Opacity Issues

[drunkim0nkey]

Hi, Im new here, I'm currently working on a sumi-e like animated short, so my team and I are all using watercolours to colour our animation in.
So here goes...

Since we're using watercolours, with multiple layers over lapping the layers. the front layers becomes see through(because of the watercolour effect), blending themselves into the background. Is there a setting/ technique to get rid of this effect? Like selecting theobjects drawn on the layer and converting them to what seems like a solid layer? We want to keep the watery effect on a textured background. But this issue will probably carry on through out the film..and at the moment.. its becoming very cluttered=S

Any advise/ suggestions would be very helpful^^

Thank you in advance^^

[slowtiger]

Tricky. Watercolours should blend with the BG, that's the way it is intended. If they weren't half transparent, they would not be watercolours.

If you really want to cut out your watercolour, you can't use the usual layer stencils because they will be exactly as transparent as the watercolour is. I tested to use the Magic Wand selection around the watercolour, then inverted the selection and filled it with colour. This gives you a solid in the shape of the watercolour which you can fill with a texture or any colour you like. You need to expoeriment a bit with the settings to get a smooth border, also you need to select any hole inside the watercoloured area as well.

The effect you will get that way will look like watercolour on paper scanned in and cut out.

[skomdra]

Possible solution, but little tricky to visualize the end result while you paint, I think what you want is that colors/layers don't mix. So, do it usual way, nontransparent, color everything. Then prepare a layer with animated paper texture (use stack of scanned watercolor textured paper, at least 50, then import into project) use scan cleaner on paper layer in order to get textured stencil, then select all the other layers and merge them. Then convert texture layer to stencil (little yellow box), or black stencil (little box under the yellow one turn to black), and select all frames in merged layer and press delete. You should get the transparency as in watercolor but without blending the layers, since you merged them. I know it's difficult to work non-intuitively with the focus on the end result, but sometimes you must.

[drunkim0nkey]

Possible solution, but little tricky to visualize the end result while you paint, I think what you want is that colors/layers don't mix. So, do it usual way, nontransparent, color everything. Then prepare a layer with animated paper texture (use stack of scanned watercolor textured paper, at least 50, then import into project) use scan cleaner on paper layer in order to get textured stencil, then select all the other layers and merge them. Then convert texture layer to stencil (little yellow box), or black stencil (little box under the yellow one turn to black), and select all frames in merged layer and press delete. You should get the transparency as in watercolor but without blending the layers, since you merged them. I know it's difficult to work non-intuitively with the focus on the end result, but sometimes you must.

Thanks for replying!! Glad to know theres people online willing to help^^

Im new to the program and I have the student version, so it might be missing some functions =S

Whats scan cleaner?? The process sounds complicated, but I'll give it a try anyways.

[skomdra]

Under Effects> Color > Scan Cleaner.. It is like luma key, makes white transparent.
Student, yes, but standard or professional? As I know, all this things are possible in standard version. It's not complicated, only problem is to get right texture, this you have to do by hand, pick the right paper in the art supply store, scan it, one by one and color correct it in order to get right balance of gray texture. Other things are only limited by your drawing skills and imagination

[malcooning]

Skmodra, your method will not render solid in the final result. it will still be transparent and will blend into the background, whereas drunkim0nkey asked if there's a way to make the layers solid over the background. Slowtiger's method is more to the point in this case but, as he mentioned, watercolors are not meant to be solid, therefore you should expect undesired results such as white fringes around solidly painted watercolor areas.

The way I would go about it is either use a method similar to Slowtiger's (with some differences), or I'd color the animation in with white in TVP first, and then apply watercolor textures to the painted fills. For instance, say you have an animated circle moving on the screen. Paint it's fill areas with a natural-looking brush (in this case an opaque brush) across all frames. Turn its stencil on, or use the preserve transparency button. Bring in watercolor textures as an animbrush and apply it to each of the white-filled frames.

Either way, you'll get solid painted areas moving over background. It'll never really look like watercolor unless it's transparent.

But if you post images of how it is now and how you want it to look, we'll have better idea of how to help you.

[slowtiger]

I could think of several ways to improve this, but all will be lots of work. Could be done for some cut-out animation where you create each element only once, but impossible to do with frame-by-frame animation in watercolour. Results can be improved with using blending modes like Multiply or Darken.

Chinese master animator Te Wei used torn silk paper and small feathers to create the illusion of watercolour strokes in motion.

Have a look at the work of NY animator Jeff Scher http://www.fezfilms.net/gallery.html. He's using not only watercolour, but I like his results and find it inspiring sometimes.

[Fabrice]

But if you post images of how it is now and how you want it to look, we'll have better idea of how to help you.

yes, I completely agree. Screenshots please !

[drunkim0nkey]

Heyy Guys!!^^ Its been a while since I've checked this, I've been busy frame painting and everything so yeah!
I thought I'd drop by to post a screen shot as requested, and to say we've finally resolved the issue!! By rendering the sequence of each layer that suffers from the opacity issue separately(into Tiffs). Then importing them into after effects. We then used the LumaKey to gets right of the white background generated, you only need to do this once then all the other layers are then cleared =D Just incase someone else was having the same issue =D

And Thank You againnn for all the advise and suggestions^^

[malcooning]

you can save time by doing that inside TVP without having to take it to AFX.

[Tubabaluba]

you can save time by doing that inside TVP without having to take it to AFX.

Hello TVPaint Forum

I read this link with great interest because this is exactly the challenge I have.
(I hope someone sees this although it´s an old link)
I decided to follow malcoonings advice: to do the whole process in TVP.
So now I have done everything described above: drawned the figure with watercolor, made a background with a pale color, merged the layers, and now I try to remove the backgrund from the figure with Luma key in TVP. I´ve tried all the different key-effects, but end up with something like this, shown in the picture attached, every time. As you can see, the edge is very sharp and ugly.
Is there anything I can do to smoothen the edge?



T

[Fabrice]

try the Stylise > Erode FX.

[Tubabaluba]

Thank you! That was just what was needed!:)

T