[Keira S]

Hello!

My name is Keira and my school club is making an animated short film. We are looking for an accessible software for lineart and this looks amazing! I’m just wondering if there is a way to export the animation with a transparent background so that we can import a transparent video when we are adding color.

Thank you!

[Rodney Baker]

I believe the Alpha channel (transparency) is on by default:

If anything that will be something of a problem as Animation Paper does not yet have fill features to make parts of the image (other than linework) be opaque while the rest of the image/background is transparent.

I’m not sure what the schedule is for activating the fill features.

 

But the good news… Animation Paper supports transparency.

 

[Rodney Baker]

I’ll add that with Animation Paper’s ability to export to Open Cel Animation (OCA) it is trivial to import the OCA into Opentoonz where it can be further cleaned up and colored all while preserving the transparency.

 

[Rodney Baker]

Here’s a quick example of exporting to OCA from Animation Paper and then importing to Opentoonz where cleanup and color fill is quickly applied.  Note the transparent (checkerboard) transparency:

[Rodney Baker]

I’m using PNG here but EXR is available as well and for high end graphics might well be preferred.

• This reply was modified 1 day, 20 hours ago by Rodney Baker.

[Keira S]

Hi Rodney!

Thank you so much for all the in-depth information! My club really appreciates it.

[Rodney Baker]

I do apologize.

I should have also said that the regular Frame output also supports transparency.

Use of OCA export is not required.

It’s just a useful way to preserve timing of exposures across applications that support OCA.

 

Here’s a quick example of a frame saved out of Animation Paper as an EXR image (colored in Opentoonz).

The transparent background would be the same in PNG as well.

• This reply was modified 1 day, 19 hours ago by Rodney Baker.

[Niels]

Hi Keira, – thanks a lot for your great question! And thanks Rodney for your excellent and accurate answers.

I will add, that it is also possible to export as ProRes Movie files, which will hold the alpha too. Some like this way of doing it, because you have all frames as one file. Though split into layers if needed of course.

Best,
Niels

[Keira S]

Thanks Niels! This animation software is awesome!

[Niels]

Thank you Keira! Feel free to ask all you want, if you stumble across anything weird or difficult. Best of luck with your short film!

Thanks,
Niels