-
This was covered in a previous thread found in the link below and the solution of which was to simply copy/cut and paste the drawing into a new frame. Its a neat way of forcing the artist to think in terms of drawing traditionally instead of relying on mechanically reshuffling frames.
However, reordering frames manually is a very useful feature that Id like to see added in future versions of AP. One of the best things about art programs (not just Photoshop or Flash but TVPaint, Toon Boom and OpenToonz) is that users can do the same task several different ways. In its current form, trying to copy/cut drawings with the Cutter tool causes the program to choke quite badly, even when working in HD. Itd be far more efficient to reorder the keyframe than simply taking the extra 2-3 steps of cutting/pasting to get the same result.
Additionally, Auto-Save would be ideal. As Im writing this, AP shut down **while saving** and I lost 2 hours of work. Admittedly I was practicing some personal work in 4K but had it been work for a client, this would’ve certainly been a headache. Animation Paper doesn’t register any significant increases in how hard my computer works when performing tasks.
Please disregard if these features are already in the works.
Thanks for this Christopher.
Reordering is something others have requested too. It’s on the list. Thanks.
Auto save might be a good idea as well. However! Animation Paper can’t crash in the middle of a save!! (It must not crash at all!) If this really happened, we need to find the problem and fix it. Would it be possible for you to recall what you did before it happened? You were working in 4K you say. Did you have many drawings in this file? Have you been able to replicate this crash? Did you have plenty of space on your harddrive? Please provide as much info as you can – including info about your computer (hardware and OS).
Thanks for helping out – very important we track this down.
Sure thing.
As before here’re my computer specs:
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 1700 8-core Processor, 3.00 ghz
32 GB of installed RAM
64-Bit Operation System, x64-based processorIm at 249GB free out of 977GB of hard-drive space so Ive enough wiggle room to get work done without having to worry very much or often. I reverted my workfile down from a 3840 x 2160 4k file to an HD 1920 x 1080. Unfortunately, even that I found has made it difficult to lasso drawings and stamp them since the software tends to freeze. First time around I had finished drawing using the Pencil tool. On top of that, while I was able to replicate a few of my drawings, AP failed to save again and crashed once more. I lost a little head-way again XD
I have 14 drawings with 67 frames. I have five layers. 1 layer has an imported JPEG sequence showing my animatic, two others have one still with their own refs, one layer has 6 scribbles showcasing an arc. Right now I went ahead and deleted several frames from my animatic layer and used clones instead.
Wow, it crashed again during Saving even after I deleted the two still frame layers. Im finding even after making some changes that the Lasso/Stamping process takes far longer than it did before, 5-10 minutes with each step, 5 on Lasso, 5 on stamp. Im going to restart , uninstall and reinstall for now.
Okay, so after uninstalling and reinstalling after shutdown, nothing has changed. Ive gone as far as to simpify my drawings on another layer while erasing some messy ones. I then used the CUTTER tool to select that simpler duplicate drawing and Stamped it onto the layer I needed it. I tried saving and the file got to 15% before AP shut down completely.
The problem seems to have to do with the interaction between Lasso/Cutter tools selecting drawings and Stamping them since it takes so much time to process data in those drawings.
I have no trouble with selecting, cutting, copying and pasting in other programs. My intent with this program was to see how far I could practice with it before I ran into problems. Sadly it seems this is as far I can go before the next few releases fixes any issues.
I hope I dont come off as frustrated by all this. I like this program alot and think it can really be useful at an $80 price point so the sooner these fixes are addressed in later releases, the better for all animators 🙂
One last thing. Upon restart, I noticed I wasnt given the option to send the AP install files to a different place on my computer. Installation was done automatically on the C: Drive. Personally, I like the ability to send software to my Solid State Hard-Drive so my computer isnt taxed on resources from the Local Drive. It’d be much appreciated for this option to be available down the road.
Thanks for looking into all this, Niel.
Phew okay. I gave this file one more go and it was definitely something up with the Lasso/Cutter tool cuz I managed to save the file this time. I wanted to copy over a portion of a drawing onto a later frame to save time but each time I tried, the software would lag very badly. Even after Stamping, erasing the portion that was stamped and redrawing it didnt help the situation either; the file continued to crash during Saving.
So this time I abandoned the Lasso/Cutter use and just drew what I needed and Saved. This time it worked which is… nice but not really the end-goal for that tool, even if its selecting multiple drawing strokes. That said, I saved the file as a different filename (which did nothing to help last time around). Im over the hurdle but I can send over the file that was giving me trouble if you wish, Niel.
Thanks for trying all this. I wish we were in the same timezone, then I could have seen this earlier and helped you out (it was night here and I was sleeping). 🙂
But you came to the right conclusion. It is caused by lassoing and stamping many times in the same drawing. This builds up data and it starts to take a lot of time (5 mins are insane!). You must have gotten a warning about this in the program (when it takes 2 seconds, which is too much already), but we don’t show the warning again. The problem is that all the data is carried over to other frames if you stamp your “bad” data there too.
Reinstalling Animation Paper doesn’t help at all. Because the problem is the excessive data that is saved in your file (and just loaded again).
It would be great if you could send me the file that makes it crash. Please send it to my email address (you can reply to the email you got from me with your activation key). Thanks a lot for this help!
To not have this problem occur again, you have to be careful not to overuse the lasso. To fix your existing file, I recommend doing a new layer and tracing your drawings over there. Then get rid of the problematic drawings/layers.
We will work to optimise all this, but best to keep these points in mind never the less.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.