[Niels]

Sure! In Preferences/Settings you have the option to have the X-Sheet to the left or right.

After copying your drawings, you can easily turn them all original, by having them all selected (using the shift method) and hitting O – which works on all of them at once.

Actually, in my internal development version, we do have a duplicate (as original) feature, so you don’t need to do this “copy – hit O” thing. This will be publicly available in our next release, which is probably in a month or two.

Thanks for appreciating the clean interface. 🙂 It’s something that is very important to me. And this is why I tend to be little hesitant about implementing too many clever ideas (even though they may be easy/quick to do). You mentioned the metronome. I definitely see its use. It would be great for some. But also it would participate in cluttering up the software. Sorry for using your idea as the example, and I mean, that one thing probably wouldn’t clutter much, but if I gave in to too many small features like that, people would tend to be confused and overwhelmed, rather than enjoying the calm and get in focus. For me, getting in the zone when animating, is super important. The less distractions the better. I hope you see what I mean.

[Niels]

Alright. Noted.

[Niels]

Hi Riko,

You can easily select a series of drawings in the X-Sheet (just click the first thumb, hold Shift and click the last). You can now do normal copy and paste using Ctrl C and Ctrl V (Cmd C and Cmd V on Mac).

You can also cycle such a selection. The menu item is Edit > Cycle Selected Drawings Once.

Reversing the selection, is a feature not implemented yet, but it is planned for the near future. Until then, you will have to copy/paste the drawings one by one to get them in reverse order.

Note, that when you copy drawings like this, the copies are “clones”, meaning that they are linked to the original and will update if the original is changed. This is great for many reasons. And if you need a clone to lose its link, you simply make it “original”, by hitting O (while on the drawing).

I hope this makes sense. I’ll be happy to answer more questions or comments!

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Riko,

Thanks a lot for your suggestion. It is interesting.

I could imagine that such a small metronome app already exists. It could easily sit on top or next to your Animation Paper window and click away.

I know you probably want it build into AP, but would it make a difference really? I am listening. 😉

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks a lot Marc. I’m sorry I can’t just check this my self.

Jalenr11, following Marc’s comment, does that help you?

[Niels]

OK, thanks a lot Jalenr11. So it seems we haven’t found the right solution yet…

[Niels]

That’s very helpful Marc! Thank you!

 

Katherine, Jalenr11, Momomo and Devin – does this help you? If you could confirm or deny this would be great to make sure.

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks a lot Marc!

Sorry, I’m a bit confused. 🙂 Are you saying that to get the menu items – is just a matter of set up? (I’m on Mac right now and can’t get to a PC – so I can’t test it my self).

I’m delighted to hear, you are loving Animation Paper more and more. Thanks for your kind words.

[Niels]

Thanks Kasey. It is always every 8 frames in Animation Paper (it is not adjustable) – this is my decision because a certain famous hero animator of mine had a rant about this and said it had to be 8 (and not six as I remember Disney did it).

Of course it could be argued that it should be up to the user to set the interval. For good reason. However, I am kind of amazed that, as far as I remember, this really hasn’t been discussed or mentioned by anyone, until you just did it. 🙂 Maybe you were the first to pay attention to these lines. 😉 Anyway, I have made a note of this. We might add this as an option in Settings. Thanks for bringing it up!

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks for asking Kasey.

Frame numbers along the edge of the x-sheet is on our todo-list. It’s planned to be implemented in one of the next updates.

As a help in your current situation: If you hold your cursor over any of the thumbnails in the x-sheet, it will show the frame number as a “tool tip” (a little popup box with the number). Maybe that helps a little?

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

You just export your AP animation as mp4. Go to the menu File > Export > Movie Clip and select mp4.

[Niels]

Hi Landon, thanks for the question!

When the frame number in the top right corner goes red, it means that it is having trouble keeping up the pace. I.e. while it is playing your animation in realtime, it will skip a frame if it can’t keep the overall timing of the animation. If this happens it is indicated by half a second of red number. This way you can always count on the timing and sync with your audio, no matter your hardware and how demanding your scene is.

Skipping a frame is depending on the speed of your hardware, the size of the Animation Paper window, the animation resolution, how many layers, the FPS and so on.

By the way, we are in the process of optimizing the playback algorithms in Animation Paper, so if it is going red with a certain scene and setting now, it might not do it with the next release (the beta). 🙂

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

Oh, doh! You wrote the version in the headline! Thanks! We’ll take a good look at this asap!

[Niels]

Are you by any chance using an older Alpha release? We have had these export issues before, but that was (hopefully) fixed. The latest is Alpha 8.1. Please let me know which one you have? (You can check the version in the About window).

If this is an issue in the latest, this will be fixed at top priority – since exporting is super important and something most people are using. Luckily it seems it is working for most people. But I’m super interested to learn if you or anybody else is having this problem with the latest release.

To help you out right away, you are welcome to email your .ap files to me and then I can export them to mov or mp4 and send it back to you. Let’s use wetransfer.com or something similar if the files are large. My email address is the one I sent your activation key from (Sorry, I’m not mentioning it here, because spam bots will sadly pick it up).

Anyway, thanks a lot for posting this. Thanks for your nice words! Please let me know your version.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks for your insight Tammy!

This is a feature that is at the top of our wishlist! We plan to have it included already in the finished 5.0, but if not, then definitely in the free update 5.1.

Best,
Niels