Peg Holes Registration in TVPaint - an observation

[D.T. Nethery]

I'm not sure where to post this ... it is not a technical problem, and it's not a new feature ... so I guess this would count as "content sharing" (although there is nothing to download or add to TVPaint , it's already contained in the program). This might be useful information to someone.


An observation about the Peg Holes Registration tool:

Recently I have been consulting for a client who is hand drawing his animation on paper, scanning the drawings, then coloring the scanned drawings in TVPaint.

In the past I've always recommended placing a strip of black electrician's tape along the path where the peg holes pass over the scanner, which causes the peg hole shapes to be scanned in solid black. This is makes it very easy for TVPaint's Peg Holes Registration tool to find the peg hole shapes and register them in tight alignment, so there is no jitter on the drawings. That is still what I would recommend as standard operating procedure for working with scans of hand drawn animation.

Scanning the drawings like this makes the peg holes registration very accurate:

TVPaint Peg Holes Reg_solid_black_shapes.png (72.87 KiB) Viewed 7523 times

The arrangement of the type of scanner I have used in the past, with an Auto-Document Feeder attachment on top of the standard flatbed scanner, is like this:

(the strip of black tape behind the peg holes makes them show up as solid black shapes on the scans)


However, when I started with this client I discovered he had already scanned several of his scenes without the recommended strip of black tape on the scanner path , so the scanned drawings had the peg holes visible , but as light grey shapes, not solid black shapes. In a few cases the peg hole shapes were very light grey. With the type of document scanner he is using (Epson EF-400) he has been unable to discover where to attach a strip of black tape . It may be that this type of scanner doesn't make it possible to do that ? (I'm not familiar with this model of Epson scanner)


What I was happy to discover in this case is that TVPaint's Peg Holes Registration tool will still work to register the peg holes, even if the peg hole shapes are not solid black shapes, as long as the entire peg hole is visible.


Light grey peg hole shapes will work:

TVPaint Peg Holes Reg_grey_peg_hole_shapes_will_work.png (57.87 KiB) Viewed 7523 times

Even these very light grey peg hole shapes will work (the entire hole shape is still visible, which gives the Peg Hole tracker enough visible pixels to work with):

TVPaint Peg Holes Reg_very_light_grey_shapes.png (51.43 KiB) Viewed 7523 times

[2dbert]

That's very good to know, thank you!

[Jean Th]

Thank you for sharing this information. We have a solution to find with our Brother scanners and its feeder, and I'll have to check if it works without blackening the part where the pegs are.