[Pharan]

Oh yeah, absolutely. We should definitely be taking a break right now. 😴

I figured I would save the experience feedback immediately while I still remember what happened.

Thanks for the speedy response! I appreciate all the hard work put into the application so far!

• This reply was modified 11 months ago by Pharan.
• This reply was modified 11 months ago by Pharan.

[Pharan]

I agree. I was about to ask about this too.

I would love a movable, keyable camera for pencil testing motions in better context. Not just as storyboards intend with panning or zooming. But also for things like various intensities of impact camera shake and handheld shaky cam.

And if I just want to use Animation Paper to make a quick cute animation with a pan, it would be great if I didn’t have to export the frames and import it into a compositor just to get panning.

Clip Studio Paint added this a couple of updates ago and I LOVED it. The way they implemented it too is a bit interesting allowed pretty good flexibility, but UI-wise had some quirks.

[Pharan]

The point of such a feature would be for the user to be able to read the X-sheet and go “ah, yeah. it’s repeating.” or “it’s going back and forth.” or “it’s doing the stagger technique, in this specific sequence”.

Currently, I’m thinking along the lines of allowing optional text labels.

Like, if you can mark a drawing as a key, you should be able to label it with a few characters. “a1” or “1” or “A” or “AB”. Visually, the label can be right on thumbnail in the x-sheet UI. And any linked instances of the drawing can also have that label visible.
Those drawing labels could even be longer (like “mouth open”, or “blink extreme”) if there was a nice way to present it.

The benefit would be that not all drawings need to have the extra visual clutter. But if it actually helps you understand the x-sheet, then you can add it.

—-
Alternatively, I don’t know how you feel about the paradigm that in classic animation, every drawing has a number label anyway and that’s what they write down on an old-timey X-Sheet.

If the program generates those numbers/IDs on its own, there could just be an option to unfold/collapse an extra column in the UI that shows all the labels for the drawings on the layer you’re working on. The problem is that as you insert and remove drawings while pencil testing, auto-generated labels tend to change, or get jumbled up (numbers getting reordered, numbers skipping, numbers between numbers).

This second way is how Clip Studio Paint does it and has this little hitch, and it falls on the user to rename the drawings into a sensible order, or use a built-in function to rename all the drawings according to the sequence they appear in the animation. The up side is that the user has full control. It’s not really a tedious task, especially with the auto-rename feature.

—-

View post on imgur.com

I’m leaning towards the first one, but maybe the second one might make more sense if it fits into some other features you have planned. I understand this requires some time for consideration though.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by Pharan.

[Pharan]

Thanks Niels!
Another behavior related to this:

In Clone Drawings - Locked or Not > Freely draw on Clones - Original will update mode

If you’re on a clone frame, pressing A causes it to create a new drawing.
Pressing ESC will clear the drawing (as mentioned above) so you have an empty drawing.
Pressing CTRL+Z will bring the drawing back, but it’s still a separate drawing instead of a clone.
Pressing CTRL+Z again will turn it back into a clone.

As a whole, kind of weird/can’t get used to it even after it happens several times.

I do appreciate being able to press * and have a new clean drawing despite being in this mode. So I don’t know how this scheme is related to that behavior.

[Pharan]

Yeah, I did notice the cursor changes color. That’s why I suggested an actual cursor shape change. 🙂

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by Pharan.

[Pharan]

I did experience some weirdness with the pen strokes yesterday. Some combination of changing window focus causes the pen to stop registering subpixel positions, so the lines get super jagged especially when you draw slowly, but the strokes look “ok” when you draw quickly because of the stabilizer.

It becomes especially noticeable when you try to draw horizontal or vertical lines.

Sometimes it goes back to normal. Other times, I have to restart the program. But sometimes you probably wouldn’t notice it happening until you try to draw slowly.

I’ll post again if I find out what exact combination of stuff to replicate the bug.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by Pharan.

[Pharan]

I like the way Clip Studio Paint does pan/zoom/rotate view.

pan – Spacebar + drag
zoom – Spacebar + Ctrl + click or drag
rotate – Spacebar+Shift or Spacebar+Alt + drag

When you release the modifier keys, you automatically go back to the tool you were using. It really helps not take you out of the flow of drawing with your current tool.

PaintTool SAI also does the same thing.
I think Photoshop does this too except the rotate part.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by Pharan.