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Hello!
I’ve just finished an animation sequence in Paper. Great tool, very simple unlike other apps, which are cluttered with unneeded features. But I have an issue with the drawing instruments (and erasers too actually) which started to appear more often as the scene started to grow (only 4 layers though and maybe 10 feet).
Every now and then the stroke wouldn’t appear on the canvas unless I lift the stylus. As long as it is contacting the surface, the stroke is hidden and then it pops up as a whole. Its Cintiq 16 but its exactly the same with the mouse.
Its very hard on the overall experience and restarting doesn’t always help (win ink can be on or off — make no difference). It sort of fixes itself after a while and it is unclear what triggers it.—
Few other things:
-Working beyond standard HD seems to be very laggy (16 GB or ram).
-Undo operation sometimes lags a lot too. Usually while undoing longer strokes.
-Lasso tool too thinks for a long time on larger selections. AND! if I move a segment and then use a drawing tool instead of pressing Enter, the segments vanishes.
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-Would be very nice if coping frames didn’t produce an automatic clone linked to the original. Or at least if I could turn it off. I’ve ruined quite a few frames coping ’em and altering, not realising its linked to somewhere. Even if you know about it, you can loose track and you end up chasing those clones all over the timeline. They are slightly highlighted on the xsheet, but I would highlight it more.
-Can’t find how to copy and paste just a selected area between frames. It’s badly needed.
-When you move cursor through the timeline there’s a bar on the xsheet, highlighting the selected level kinda. Its always in the same place/ When you let go of the cursor, the bar disappears and only currently selected frame in an active layer is shown in bold. I would keep bar always on, because otherwise there’s no stable visual anchor on the xsheet since the layers of the xsheet can scroll horizontally and also scroll vertically. It becomes confusing quickly.
Otherwise can’t see many flaws. Great concept.
Hi Alex,
Thank you very much for testing Animation Paper and reporting all this. Much appreciated.
Yes, the stroke not appearing while you draw is a known bug. It should actually be fixed now and this fix is part of the next update (Alpha 8).
The lag you experience could potentially be caused by the same problem – the lasso usage. As talked about many times on this forum, using the lasso a lot will make data in a given drawing build up fast – making things slower and slower. Normally this wouldn’t affect drawing it self and flipping and playback and most other things. Only picking up and stamping down lassoed selections, undoing of that, etc. We do have a warning about this popping up if it starts going slow. Maybe you got that?
(And by the way, in our next release (Alpha 8), we will have a “Collapse” button, so the built up data can be collapsed easily. This will help people that like to use the lasso a lot.)
Normally it would be fine to work in higher than HD resolution, but of course it depends on the number of layers and not least your computer hardware. But generally AP should be working very well and fast compared to other drawing software.
One of the great things about Animation Paper, is that it allows you to work in one (lower) resolution (to have a super responsive interaction), but then change resolution to higher later when it is time to do some really detailed work or simply just export in higher resolution for the final finished look. Scaling up with Animation Paper is great – it doesn’t get blurry or degrade anything – it is all rerendered with fully crisp lines. It really feels like “magic”. 😉
About clones: Did you know there’s an option for locking clones for drawing. So you don’t accidentally draw on clones, ie update the original.
If you have done a copy (clone) you can always just hit O (Turn clone into Original) on it. This looses the link, so it becomes a new original and now you can draw or erase as much as you like without changing any other drawings.
Copy/paste selected area: That’s what the lasso is for. Just lasso the area you need, go to the frame you want it copied to and stamp it down there. Also, if you loose your lassoed floating selection (if you hit Escape to loose it or, say, switch to drawing) you can always get your selection back with Shift Escape (“Get latest Floating Selection back” in the menu).
To copy whole drawings, just use copy/paste on thumbnails in the X-Sheet, – but you know that one already. 😉
I’m not sure I get your last point? I am aware that the one thing that tells you what the current frame/drawing is, is the bold rectangle highlighting it. But AP will always make sure that it is visible after you drag the playhead in the timeline or when you flip your frames using the arrow key, etc. By “making it visible” I mean scroll the X-Sheet to show the current frame and current layer. So I am not sure why it becomes confusing? Please explain – I really want to make sure I fully understand. Thank you!
Thanks for all your kind words and for your points! Looking forward to your response to this. 😉
Best,
NielsThank you for such a quick and in-depth reply.
When do you think Alpha 8 can be expected. If this one issue can be addressed, the rest are mostly cosmetic. The tool feels very comfortable and its hard to find a comfortable 2D animation tool these days.
>>>We do have a warning about this popping up if it starts going slow. Maybe you got that?
No, I didn’t see the pop-up. Does it mean that the app is vector somewhere under the hood? You’ve mentioned it can scale up with no loss.
>>> Did you know there’s an option for locking clones for drawing. So you don’t accidentally draw on clones, ie update the original.
Yes, I did, I watched all the videos and I tried this. But it turned out to be even less helpful, because now I can draw only on the ”root” of frames with longer exposure. I instantly had to turn the lock off.
This clone linking tool I know I will never ever use, so it would be nice have an option to turn it off completely. For me personally the simpler the better.
And same goes for lasso. Its best (for me personally) if its quick and simple. No bells, no whistles. 🙂>>>Copy/paste selected area: That’s what the lasso is for. Just lasso the area you need, go to the frame you want it copied to and stamp it down there.
Yes, I tried it and it copied whole frames. Maybe I did something wrong. I’l try again.
About the last point with moving Xsheet. The thing is I again personally find it confusing that Xsheet scrolls whenever you touch the horizontal timeline. Would be great to have either an option for manual scrolling only (or when the active frame is out of range only then it scrolls) or have a very clear of static visual anchor. Just a personal thing.
It is not yet decided how much we want to get done before releasing Alpha 8 – so not possible to set a release date – but it is a matter of a few weeks from now.
Yes, our line-engine is very special, so it feels like traditional bitmap/pixel/raster, but it has vector data under the hood. This will give us a lot of advantages with planned features coming up – but already has a great advantage now when changing resolution or just scaling and rotating lassoed parts.
You say, you accidentally draw on clones. So why do you turn the lock off? It doesn’t change the fact that they are clones, it just makes you not able to update them by accident. Anyway, you want clones to be independent duplicates. I don’t see how this would be preferable generally. You say you will never ever use this clone linking. Why is that? It saves you a lot of time when colouring for example. Anyway, as I said above, I suggest you just hit O when you have copied a drawing, then you turn it white (so it is not a clone anymore).
Copy whole frames: Remember, the lasso is used for parts of drawings. Copy/paste is used in the X-sheet for whole drawings. When you pick up something with the lasso, you just stamp it down at the position and frame you want it. You don’t use Ctrl C / Ctrl V.
Sorry for all my writing 😉 It’s not that I am trying to defend anything, I am just trying to explain things. If you feel strongly about a point, please elaborate further. I really want to fully get where you are coming from, so I can make Animation Paper as good as possible for everybody.
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