[Niels]

Thanks for showing your hard work! Looks promising this far 😉 Yes, it can be challenging to keep at it. If you decide not to do any more work on this – no matter what – it is great training! Cool. On to the next idea!

[Niels]

Thank you!

[Niels]

Goodmorning Beto! 😉

The next pre-release is going to be Alpha 8 and will be ready in a matter of a few weeks from now.

The final Animation Paper will be ready later this year. As we release the final version, we will have completely new videos and tutorials with great examples – going through everything there is to know about Animation Paper.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Mike,

OK, this has happened to others too. You just need to change your “scale” setting in Windows. You might have it set to 150% or 200%, so you need to lower it. Maybe 100%? (Right now your AP window does have the timeline etc, but it sticks out the bottom of your screen. The window UI is very large and the minimum window size has been reached, even though it is greater than your screen)

So you just need to adjust this setting:

 

We will at some point do a setting for Animation Paper specifically.

I hope this helps you!

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

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.

[Niels]

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,
Niels

[Niels]

Yeah, it would be better if Krita just respected reused frames – I seemed to remember it actually did that, but I might be wrong. I’m glad you find a workaround, but of course having to do more colouring work is not exactly optimal workflow. 😉 Thanks for letting me know!

[Niels]

Yeah, the file format will not make a difference. But great you found the hold frames option.

It should be possible to have the reused (looping) frames go through as well. But this is on the Krita side. I will have a look my self…

[Niels]

Hi again Kale,

Just wanted to let you know that I got your files. Thank you! I also checked them and they seem to be just fine both of them. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I will have to download Krita and try importing here and see how it goes. Will get back to you!

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Much appreciated – both of you Javi and Bert. Will give it some thought. Thanks!

[Niels]

Cool. Thanks Bert. We’ll test internally and see how it feels with the backwards thing. 😉

[Niels]

Hi Javi,

Paint and fill is, as you probably already are aware, coming fairly soon. My plan is to have paint layers, so you can have your line on top of your painted areas. Also, technically, the two kinds of layers are quite different, so there are many good reasons to let them stay separate. Of course when you fill, it will respect the boundaries of the lines in what ever layers you choose. We have plenty of ideas and plans for how it’s all going to work. And about half of the work have already been done.

But I would love to understand better what exactly it is you are asking. I mean, you want a fill tool, that fills behind the line in the same layer. Understood. But why? Let me know why this is important to you? I need to understand your thoughts and workflow, to decide if I need to change anything in my plans. 😉 Please explain. Thanks!

[Niels]

Hi Kale,

Yes, that is exactly what exporting as OCA is supposed to do. Keep the timing, with information about clones (held drawings and reused drawings) as well as information about layer structure, etc.

If this didn’t transfer over, then something clearly went wrong. I would like to get to the bottom of this.

Would you mind sending me (a link to) both your ap file and your exported OCA data? My email address is the one you got your activation key from. I want to know what went wrong in this process and then I can hopefully help you to get it correctly transferred.

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Yes, I have already put it on our todo-list – including the option to turn it on/off. 😉

I’m thinking, since the Return Flip is actually flipping at the set FPS frame rate, we could have the sound play perfectly (without any stuttering) and even play the sound backwards, when the Return Flip goes backwards. What do you think of that idea?

[Niels]

It’s good you mention it Bert! Thank you.

We are deliberately not playing the sound, because I thought it would (at least in some circumstances) not be preferable while just flipping back and forth checking your drawings. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it would be a good idea to have sound playing on Return Flip – and that’s the way you do it if you want to hear the sound. Of course we could make hearing the audio an option.

For now, as you probably already know, you can scrub (while hearing the audio) by dragging the playhead back and forth.

Cheers,
Niels