[hevonen]

Hi,

1. hotkeys for frame timing
It might be useful to consider hotkeys for quickly redoing timing in xsheet, like “1” for single spacing “2” for double “3” for threes etc (like in CTP from the old days). Pressing the hotkey would set current frame to that timing and shift+hotkey could add/reduce frames from all other layers. It’s pretty quick to retime a level just by using these instead of mousing around and dragging for every frame.

This would conflict with currect tool hotkeys (erasers, drawing tools), though these tools have multiple access points already (d key, e key, tool icons, flipping the stylus).

2. concept of level/orphan frames
On another note there doesn’t seem to be storage for deleted/unused frames in AP (no concept of level drawings separate from xsheet, so frames have to exist in xsheet or they are gone forever). For retiming/reuse flexibility it might be useful to consider some solution for this as it would be sad to lose frames forever when just testing different timings.

I don’t know what kind of approach would best fit AP and not complicate things, maybe a frame picker of some sort in xsheet (like a popup with hotkey showing thumbnails of all the unused drawings for current level – click would replace current frame with that drawing and shift-click delete it forever or something such)?

[Niels]

Thanks for these good suggestions Hevonen!

But let me challenge them a little to make sure I understand you fully.

1) You already have a hotkey for adding a clone [‘]. Wouldn’t it be fine to just hit that key once or twice (for setting your drawing on two’s or three’s)?

2) I do think I get your point. It is good to be able to test different timing alternatives, which means you sometimes need to delete a drawing – but then you can not easily get it back if you need it again.

You suggest some kind of popup window that could hold these deleted drawings so you could just click the one you want and get it back. But you would need to be able to see them at full size then, because picking it out between more similar looking drawings in some kind of thumbnail size wouldn’t work.

I tend to think that instead of deleting a drawing, you could cut it (Ctrl X) and then have an extra layer (not visible in your drawing area view) where you paste the drawings you want to save for later. Wouldn’t that work quite well for your purpose? AP will automatically make a copied clone become an original if it is the only copy left.

Let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Niels

[hevonen]

Good points!

1. My bad, didn’t know about add clone shortcut so that’s solved for single frames! Is there a key for reducing clones too?

Drawback is that it doesn’t work for multiple frames so when timing a larger set of drawings it might be useful to have a context specific right click menu for setting selected frames across layers to twos or threes or fours (longer holds are anyways done by dragging). Or alternatively ‘ could work for selections too (and extend/reduce selection as needed, so that the shortcut could be hit repeatedly – this might fit AP approach and would be better in general).

2. My preference comes from Toonz and others like it where the concepts of level (stack of cels) and xsheet (how to shoot these cels) are separate and the drawings are numbered (so camera operator can skip frames). As a concept it might not fit AP so I thought of something “simpler” like a bin where the unused cells would go for safekeeping. As you said, it probably wouldn’t work either and be messy/unclear anyway.

Your workaround is good I think, but maybe it could be enhanced with a feature to duplicate/clone a whole level (in addition to moving layers around). In this case one could (if wanted) emulate paper workflow by doing all the drawings first on one layer (or more), duplicate it with clones (hiding the original) and work on the cloned layer by timing, deleting and copypasting frames as needed. Might be nice and simple (as all the drawings can be found in xsheet, nothing is lost by accident and the whole workflow would be optional)?

On a sidenote what are the plans with xsheet, will pegs be animatable (moved manually or with curves and the like) or do you see walk cycles across the screen and the like being done in compositing?

[Niels]

1. Actually we are going to have several functions work on a block of selected drawings in one go. Including adding a clone. This will come soon in one of the alpha releases.

2. You can already now either duplicate a layer, which will keep the clone structure, or select a block of drawings and copy/paste those into another layer. I guess that would do the job?

Moving things along paths is something for compositing as it is right now. But we plan to add this in a future version.

[hevonen]

1. Okay good! Current ‘ functionality duplicates copy-paste to a single key so it still might be good (though minor) thing to have similar single key action for removing a clone (never an original to differentiate from cut).

2. Yes it would, no idea how I missed it, shame on me..