[Niels]

Smoothing is actually standard in Animation Paper too. 🙂 We have no settings for it – because it just works quite cleverly and subtly. You would definitely notice it if it wasn’t there. At some point we might present a couple of parameters for the user to be able to adjust it.

The issue with the lasso is that the data in one drawing will build up exponentially. So after 15 – 20 copies on top of it self, number of lines have doubled for every copy, and then memory and CPU usage explodes. We put in a warning with some recommendations. It pops up when picking up takes more than 2 seconds. Hopefully you got that too?

It’s a complex problem. Not just a matter of collapsing something. 🙂 Animation Paper wasn’t designed with extensive lassoing in mind. The positive sides of how this works are the ability to draw and lasso beyond the frame borders, unlimited resolution, so when scaling/rotating you get no degradation or blurring of your lines. Also coloring will take great advantage of this line engine of ours. As well as the ability to work in lower resolution for speed and exporting in higher resolution for quality.

[Niels]

Our plan was to release alpha 3 three weeks ago. But we have run into some issues that includes problems reading various audio formats, etc. So until these issues are overcome things are delayed a bit. Sorry. We just need to get it right. I’m guessing we should be ready with alpha 3 in a week or two.

[Niels]

30 seconds?! Would you mind sending me your .ap file? Then we might be able to discover what is wrong here.

Please send it to my email, which is the one we used to send your activation key.

Thanks a lot for your help!

[Niels]

That is not supposed to be the case. The time it takes to undo something is depending on what it is you are undoing. If it is something complex it naturally takes longer than some small thing. Either way, undoing should never take longer that a very short moment.

If you found it to be slower than say, a second, please let me know and please describe what specifically you are doing in Animation Paper, so we can reproduce the behaviour you are talking about.

Thanks a lot Caleb!
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Marcin,

Thanks for your comments!

1) Actually you DO have flipping keys on the left of your keyboard: Q and W. Please check out the keyboard shortcuts here: https://animationpaper.com/animation-paper-keyboard-shortcuts-for-pc/

I am fully aware that many people want to do their own shortcut key bindings. That ability will come soon in one of the following alpha releases.

2) The blanks you are putting in between your drawings are considered originals too – meaning they are shown in the light table (only there’s no lines to show in your example). You would want to use “clone drawings” to have between your drawings instead. Much easier this way. You just drag down (or up again) on any original drawing to repeat it. That’s how you do timing in Animation Paper. Or you can use the Add Clone Drawing button instead of using the Add Blank Drawing button. When you do it like this – the lightable behaves just as you expected.

3) Yes, coloring features are still to come (soon in an alpha update).

4) If you draw, erase using erasers and draw again over and over and over – or if you use the lasso tool a lot, data builds up and things will ultimately get slow. The trick is to erase the whole paper using Clear Drawing instead. Draw roughly to get your animation right, then clean it up on a layer on top. You can repeat that many times if you want to do refining in several passes – no problem. But don’t be fudging your drawing too much. 🙂 (I’m not sure if that’s a term in actual english? I hope you get what I’m saying) 😉

Let me know if you have further comments!

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Great – thanks Jerry!

It is in fact only an alpha version. Beta means finished, but could have bugs. Alpha is still missing features. And that is the case with the paint/coloring tools. They are still to come. You can see what’s planned in the menus, but as disabled (greyed out) functions.

We do want to make a brush system at some point. On the list for next major release.

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Layanie,

When you copy a drawing (frame) and paste it to another place in the x-sheet, it is a clone – meaning the clone are are linked to the original. However, you can easily drop that link by making the clone a new original.

That’s my complicated way of saying: Just hit O (for Original) on the copied drawing. 😉

[Niels]

Thanks for this very precise bug report Russ! Consider it fixed. 😉

[Niels]

OK, Susan. But you managed to find it?

Anyway, PAP4 is old! Jump on over to Animation Paper and try the alpha! Maybe you did already?

[Niels]

A few others have mentioned that too, Tengus. Thanks for letting me know. Some people actually love the vertical way of the traditional exposure sheet. But anyway, I have it on my list as an option for future versions.

[Niels]

OK, thanks Corin. Noted.

[Niels]

1. Actually we are going to have several functions work on a block of selected drawings in one go. Including adding a clone. This will come soon in one of the alpha releases.

2. You can already now either duplicate a layer, which will keep the clone structure, or select a block of drawings and copy/paste those into another layer. I guess that would do the job?

Moving things along paths is something for compositing as it is right now. But we plan to add this in a future version.

[Niels]

I think you are right Hevonen. I’ll put the solo layer function and hotkey on our todo. Thanks!

[Niels]

In case the program crashes?! I beg your pardon!! 😀 😉 Haha

Yeah, we might do an autosave at some point. Good idea either way.

Audio is what we are working on right now. Everything audio will come in Alpha 3 – which we hope to release in a few days if all goes well.

Exporting movie clips is coming too – but in one of the following alpha releases. The exact one has not been decided on yet.

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks for these good suggestions Hevonen!

But let me challenge them a little to make sure I understand you fully.

1) You already have a hotkey for adding a clone [‘]. Wouldn’t it be fine to just hit that key once or twice (for setting your drawing on two’s or three’s)?

2) I do think I get your point. It is good to be able to test different timing alternatives, which means you sometimes need to delete a drawing – but then you can not easily get it back if you need it again.

You suggest some kind of popup window that could hold these deleted drawings so you could just click the one you want and get it back. But you would need to be able to see them at full size then, because picking it out between more similar looking drawings in some kind of thumbnail size wouldn’t work.

I tend to think that instead of deleting a drawing, you could cut it (Ctrl X) and then have an extra layer (not visible in your drawing area view) where you paste the drawings you want to save for later. Wouldn’t that work quite well for your purpose? AP will automatically make a copied clone become an original if it is the only copy left.

Let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Niels