newbie alert!!

[shylevari]

Hello dear community, my name is Shy and i'm a 25 years old graphic design student, running a course in animation. My teacher only handles with Flash but i wanted a bitmap animation and not vector one for my final project - so ofcourse i have to learn the software myself

TVPaint is not as intuitive as I had hoped..
Hopefully you guys will be able to help me out.

The first issue I ran into was this:
In a certain scene in my movie you see a school of fish. I animated a single fish (a layer of line art and a layer of fill color) and now i want to make it into a "symbol" of sorts and duplicate it dozens of times.
In my search i realised TVP has no symbol system and came up with two possible solution, although non seemed optimal.
The first on is to use the keyframer for each of the fish, thus ending up with dozens of layers, each containing hundreds of key frames (or instances I think its called here), and to repeat the process again for the fill layer.
The second method is to export the layers as a DEEP project and re-import it as an animated brush.. although i couldn't figure how to make the brush "go" across the timeline but without moving it's position..

And what if, say, I will find a mistake in the original fish cycle? am I doomed??

Please help me deal with this and not regret that I didn't chose the vector path..

[slowtiger]

You could use the fish animation as the seed in a particle animation.

For good effect it can help to have 2 or 3 layers of that with different settings. Also you could easily duplicate the 1st fish and change its timing, so you'll have variation in the swarm.

[ZigOtto]

... I animated a single fish ...

a cycle "on place", or a "in/out" animation, crossing through the camera field ?

... although i couldn't figure how to make the brush "go" across the timeline but without moving it's position ...

you just need 2 keys,
one for the the start-point (say fr0), and the other one for the end (go to fr100 or whatever, and "create a Key"), now you can modify (or not) the position (x, y, z).
if your source is a looping animbrush, check the "start" and "end" behavior to "Loop" mode in the Render tab.

[shylevari]

Thank you for the quick reply guys!

@ slowtiger: I have NOOO idea what a "particle animation" is

@ZigOtto : a single fish staying within the frames limits. How can I "create a key"? the right clicking on the frame menu has no such option. Anyway, what I ment was that if I just single click on the work area, the brush doesn't work. I have to click and drag it around in order for it to "go" with the animation. Is that realy how one gets about duplicating a cycle? What if, for example, i have a walk cycle drawn one, 16 key frames, and I want my character to walk across the screen? What I am looking for is some sort of "nesting" technique, a way to put a work upon scene (with layers and all) whithin another scene, self contained, in the form of a single layer. At the moment it is such a husle I feel it'be easier to do it by hand over a real lighttable - like I did last year =/

[slowtiger]

OK, you need to get aquainted with the FX stack. FX stack - shylevari, shylevari - FX stack. Have a beer.

The 2 effects you should test are Motion -> Keyframer and Rendering -> Particles Generator.

Start with the Keyframer. The first tab is pretty obvious: values for position etc. But open the second tab first (called "Render") and choose your fish layer as source so you see what you're going to move. Create a new layer. Go to first frame. Click the "C" in the first tab to set a first keyframe. Go to another frame (at the end), change position, keyframe is created automatically. Select all frames, hit "Apply".

Do this more than once, to get used to the workflow. Then try your luck with the particles.

[Paul Fierlinger]

O.K., Shylevari, Sven just now posted this script in time to save you all the FX stack work :
http://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 115#p39115" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[shylevari]

Wow, this forum is really nice
@ Slowtiger: The particles thingy sure sounds intriguing. I already got the hang of the Keyframer but i thought i was too overcombersom on the file with all the key frames on ones it creates (I animate on twos), plus it didn't feel intuitive enough (like most of the software).

@ Paul: So what Sven did with the code is simply to allow it to "stamp" right? The thing I complained about you having to move the mouse about in order for the brush to work? Sounds perfect, not really time saving, but at least it will be accurate And say I wanted each fish to have a slightly different color? Should i change the tint of the brush in some way, or is it better to run the FX tint on the layer afterwards?

Thank u very much guys! I was afraid I am dealing with an unaproachable program since I could oly find tutorials for it in French. I am going to film green screen the entire day today so I will test these suggestions tommorow

[shylevari]

I wrote a very nice progress report, which didn't get posted. poo.

@SlowTiger: The particle thingy, makes the whole thing random and thus unsuitable for my animation. The key frame bit... I now know how to "tween" like in flash. Thank you Although, if I don't require any movement between the keyframes, then there is no need for them, and I can move a single frame, select all frames, and click "Apply FX Stack" just the same, right?

BTW, I found out that I can perform those simple X Y shifts without usinf the FX Stack at all: I move the frame with the move position tool, select all frames in the layer, and press the ENTER key, and it applys to all