[Niels]

Hi Manuel,

Thanks for reporting this. It is not easy to guess what is causing this annoying thing. But it sounds like it is something within the drawing data, since it is stil there after restart and reload of your scene. You mention the lasso. It could be that. Did you get the warning (window coming up, if using the lasso is slow) about that?

We actually just did a “collapse” feature – maybe this will be of great help to you. This will be part of our next release (Alpha 8).

But that doesn’t help you right now. If it is the lasso-problem, then it will definitely help to simply trace your drawing onto a new blank one. You see, the slowness is within a specific drawing. If it is copied (lassoed) to others, then they will be problematic too. So add a new blank drawing, use the light table to trace your drawing onto the new blank. Then delete the old drawing. Then you will see the filesize go way down and the speed be back up to normal again – including Undo. Hopefully this is it and this will help you.

Let me know!

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks

[Niels]

That’s great news Maria! Thanks for testing!

We’ll have this fix in the next release (Alpha 8) – so be sure to download it when it’s ready.

Also make sure to tell me, if the problem surfaces again.

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

I understand. Your A/B/C reasons are exactly as intended. Cool.

I do have considered making it like you suggest – and multiple other ways too. It would make sense. I decided however, on how we made it, to keep things simple. Keeping everything straight forward and uncluttered is one of my top priorities. You probably noticed 🙂

[Niels]

Hi Maria,

We have tried a thing, that might solve the problem. Can I ask you to send me an email, so I can send a test version to you so you can try it out? My email address is the one you got your activation key from. Thank you!

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

We now have a fix ready for you to test. I’m not completely confident it will work, but it is definitely worth a try. 😉 So please email me, so I can send it to you!

[Niels]

Not that it has anything to do with solving our problem – but I just can’t help mentioning that you can use this feature to easily repeat or cycle frames for the rest of the animation (instead of having all the clones or blank drawings).

The top screenshot shows the small buttons and lines indicating freeze and cycle in the left and right layers respectively.

The shot below shows you where to enable this feature.

[Niels]

Thank you again Loki!

Stupid me – I just didn’t look for the range thing 😀 The files are essentially identical (all frames included) – only the Range setting is different, as you say. Thanks anyway for sending again. Sorry. 😉

Getting back to you, when I have had a chance to look more into it….

[Niels]

Thanks a lot Loki – for the file you just sent me and for your further comments. It all helps – much appreciated.

Also I’m glad that you don’t use the lasso much, because that rules out that problem. So it must be something else – which I am excited about 😉 My mission is to get everything to work optimally, so this file of yours is super interesting to me. 😉

There’s definitely something weird going on with the red number feature. We need to fix this soon.

It does, however, seem to play well here at my end. It is in sync with the music – looks great btw! But depending on which monitor I have it on (hires/lores display) I can get it to be a little slow – even though it seems to keep the sync all the way.

The file you sent me have 348 frames – less than your full animation of +2000 frames. Just to make sure, do you get the same problems with the 348 frame file? Is the sound also out of sync with the file you gave me?

Anyway, I just wanted to give my immediate reaction. I will study and test it all much more in depth… I’ll get back to you… Thank you very much!

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

I just remembered that we do actually have an alternative shortcut working. It’s not exactly the same as you are suggesting, but maybe it will work for you?

If you while inside the drawing area pane hold your Ctrl key (or Cmd key on Mac), you can drag left/right to change the size of your pen – or drag vertically, to adjust the opacity.

I hope this will help you! Please let me know. 😉

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi again Rusty, we got an idea on maybe what could cause this. We will do a test version later today – could I ask you to try it out to see if it solves anything? I would need your email address so I can send you the test version. Please write it here or email it to me (my email address is the one you got your activation key from).

Thanks!
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Rusty!

Wow! Thank you SO much for this. Another user just reported the same problem, but your thorough test and explanation is super valuable. Now it should be fairly simple for us to reproduce and fix this! If all goes well, we will have this fixed for the next release (Alpha 8).

Very helpful! Much appreciated!
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Loki, thanks for this!

Actually we do have some unfinished areas of AP regarding the frame number turning red. It was supposed to turn red if it can’t keep up the frame rate when playing. However it does not work correctly – also when it is no problem at all to keep up. So it is just not reliable right now. 😉

But of course, if you are experiencing things running slow, then this is interesting and something I want to investigate.

First of all, previously reported slowness is usually always about overusing the lasso. Do you use the lasso? Using the lasso a lot will make picking up a lasso slow on that specific drawing. Also undo’ing it will be slow.

We actually just finished a new feature that can “collapse” the build up data – solving the problem. But that doesn’t help you now. It would be interesting for me to examine your .ap file – would you mind emailing it to me? (or a link to it – I’m guessing it is quite large)? This will help me figuring out where the problem is – so we can solve it. My email address is the one you got your activation key from (because of spam-bots I will rather not write my address publicly here).

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

Thank you very much! But I worry that AP is unusable for you until we do the custom shortcuts.

Let me know if you find a solution. Because if you don’t, I hope I can think of something to help you.

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Maria,

Thanks for making the video! It helps a lot.

It seems like you maybe are accidentally holding down your Ctrl key? (Cmd key on Mac) At least with normal behaviour, you can hold that key down and get easy access to quickly adjust pen size by dragging left/right and opacity by dragging up/down.

While this feature has been a request of several people – it might not be good for everybody. My guess is you are using undo (Ctrl Z) a lot and therefore maybe you are unconsciously keeping your Ctrl key pressed sometimes – even though you are in the middle of drawing lines.

At some point fairly soon we will make the keyboard shortcuts customisable – and then it will be easy to just get rid of this shortcut if it doesn’t fit your way of working.

Let me know if I am guessing correctly 😉

Cheers,
Niels