Shortcuts Bug ? (help!) -- Assign FLIP shortcut keys to Wacom Express Keys Topic is solved

[schwarzgrau]

Next I tried to assign CTRL + SPACE to Flip KEYS and BREAKDOWNS . Guess what happened ? Yes , I got a weird line tool that pops up.

Great SHIFT + SPACE works. This is a good starting point. CMD + SPACE probably doesn't work since its conflicting with the spotlight search on MacOS. But if you don't use this key combination you could disable it in the keyboard settings of your Mac. This way you get your second useable combination. You'll find it here System Preferences > keyboard > shortcuts tab > Spotlight.
This combination isn't supported by TVPaint, but you could use this code in Hammerspoon to rebind CMD + SPACE with F

Code: Select all

hs.hotkey.bind({"command"}, "Space", 
	function() hs.eventtap.event.newKeyEvent("f", true):post() end,
	function() hs.eventtap.event.newKeyEvent("f", false):post() end
	)

As far as I know X-keys come with a license of Controllermate for Mac. This is a tool which lets you rebind your keys without coding, just by plugin in some "nodes" into each other. I heavily used it a few years ago, but their development nearly stopped. But it's a great tool and fairly easy to use.
A few years ago I wished for some buttons on the back of my cintiq companion to use my index finger and ring finger to flip faster between the last and the next frame. Since I couldn't find something except of the overpriced X-keys I made the (bad) decision to build something myself and dived way too deep in the mechanical keyboard community rabbit hole. Currently I use the left half of a bluetooth split keyboard on the back of my Mobile Studio and another splitkeyboard on my regular Cintiq. But I probably dived already way to deep in this topic.

A much cheaper and more versatile option than one of the long X-keys would be a "Butter Stick", which can be bought ready to use for $55 and can be configured with this online configurator or with Controllermate

[D.T. Nethery]

Next I tried to assign CTRL + SPACE to Flip KEYS and BREAKDOWNS . Guess what happened ? Yes , I got a weird line tool that pops up.

Great SHIFT + SPACE works. This is a good starting point. CMD + SPACE probably doesn't work since its conflicting with the spotlight search on MacOS. But if you don't use this key combination you could disable it in the keyboard settings of your Mac. This way you get your second useable combination. You'll find it here System Preferences > keyboard > shortcuts tab > Spotlight.
This combination isn't supported by TVPaint, but you could use this code in Hammerspoon to rebind CMD + SPACE with F

Code: Select all

hs.hotkey.bind({"command"}, "Space", 
	function() hs.eventtap.event.newKeyEvent("f", true):post() end,
	function() hs.eventtap.event.newKeyEvent("f", false):post() end
	)

As far as I know X-keys come with a license of Controllermate for Mac. This is a tool which lets you rebind your keys without coding, just by plugin in some "nodes" into each other. I heavily used it a few years ago, but their development nearly stopped. But it's a great tool and fairly easy to use.
A few years ago I wished for some buttons on the back of my cintiq companion to use my index finger and ring finger to flip faster between the last and the next frame. Since I couldn't find something except of the overpriced X-keys I made the (bad) decision to build something myself and dived way too deep in the mechanical keyboard community rabbit hole. Currently I use the left half of a bluetooth split keyboard on the back of my Mobile Studio and another splitkeyboard on my regular Cintiq. But I probably dived already way to deep in this topic.

A much cheaper and more versatile option than one of the long X-keys would be a "Butter Stick", which can be bought ready to use for $55 and can be configured with this online configurator or with Controllermate

Thank you very much for your continued support! These are great suggestions I would never have thought to try on my own. (and I had not come across Butter Stick in my searching for programmable key pads , so I'm glad to know about it Thank you.)

I don't use CMD+SPACE to trigger Spotlight Search , so I tried your suggestion to disable that in System Prefs and use Hammerspoon to bind CMD+SPACE to one of my Flips shortcuts, but TVPaint does not seem to recognize CMD+SPACE bound with F . Nothing happens when using CMD+SPACE. SHIFT+SPACE works fine.

As I was poking around on the X-Keys website I noticed they do offer ControllerMate for Mac , but they also note that it does not work with Catalina or Big Sur. Not a problem for me at the moment as I am on Mojave. I emailed X-Keys to ask if ControllerMate would ever be updated to work on MacOS past Mojave . They responded that the developer who wrote ControllerMate has said he will not be continuing to update it , so Mojave is the end of the line for ControllerMate. So, Butter Stick seems like a better option. (and also costs much less than X-Keys!)

[schwarzgrau]

Oh no problem, you're probably the most helpful person here, so I'm happy if I can help you in some way.
By the way you're not limited to using shortcuts involving the space key in the Wacom Pref Pane. But since ALT is used for panning and CTRL+ SHIFT for this line tool there are not much left.

Yea, I suspected Ken would soon stop developing Controllermate completely. A shame, it was really easy to use for basic stuff, but also capable of really complex tasks.

In this case butterstick is probably the better choice. It runs a software called QMK, which is the most popular in the keyboard community. You can use the web configurator to map the keys, download the file, press the tiny reset button and then load the downloaded file onto it using a little tool called QMK toolbox. If you really choose the butterstick make sure you buy the Butterstick ready 35g and feel free to send me a message if you stuck somewhere in the process.

[Svengali]

I apologize ahead of time for the nerdy nature of the following speculation:

Your problem of trying to make express keys on the Cintiq trigger the sequence of parameters you setup in the FLIP configuration window may be something similar to a problem I've run into in GEORGE scripting.

Here's what I have had happen with certain scripts assigned to a hotkey. All scripts are run-time compiled meaning that they are converted from George commands into executable instructions every time they are invoked. Some scripts have built into them conditional events upon which later operations in the same script are dependent. But because the entire script must be converted into an executable, before any of it can be run, the conditional event is bypassed. It makes for very strange situations in which some scripts seem like they should work, but won't because of the compile-then-execute nature of the George Scripts.

In a similar way, maybe your selected FLIPS definitions are really a list of conditions as to how the FLIPS should work... BUT that list of conditions only get converted/compiled into a necessarily COMPLETE SET of executable instructions AFTER the assigned shortcut key is pressed.

So the problem might be when the Cintiq key triggers the hotkey assigned to a particular set of FLIP instructions, nothing happens in those cases because the stored FLIP instructions must be compiled before execution. That necessary compile step can't or won't compile/execute when initiated from a secondary hotkey on the Cintiq.

Maybe one of the programmers can comment on whether the FLIP parameters do or do not require a compile action BEFORE they are executed (as must happen with George Scripts)???

sven

[schwarzgrau]

But this wouldn't explain why the SHIFT + SPACE workaround still works? I guess the problem is probably really the Wacom driver, which sends every button press as a single tap, if you don't use the "Modifier way" or don't use a workaround with Autohotkey or Hammerspoon

[D.T. Nethery]

But this wouldn't explain why the SHIFT + SPACE workaround still works?

I guess the problem is probably really the Wacom driver, which sends every button press as a single tap, if you don't use the "Modifier way" or don't use a workaround with Autohotkey or Hammerspoon

I was very hopeful that the Hammerspoon workaround of rebinding my shortcut keys (F, G, and H) to F17, F18, F19 for the Wacom Express Keys would work. I've followed your instructions carefully , but I can't get it to work to trigger the shortcuts for Flips Manual. Maybe it has something to do with my older Cintiq 21UX (2nd Gen) which is probably nearing the end of it's life (it is 12 years old , I think ?). The current Wacom Driver version 6.3.42-1 does not support my Cintiq 21UX , so I'm on driver version Driver 6.3.40-2 which is the last one to support the Cintiq 21UX . OR maybe it's a problem tied specifically to how Mac OS Mojave interacts with the Wacom driver? ... or a combination of those. But of course the Hammerspoon key binding works as long as the keys are not for Flips Manual shortcuts.

[D.T. Nethery]

Yes, it is only Flips shortcuts that are the problem. If I assign f to "TVPaint Animation: About" (or any other function) it will work when the Wacom Express Key button is pressed.

But what now if you assign another button, like J or K to the Flips shortcuts ?

Ok, I assigned J and K to Flips shortcuts. It is the same result as with F or G. It works from the keyboard when pressing J or K , but when pressing the Wacom Express Key button it does not work.

It would make me crazy too
That said, we tried to reproduce the behaviour you describe, without "success" : the keyboard shortcuts worked when pressing the tablet buttons.

The keyboard shortcuts worked when set up for Flip Manually ? It worked for you with F key for Flip KEYS only (i.e Red Image Marks only) , G key for Flip KEYS and BREAKDOWNS (Red Image Marks and Blue Image Marks ), H key for Flip ALL (flips manually through all drawings on the timeline) ? Was the test done on Mac OS or Windows ? (or does the operating system make no difference with regard to how shortcuts are triggered by Wacom Tablet Express Keys ?)

For me the Basic Flips works , Directional Flips works , but Manual Flips does not work when pressing the Wacom Tablet Express Key buttons. User schwarzgrau confirms that my Flips shortcuts also do not work for him with Wacom Express Keys:

By the way I tried It and it doesn't work for me too to use the flip shortcut on the Expresskeys.

[schwarzgrau]

User schwarzgrau confirms that my Flips shortcuts also do not work for him with Wacom Express Keys:

By the way I just tried it and it works for me on Windows (Cintiq 22HD), but not on MacOS (Cintiq Companion 2).

[Dean]

The tests we conducted were on Windows and MacOS, with an Intuos Pro and Cintiq 22. Both had functional shortcuts in TVPaint, sadly I don't think I can progress much more until Xavier returns and takes a look inside the code :/

[D.T. Nethery]

The tests we conducted were on Windows and MacOS, with an Intuos Pro and Cintiq 22. Both had functional shortcuts in TVPaint, sadly I don't think I can progress much more until Xavier returns and takes a look inside the code :/

Is JeremyN the Mac programming specialist still there at TVPaint Co. ? Because now schwarzgrau also confirms that my Flips shortcuts (Flips Manually) work on Windows, but not on MacOS. This seems to be a problem with how TVPaint communicates with Wacom Tablet Express Keys triggering shortcuts on MacOS only.

User schwarzgrau confirms that my Flips shortcuts also do not work for him with Wacom Express Keys:

By the way I just tried it and it works for me on Windows (Cintiq 22HD), but not on MacOS (Cintiq Companion 2).

[Dean]

Yes Jérémy is still part of the team, now to access the source code, remote work makes things a bit more complex. I will check with him.

[D.T. Nethery]

Yes Jérémy is still part of the team, now to access the source code, remote work makes things a bit more complex. I will check with him.

Ok. Thank you. I hope he can take a look at it .

To summarize what I know from my own tests with my Wacom Cintiq 21UX and Macbook Pro running Mojave (supplemented by tests run by schwarzgrau on both a Windows computer and Mac computer) -

• It does not seem to be a hardware issue. The Wacom Express Key buttons work to trigger their assigned shortcuts in every other software I use , including Harmony, Photoshop,
  Autodesk Sketchbook , and ALL other TVPaint shortcuts , except for Flip Manually shortcuts.

• Flip Basic works with the shortcut assigned to Wacom Express Key.

• Flip Directional works with the shortcut assigned to Wacom Express Key.

• Flip Manually does not work with the shortcut assigned to Wacom Express Key on Mac,
  but does work on Windows.

• All three Flips modes , Basic, Directional, Manually work fine when executed from pressing shortcut keys on the keyboard (on both Mac and Windows)
  but Flip Manually shortcut will not work when the shortcut is triggered by pressing Wacom Express Key button on Mac (but does work on Windows).

[Dean]

Okay we are going to focus our investigation towards the Manual flip, then!

Edit: just did the same tests with the Flip Manually on Matthieu's Mac and it worked, we are going to look further

[D.T. Nethery]

Okay we are going to focus our investigation towards the Manual flip, then!

Edit: just did the same tests with the Flip Manually on Matthieu's Mac and it worked, we are going to look further

Do you know which Wacom Driver Matthieu has installed ? I wonder if a Wacom Driver issue may be causing this? I may need to revert to an older Wacom Driver.
(although that would not explain why every other shortcut seems to work when assigned to a Wacom Express Key , EXCEPT for shortcuts for Flip Manually.)

[Dean]

Hello David, Matthieu is currently using version 6.3.42-1 of the driver