Getting brush from Guideline Image

[kelanhordos]

Is anyone aware of anyway you can "capture" a guideline image into a brush to paste into your project?

To elaborate, if I have a model sheet as a guideline image outside my canvas, I can use shortcuts to bring up windows 10 "snipping" tool and take a screenshot of my guideline/reference image, and then use Edit>Clipboard>Paste Brush to get the screen shot of the reference imported as a brush. I can then draw on top of this or manipulate it. This is a bit cumbersome, and I am wondering if there is another way inside TVPaint to accomplish this.

If not, would this kind of thing be possible in a future version if there is no way, or would anyone aside from me find it useful? Perhaps also if the opposite function were available as well where you could take your brush and create a guideline image without having to export your brush and import as a guideline. This might provide an alternative to the similar function of the endless canvas that is quite handy for putting reference/notes in other animation software outside the canvas.

Please let me know if I need to put this second part into the feature request section.

Thanks

[Peter Wassink]

i was gonna suggest this: "take a screenshot of my guideline/reference image, and then use Edit>Clipboard>Paste Brush to get the screen shot of the reference imported as a brush"
but then you already came with it yourself. So i am a bit confused what your question is.
if you want to be able to interact with the guideline image you could consider simply enlarging (cropping) the canvas to have the image sit inside the project.
i believe a request for an infinite canvas, which is a cool concept... is definitely not gonna happen with TVPaint anytime soon.

If you simply want to improve the flexibility of putting images/custombrushes/screenshots up as guidelines, this i would find a very valid request,
Having to use The image library, is cumbersome, one needs to go through a couple of unnecessary hoops in order to put up an image as a guideline.
i think something that would allow you to directly put up the current custombrush as a guideline would help ease the workflow...

maybe this could be achieved with an extra tab on the guideline image requester (see image)

tvp - library.png (34.3 KiB) Viewed 1751 times

[kelanhordos]

Well, basically I am just wondering if there is some way within Tvpaint already to do what the screen shot workaround is doing that would make it a bit quicker/intuitive, ie if the cutting tool could capture outside the canvas. It doesn't seem to be the case but I keep finding settings and other things out about Tvpaint that somehow I missed over the years, so I thought I would check if I'm overlooking something.

I understand the infinite canvas is impossible, and have used an extended canvas as you suggested in the past, but working at higher resolutions and then extending it further for that bogs things down too much when it comes to flipping and with the lighttable/out of pegs. In the past I would have my reference in the canvas on a seperate layer and move it around as needed, but that is a bit cumbersome at times switching between the layers, etc. I started trying out guidelines, and with a shortcut to be able to quickly go into edit mode to move them around I have found them to be more useful currently.

I was thinking about how If you could quickly create guidelines from within the canvas quicker as you mentioned, that seems like it could be helpful for similar functionality without the need for the infinite/extended canvas.