Colouring with textures

[Harlock]

Hi Everyone,
this is my first post here so I hope it’s in the right section. I’ve been using TVPaint for a while now but almost exclusively for drawing and animating, not so much for colouring and painting. Until now I’ve mostly used the “flat colours method”, either with the Paint Bucket or the CTG Color Layer (which I love). The last days I’been trying the combination of some papers with different tools so I can get more interesting textures, both on the Character and the background. This is what I do so far: flat colouring the lineart with the CTG Layer, then extract the colours on separate layers, then make a mask out of each part (hair, cloth, skin, etc.) and reduce the opacity to 0 in those layers. Finally on another (“paper/texture”) Layer, I floodfill (with the rectangle) each of the parts so I pick up the paper texture on them (this could be also done in separated layers for more control). Before I put the background I have to create a white silhouette of the character with the CTG Layer to “mask” so it’s transparency (from the different textures) doesn’t show on (or through) the background. I’ve tried to spare me this last step (silhouette) using blending modes or masking the extracted colours plus the line art when applying the background but this get me just some reduction of the background color showing through the character. I’m also attaching two pictures to show the different results I get.

My question to you: is there a quicker way to get this colouring done? I’ve also tried to apply a FX (Color/Image Source) with paper as source on the flat colours but I didn’t like the result because the textures show on top of the character in a darker tone, as if it was “dirty”.

Thank you in advance for any suggestion!

[slowtiger]

Your example pics give the impression that you want a uniform texture over the whole image, not just the characters. That would be done as an FX as the last step, maybe in a compositing program or even video editor.

However, I assume that you want a texture on the characters only, right? Colouring flat is the first step, no matter whether you use CTG or any other method. Separating the colours, if necessary, is correct too. It shouldn't be necessary to add any additional silhouette layer since all the colour layers should have 100% opacity.

[Harlock]

Hi Slowtiger,

thank you for your answer. Your assumption is correct, I want to have two different textures, one for the background and one for the character. I agree that these two first pictures weren’t the best example to depict that. Im attaching another two pictures to show you what I get if I don’t use this white silhouette (as a mask for the character) between the textured colours and the background. For my understanding the colours don’t have 100 % opacity, otherwise they wouldn’t show the texture underneath. I don’t know what I'm doing wrong but my procedure is exactly as I described it in my first post.

PS: I added a third picture with just the color layer and the background set in black (I mean, no layer for the background just the black canvas)

[slowtiger]

Opacity of a coloured layer should always be 100%. No transparent colours, unless it's glasses or you want a ghostly effect or have the BG shine through.

The texture is applied by having some colour A applied (with paper ON) over colour B. The amount of texture is controlled with the hardness parameter (in the paper panel). 100% makes the texture work like a stencil, anything less makes it softer. You should experiment with: different colours A onto colour B, with different rates of hardness. It's possible that you may need different pairs of colours for different body areas.

If you've already separated the colours on different layers, it's easier to preserve alpha and drag a filled rectangle ofer the whole frame, then re-apply for all frames.

[Harlock]

Thank you again! I will try your suggestions and see what I come up with. Since the opacity sliders on the colour layers were set to 100% I thought there wouldn't be any transparency.

[slowtiger]

Well, that's one point to check. Another would be the opacity of the brush/fill you're using, and if you draw with paper ON, the result will also be a bit transparent.

[Harlock]

I used the rectangle fill flood set to colour so there wasn't any transparency there. I guess the papers I was using were a bit transparent...so in that case I would need something like the white silhouette, wright? I mean just to avoid the background showing throw my textured character.

[slowtiger]

That's why I first colour everything in solid flat colours, and only then use textures.

When I accidentially drew something with paper ON which needs to be 100% opaque, I just duplicate that layer several times and merge them.

[Harlock]

After some trying now I know what I was doing “wrong”: After extracting the flats colours I would do mask out of each part (hair, cloth, etc) and then reduced the opacity to 0 % on these layers (so the applied texture shows). On another layer I used a paper to get the wanted textured and with the flood fill rectangle I coloured each part (making use of the masks). But in this way the colours applied had some transparency on them because of the papers…that’s why after that I needed the white silhouette so the background doesn’t show. This time what I did is to preserve the alfa (on the extracted flat colours) and drag a filled rectangle with white colour on them (instead of doing the masking)…just after that I apply the colours with the paper ON. That way the colours layers didn’t show any transparence anymore and the background didn’t shine throw (even without the silhouette). I didn’t know that the papers worked this way or that they are partially transparent (depending on the hardness), that is what got me confused. One last question: if I can’t remember anymore which Paper I used on some layer, is there any way to find this out? kind of a “paper history” or something? Thank you for your help!

[slowtiger]

Unfortunately not - just take notes.

[Harlock]

I was fearing that answer...I will! Thank you again.

[D.T. Nethery]

Written notes as suggested, or what I do when I'm working out a custom effect , take screenshots each step of the way , so I can go back to check the settings or which paper I used , things like that . However, if you're in the FX Stack, you can Add the FX to a the FX bin , so you can call it up later and re-apply the exact same FX to other scenes as needed. (this can be any FX , but especially useful for saving KeyFramer FX coordinates for "camera moves" , etc.)

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[Harlock]

Hello David, and thank you very much for your suggestions, specially the one with the FX Stack. It will come in handy as soon as I start using more effects. By the way, it’s out off topic, but I would like to ask you something. I’ve seen some of your beautiful drawings in the gallery: Which tool did you use to “ink” (or clean) them? I guess with the PenBrush, wright? Until now for me it was all about the pencil, even for my finished outlines, as if I was almost afraid to use the pen. But I’ve just tried it to clean a couple of my drawings and with the line smoothing (set in 20-25) you can get nice crisp, “thick to thin” lines. On the other hand, what I like about doing the clean ups with the pencil, it kind of remind me of the Disney’s “Xerox style”.