[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

[Niels]

Hehe – thank you very much! I’m happy you like it! And thanks for the drawing! 🙂

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Alpha 4 is finally out! It has exporting of movie clips. We are still working on coloring – to be ready in Alpha 5.

Alpha 4 is here!

 

[Niels]

For those looking for an export movie clip option – update to alpha 4!

Alpha 4 is here!

[Niels]

Hi Phoenix, Alpha 4 is now released! It has export to movie clip (mp4 and mov).

Alpha 4 is here!

[Niels]

For those interested in exporting movie files from Animation Paper, here you go: https://animationpaper.com/2021/07/06/alpha-4-is-here/

 

[Niels]

Here you go Rob! https://animationpaper.com/2021/07/06/alpha-4-is-here/

[Niels]

Yeah, this lasso problem can go bananas quickly if you are not careful. 🙂 It’s just how things are made internally – great possibilities because of it, but drawbacks as well.

[Niels]

I can recommend FFMPEG which is great even though it is technical.

But I can reveal that we will be releasing Alpha 4 in only a few days from now – and it has build in mp4 export. 🙂 So just wait a few days for the update. I will be sending out an email notice to all alpha users when it is ready for download.

Cheers,
Niels

 

[Niels]

Alright, thanks a lot 🙂

Yeah, you can import just one png (could be a model sheet or a background or something else) – or you can shift-select multiple png’s (like a numbered sequence of video or rendered 3D animation, etc, for reference use).

When you import png’s Animation Paper automatically creates a reference layer for the images. It is not possible to draw directly on a reference layer, but you can add a new normal layer on top and do animation, clean up or tracing or whatever on top of the reference layer that way.

Reference layers do allow you to use all the usual timing functionality – like add clones, copy/paste, slide originals, etc.

I hope this helps you!

Best,
Niels