[Niels]

Hi Ben, thanks for this too!

I am however not convinced how useful this would be? I mean, wouldn’t it always be quicker and easier to just hit one specific key for each tool? I mean, we already have P, M and B, for pencil, marker and brush. They are also copied to the 4, 5 and 6 keys to match the three erasers on 1, 2 and 3.

You are probably also fully aware of D and E for latest drawing or erasing tool. I would think that using D and E, in combination with the above, is more convenient, because you would normally switch much more between one drawing tool and one eraser – not switch between pencil, marker and brush that often while animating.

Also, for the sake of completion, I will mention the shortcut . (period) – that toggles between drawing and erasing, again going back to the latest used drawing and erasing tool.

Please get back to me, if you have further thoughts on this. I am all ears! 😉

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Thank you again Ben!

And your second suggestion is on out todo list as well! 😉

[Niels]

Thanks for you kind words Ben! And thanks a lot for your suggestion. Actually we already have this on our todo-list, so sometime during the alpha period we should see this, in some way or the other, being implemented.

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

I’m glad! Thanks!

[Niels]

Hi again Colby,

I wanted to help you with a less technical way too. I just googled and tried this free open source software: https://www.openshot.org (for both Windows, Mac and Linux).

It lets you import your sequence of png’s and export as mp4.

I hope this, or the above, is of some use to you.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Exporting as a moviefile (MP4 or Quicktime Prores) will be implemented very soon.

But that doesn’t help you now of course. 😉

So you need to export as a sequence of png files (make sure “Simple Unbroken Sequence” is checked) and then you can use some other software that can convert your sequence of png’s to, say, an mp4. The mp4 format is excellent for sharing.

If you don’t mind using the terminal/shell, I can recommend using the command ffmpeg. You need to download and install it first. You get it for free here: https://ffmpeg.org

The command will look something like this:

ffmpeg -framerate 12 -start_number 1 -i /inputpath/basename.%04d.png -vcodec mpeg4 /outputpath/youranimation.mp4

ffmpeg has tons of options to explore. I’m thinking the above command is fairly self explanatory. Let me know if you need any help with it.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Yes, I know. Sorry about that. But that is the nature of being invited into the alpha stage of software development. 😉 The point is to test Animation Paper extensively and make it as bug free as possible before final release – while of course still manage to implement the remaining features, like coloring, exporting to video, etc, etc.

Let’s keep in touch in this thread – so I can inform about if we have made any breakthroughs and if we would be able to release an intermediate update. I would love to do that for you and the others waiting.

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks. I am not able to set a date for the release of Alpha 4 – because it depends on so many things. First of all we just need to finish the planned coloring features we are aiming for for Alpha 4. Hopefully we will locate the source of this pixel/garbage/line problem, so we can include a fix in Alpha 4 as well. Others have reported the same issue, so we will do what we can.

A rough guess is a couple of months from now.

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks for the video. Yeah, it is not at all usable when it behaves like it does for you. We need to fix it before you can use it. Hopefully we will find the course of the problem and figure out a solution. I hope a fix will be part of our next release – Alpha 4.

I don’t think any system settings will change this, but I must admit I don’t know for sure. Maybe. 🙂

[Niels]

It is hard to say. You see, right now we are working on coloring, which is a major set of features, which is taking a bit of time to develop and will probably be spread on two or more alpha releases (alpha 4 and 5). After that your requests will probably be part of alpha 6 or 7. We hope to release an alpha version each month, but often it takes more than that because of unforeseen obstacles and new ideas and stuff we want to try and test. It’s development – it just takes time and it is difficult to set any release dates with this kind of project.

We aim for excellence – and it takes what ever time it takes. 😉

I hope you understand.
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Tereza, thanks for asking!

Yes, you will be able to manipulate the images you import. Like scaling and moving. This is on our todo-list. Already you can edit the timing and delete any unwanted images.

Also we plan to do an SVG importer.

Thanks for your nice words and for your support! Really appreciated.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

OK, I’m trying to understand exactly when this happens. This is important for us to be able to do something about it.

So now you are talking about the freeze, right?

So it freezes when you load your file and work just a little.

And it freezes if you start from scratch but work longer.

Is that correct?

Any pattern in what it is you are doing in order to make it freeze?

[Niels]

Thanks Daniel. Yes, we know. We just haven’t come to that part yet. Support for gestures. It will come at some point during this alpha period.

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks for the video.

Just so I understand – the freeze does NOT appear after you start AP with a blank scene and just make a few edits. It appears after you load your file and then do some edits. Is that correct?

The blocky glitches around the lines and undo areas is something unrelated. Other people have reported this. It seems to happen only with certain older graphics cards. We are working on a solution for this problem.

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Konstantin,

We haven’t yet set a minimum requirement. But your specs seem very well to me.

This must be something else. Are you able to reproduce this problem? It would be great if you could write a step-by-step on how to provoke this issue – or even do a screen-recording and send to me.

Very much appreciated!

Cheers,
Niels