[Niels]

Hi Katherine,

I’m looking into these requests of yours. About the slide-mode and swap-mode:

I am always trying to keep things as simple and straightforward as possible, so adding a third mode might not be the best solution. I am wondering if simply dropping slide mode would work for you? I mean, in stead of sliding your originals as you do in AP today, we could just change how it works a little, so you are still sliding, but sliding through the next originals (making them swap places).

Or am I committing the crime of dropping something that is super useful? What would work for you? Super interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Danny, thanks for mentioning this.

It is on our todolist and actually one of the things we are working on as we speak.

It will probably end up as a “New Layer with Clone Structure” menu item. Or something like that. There’s already a similar menuitem in the Paint menu (even though it is greyed out/disabled because it is not implemented yet).

To help you right now, remember, in a new layer, you can drag down a lot of clones to correspond to the length of your existing layer – and then go through it hitting your * key (“Clear Drawing”) each time you need an empty drawing.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Cool. I’m glad you appreciate it 😉 Thanks.

[Niels]

Hi Morfy, thanks a lot 🙂

Actually I can let you know, that it is exactly how we are making it already. 😉 I call the defined colors for “buckets”. 😉 This way you can adjust any (or all) bucket colors after you have painted some (or everything) – and see the colors update in all frames realtime.

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Ivan,

First of all, I want to make sure you ACTUALLY want to use Plastic Animation Paper, which is an old predecessor to Animation Paper? Animation Paper is MUCH better and robust even though it is still under development. So sign up for the alpha pre-release of Animation Paper here: https://animationpaper.com/#HowMuch – it is free too. You will receive the download link right away.

PAP is 25 years old – last line of code was written over 15 years ago. So if it works on modern systems it is amazing and frankly pure luck. 😉 But about the problem you ask about: Did you check if the projects_path file is pointing correctly? Alternatively you can just install it again, to make it set up correctly automatically.

But again, just drop PAP and get AP! 😉

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Thank you very much 🙂

[Niels]

Hi Dylan, thanks a lot for your suggestions. Appreciated.

I know the vertical timeline is somewhat controversial – and I know most other software use a horizontal one. The reason it is vertical in Animation Paper is that is based on the traditional exposure sheet (X-Sheet). This has definite advantages.

I am not apposed to implementing a horizontal version of the X-sheet and make it the direction user optional. This is on our list of features for the future – but for now we have other functionality that must be prioritised, such as all the coloring features, etc.

The scroll wheel zooming is on our todolist for a release during this alpha stage. 🙂

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Yes, I know. Sorry Guillermo. We haven’t been able to locate the problem yet. More info in my post just above yours.

[Niels]

Much appreciated – Thank you!

[Niels]

Yeah, I know. We have looked into it but haven’t found the reason it happens yet. We are not seeing the problem on any of your test systems, so it is not easy. We decided to release Alpha 4 before our holiday, to help people asking for the movie export options. I am very well aware of you and others waiting for a solution to this messy graphics problem. We hope to somehow find a solution soon.

[Niels]

Thanks a lot for asking Alan! 😉

I believe exporting as animated gif is a very relevant feature and actually it is already on our todo list for this alpha stage.

But thanks for reminding me of its importance.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks a lot Kaye.

I agree this isn’t part of the videos – actually the videos make use of the lasso too much for my taste 😉 But that is how they turned out. They are only meant for the alpha pre-releases. For the final release we will have new, better and more in depth videos.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

If you have a suggestion to how it could be simpler I am all ears.

You register to get your license (activation key) – and when you enter it into Animation Paper it needs to be online to verify it. This only happens the first time, so next time you run Animation Paper it doesn’t require any check and you can be offline.

[Niels]

Thanks a lot for this, Kaye! If the software crashes, it is definitely a bug somewhere. I will try and see if I can replicate it. If you don’t mind, it would be great help for me if you sent me your .ap file, so I can follow your steps and hopefully get the same bug here. Then we have optimal conditions to find the problem. My email address is the one that sent your activation key.

About 32/64 bit: I don’t believe this would be causing the problem in your situation, but of course you should always choose 64bit (if it matches your computer) so it runs the fastest. We are offering both, but if you just clicked the big Windows download button it was the 64bit version you got.

About the warning you probably encountered. It is about how Animation Paper is built internally. Technically our drawing engine is part vector / part bitmap, and therefore we are able to offer some really cool functionality, like speed, clever line stabilization, bucket fill without destroying antialiasing or “eating” part of your line. It’s a matter of quality. Also you are able to draw, and stamp down selections, partly or fully outside the frame – and get it picked up and moved back in later. And maybe most importantly: all lines can be rotated and scaled indefinitely without any degradation or blurring. Try it! It’s almost magical 🙂

The drawback is you can not just keep lassoing parts of drawings infinitely. Data builds up if you do that, which ultimately means that a particular drawing/frame will take way too long to render. Especially it can take several seconds to pick up a lasso area one more time. The large amount of data for the particular drawing can be copied to other drawings through more lassoing and this can make the problem bigger and your file size explode. Animation Paper is designed with traditional hand drawn animation in mind – thus rough sketching as a first pass, then refining passes to clean up is encouraged – until final inked frames. Using the lasso is great to adjust here and there, but over-using it is not recommended. I hope the reason is clearer now.

To help in your current situation with your scene, do a new empty layer, trace or refine all your drawings onto the new layer and then delete your old layer. When saving you will see your file size be reduced to a fraction of its previous size and you can safely use the lasso again 😉 (without going crazy! 😉 How much “crazy” means, depends on the specs of your computer/memory/etc).

I hope this helps. Let me know if my explanations makes any sense or not 😉

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks a lot for your time testing and writing. I am happy that you are testing it without doing any reading/watching about usage first. My ambition is to hopefully make it simple/easy/intuitive enough for people to do exactly that – even though some concepts are naturally kind of complex. So it is not easily done. Of course. But comments like yours are extremely helpful for me – and I see I need to make some things, like the opacity of a layer (imported frames comes up in a 50% transparent reference layer) more obvious and the behavior of the software easier to understand in that situation.

Some of what you are saying is said by others too. I want to make sure Animation Paper is as good as possible – and at least give it its own inner logic that’s making sense for as many as possible. So I’d better listen 😉

Some of your points are of course a matter of preference and taste. Based on what you are used to. Naturally. A good example of that is the x-sheet which is, as I’m sure you are fully aware of, based on the traditional old school way of doing exposure sheets. I know many programs have a horizontal setup, but I believe the vertical way has its pros. Anyway, it is largely a matter of preference, so we might implement an option to make it horizontal at some point in the future. But for now we are sticking with what I see as the modern take on the traditional way.

Of course the direction of the x-sheet should not, and IS NOT, an impediment for making stuff like audio functionality work in an optimal fashion. Dragging the waveform up/down is an obvious feature that is planned long ago and will be added soon. But for now, as long as your audiotrack is cut correctly before importing, you should be just fine. All timing and highlighting should work just fine as far as I’m aware. 😉

I am not entirely sure I get your suggestion about “frame highlighting when in sync with audio”. Maybe you can elaborate a little please?

Many more customization possibilities are planned to be added soon for all the next alpha releases.

Thanks again,
Nieks