategorized56 Comments

These minutes, all alpha testers are getting the Animation Paper Alpha 3 download! Refresh your inbox!

It's mainly about audio in this update.

You are now able to import a wav or mp3 file, display it as a waveform alongside your drawings in the X-sheet - and scrub or play your animation with the audio in perfect sync. This means you can time your animation to dialogue, music or any other sound track.

Additionally, we added support for more hardware and graphics - and fixed a few bugs. Animation Paper is now compatible with laptops with touch screens and pens, like the Surface Pro.

Happy Animating! Enjoy! 🙂

If you haven't signed up as an alpha tester yet, it is not too late! Sign up HERE and get this release for free right away.

56 Comments on “Alpha 3 up for grabs”

  1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

    Touch-screen laptop people! If you don’t get pressure sensitivity at first – do this: Find the file “qt.conf” (probably here C:\Program Files\Animation Paper\qt.conf). Delete it or rename it (to save it). Then launch Animation Paper again.

    This will force Animation Paper to use Windows Ink. Later we will do a more elegant check box option. 😉

    Cheers,
    Niels

  2. Niels Krogh Mortensen

    It seems some people on Mac are experiencing a crash (AP exits immediately) when importing a certain kind of wav file. We are on the case and will do a quick update asap. I’ll let you know about it here… Thanks to those who made me aware of it! You’re awesome!

  4. Sean Ebasan

    Great! I use a Macbook and the audio is working fine, but I guess this doesn’t say the same for every Mac users, still though thank you.
    Question: can you customise the input for the shortcut keys or is the given shortcut keys permanent?

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      Very good to know Sean. Thanks.

      Keyboard shortcuts will be customisable – we just haven’t gotten to that part yet. 🙂 We will implement this in one of the following alpha releases. But for now, you better get used to these ones. I think the shortcut layout works very well! 😉 Hehe 😀

      Best,
      Niels

  5. Roger Scott

    Hi Niels,

    I think I’m missing something. How does the audio scrubbing work? I’ve tried it on an iMac and on a MacBook Pro and can’t figure it out. The sound file plays when I hit the space bar, but doesn’t seem to scrub the audio when I use the right and left arrow keys.

    Great work, really lover the drawing interface.
    All the best
    Roger

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      Hi Roger,

      Thanks 🙂 Using the arrow keys to just flip one frame at a time will not play any audio. That’s on purpose. To scrub you drag the playhead back and forth and this will scrub both the video and the audio.

      Cheers,
      Niels

  6. Nícolas B. Gazin

    I want to report something, one time I open the program and something happened, when I draw something I can only see what I am drawing after I draw, but when i restart the program it became normal again, is this a bug or I accidentaly actived an option for that.

    PS: I’m Latin so my english can be bad, I’m sorry for that.

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      Hi Guillermo, that’s because you actually can’t move it right now. We were supposed to do a slide feature, so you could slide your track up/down, but that got bumped to alpha 4 unfortunately. So it’s not you who can’t find it – it is us still needing to do some work. 🙂

      As a workaround, you could insert some silent space at the beginning of your audio file using a sound editor. Sorry about that.

  9. Israel Garcia

    Hi Niels!!
    The new alpha 3 is awesome !!!
    I have been drawing and animating some basics forms and I want to make a suggestion
    that It could be great add a line drawing tool (with a keyboard shortcut included) so users could animate some geometrics forms.
    I think, Animation paper, is one of the best 2D animation tool that I know

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      Hi Kiba, sorry for answering in english. You are asking about export as mp4.

      In the current version you can export as a sequence of png files, which can be converted to mp4 elsewhere. MP4 export will come within the alpha period. So pretty soon.

      Right now we are working on coloring, which is a big area with lots of functionality. So coloring will probably be spread over alpha 4 and 5 (at least). And THEN we get to mp4 exporting. I hope you understand, we can not do everything at once. 😉 Thanks for your patience!

      Best,
      Niels

      1. kiba

        thanks for answering, i was a bit lost and sorry if i sounded too impatient 🙁 i hope you’re very well and thanks again for explaining, greetings from chile

        1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

          You are most welcome Kiba! You didn’t sound impatient at all. I understand and appreciate that people need patience waiting for us to get Animation Paper done. Even though, as an animator, I am indeed my self a patient man, I do look forward to being able to release the final product. 🙂 The process of developing is challenging and exciting, but I must say, being able to make it available to the world wide animation community is next level exciting 😉

          Anyway… 🙂 Greetings from Denmark. I hope you are well!

  13. Timothy Morgan

    Hello Neils! Im a brand spanking new animator and i switched to Animation Paper from Opentoonz because yours was alot more intuitive. However, I cant seem to export any animations, and a-lot of the menu options in the toolbar are grey, and unusable. Why is that? Thank you for your help.

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      You are right – you are not able to export as movie files just yet. That’s because we haven’t done that part yet. We will of course – soon in one of the next alpha releases.

      For now you can export as a sequence of png images and then convert them to a movie file elsewhere.

      Our plan is to support exporting in at least two different formats: MP4 and Quicktime Prores. The latter are able to contain an alpha channel.

      Let me know how that sounds. Would that fit your needs?

      Cheers,
      Niels

      1. Timothy Morgan

        Oh awesome! Thank you for getting back to me. It all makes sense now! I love this software, and it’s easy to get used to, especially since I am a very beginner animator. Your tutorial videos are also very helpful. I thought something was up with my computer or something, and couldn’t find the answer anywhere else. I’m glad theres kind-of a work around though. Till the next release I will surely get good practice in. Again thank you for getting back to me. I’m stoked!

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      Thanks for getting in contact. I don’t know if that is what you have done, but if you installed the software as one user and run it as another user, I think there will naturally be problems (including dll problems). I can check this with my colleagues that know much more about this than me – if that 2 different user thing is indeed what has happened.

      In the second part of your message, I’m not sure what you mean by “birch lines”? Are the lines you are drawing not appearing fine? There’s a known issue, where the lines are shown as blocky “garbage” areas. Also when undoing strokes, the area that was supposed to be cleared, turns to random pixels in the boundary rectangle. You can find examples of this from other users on the forum (see Community and Feedback in the menu above).

      Let me know more and I will try to help you as best as I can.

      Cheers,
      Niels

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      Hi Tunke, thanks for asking.

      You click on alpha version, then fill in your email, to sign up for the alpha and beta program. You will then receive an email with the download. After installation you will need to register to get your license (your activation key).

      Let me know if you have further problems.

      Enjoy!
      Niels

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      As far as I understand, Chromebooks are not for graphics heavy apps. But I must admit I haven’t followed the progress, so now that you are asking, I’m not sure. Maybe somebody with more knowledge on the hardware capabilities of Chromebooks can help out here? Would it even be possible to make software like Animation Paper usable on one of those babies?

  20. Herb Montes

    I am in the process of moving residences so I have no Internet at the time. I am writing you through my phone. Because of this I can’t run the Alpha of Animation Paper since it requires an Internet connection to register the license key before start up. Is there a way around this or will I have to wait until I get Internet service again (it could be several weeks). I appreciate your help in this matter.

    -Herb

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      I’m sorry for your trouble Herb. You can register using your phone, so you get your activation key. But I guess you may have done that already.

      The problem comes when Animation Paper needs to validate the license the first time it runs with the activation key. After that it can run without the internet connection.

      I will have to check with my programmers if there’s anything we can do to help you in this situation. I’ll get back to you.

      Best,
      Niels

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      Hi again Herb, I have investigated the situation. I am not sure I am able to help you, sorry.

      I have two things in mind you can try out though.

      1) Are you able to get your computer online via your phone? Many systems support this nowadays. I mean making a shared WiFi hotspot with your phone, so you can get on to that with your computer and then run Animation Paper. It only needs to be online the first time you run the new version. After that it will ignore if you are offline at least until you have moved and have your internet back for good.

      2) If you still have the old Alpha 2 installer, you could try installing that again. I am not sure, but there’s a chance it will just run as it did before because your license was already validated. However I am not sure this works, because installing alpha 3 could have messed with this. And the problem is, of course, that you will not have Alpha 3 – only Alpha 2. But at least that would be better than nothing. Anyway, as you know, it’s of course all back to normal when you get Internet again.

      Sorry if these two ideas doesn’t help you. I have talked with my team about building in a system that would enable us to manually issue validation by having the user, guided by me, do a command or two in the Terminal. But that of course requires an update of the software, so this is not an option for you right now. I just mention that, to tell you that your story at least will help others in the same situation in the future. 😉

      Thanks a lot for that. Good luck with moving! Best,
      Niels

  23. Mike Stumbo

    Hey Neils!

    Awhile since I last made any comments! Been using Alpha 3 though for a couple months now, loving it, but was wondering. Do you have an eta on Alpha 4? Would love to be able to do more than simple rgbk colors and looking forward to the other advancements to come! For now I’m having to send my animations to Toon Boom for finalizing, I’ll share my work once it’s finished though! Best,

    Mike

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      Hi Mike,
      As you know, we have been working on, besides a list of smaller things, mainly on coloring. But it takes more time than anticipated. It is just complex because of all the special stuff we would like to do. 🙂 These days we are trying to decide if we should stick to our plan and take the time or if we should do an alpha 4 release with just some of the features, like movie file exporting (mp4 and Quick time ProRes), etc. So how long it takes depends.

      As soon as we know more I will keep everyone posted.

      In the meantime I think it is a great solution to just export as png’s and use other software for coloring. I’m so excited to see what you have done! Please share it when you are ready -Looking forward to it!

      Cheers,
      Niels

  24. Kim Jung Gi Gi

    Hello my dear sir
    I’m just wondering if you know the release date of the paid version of this software. what new features will be added in it, or if you would show the new features when it is released. I would love to support your project!!!

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      Hi Kim Jung, thank you very much!

      We do not yet have a release date. We just work until we feel it is right. 🙂

      There’s loads of small things still to come, but also a few large ones – especially all the coloring features. Also export of mp4 and ProRes with alpha, which is part of alpha 4 that we are very close to releasing.

      We will keep updating through the alpha and beta periods – all of which is free. When all is fully tested and approved, we can release the final Animation Paper. Though it is not more “final” that we of course will keep updating it with more features and functionality (we have plenty of great ideas on our todo-list) 😉

      Cheers,
      Niels

      1. Kim Jung Gi Gi

        hello Niels, I have another question.
        with the next update, will we still be able to export as pngs? I would have to import the frames into paint tool sai to paint.

        however, about the coloring, how is it like? will there be some sort of watercolor effect like paint tool? the ability to blend colors? what is the painting like?

        thank you

          2. Niels Krogh Mortensen

            All your questions are no problem at all. Feel free! 😉

            Yes, the easiest way to do that is simply use copy/paste in the x-sheet.

            So, click the thumbnail (drawing) you want to copy, hit Ctrl C, click the destination, Ctrl V (that’s on PC. On Mac you use Cmd C and Cmd V). You can also Shift click (first and last) to select a whole range of drawings in one go.

            The pasted drawings can be inserted in the same layer as well as any other line-layer (i.e. not reference layers).

        2. Niels Krogh Mortensen

          Hi again Kim,

          Yes, we are only adding features, not taking them away. So you will be able to export png’s as you are used to.

          Coloring is mostly thought as flat colors, using fill tool. But you can color with pencil/marker/brush as well. A conventional brush system, a’la Photoshop, works well with bitmap based systems. AP has a special line engine, that enable you to do cool stuff like scaling your drawings with no blurring, etc, but brushes like PS are not immediately possible. However we plan to do a brush system for the next release of AP (not alpha release).

    1. Niels Krogh Mortensen

      Hi Kale, sorry for my slow response! Your post disappeared on me 😉

      We decided to keep it simple and only allow one audio track. It could quickly evolve into an actual audio editor if we allowed for more. 😉 We might change this in the future when we have more other important features finished, but for now you are limited to the one audiofile.

      For now I suggest you create your audio in an audio editor first, then save it as one file to be imported into AP. This could be before you do any animating – so your audio represents your timing. OR you could animate to dialogue or music – and add extra sounds after animation (like sound effects) with a video editing software.

      I hope this helps.

      Best,
      Niels

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