Automatic coloring

[Lukas]

I remember seeing automatic coloring for line animation years ago. (I think it was in Mirage)

Is there a way to use the Pixel Tracker and auto paint to simulate this somehow?
Am I overlooking something?
Are there any plugins available?

Manually using the fill bucket to click all those frames seems a waste of time and money anno 2013...

[Elodie]

You can simply use the Preserve alpha channel + Filled rectangle.

Apply the filled rectangle on all your drawing space, select the other instances, then hit [enter] and tada : all your lines are colored

[Lukas]

Oops, I wasn't very clear, I didn't mean coloring the lines. But the shapes inside those lines

[Sewie]

Have you seen the FigFill thread ?

[Lukas]

Yes, and I've been using the tool with pleasure

But it's only for colouring the entire character in 1 colour. Not colouring lots of different parts, (red nose, green hat, etc. etc.)

[Paul Fierlinger]

Any frame you rename by double clicking on it will become a tracking frame. This means that once you copy this frame elsewhere on the timeline it will be colored at the same time as you color any of the other frames of that name. I place a [*] in front of the number.

But Mads Juul and I have created a plugin that streamlines this feature.

Tracker 07b.tvpx

(152 KiB) Downloaded 623 times

To use it:
select one or any number of frames and then press the "AUTO" button. This will rename all those frames.
Then after coloring the frame, press the green "T" button, which will automatically track all the copied frames and color them at the same time.
To absolutely streamline all these moves do this:
Make a keyboard shortcut and assign it:
Tracker 07b:Tracker:Next Instance

Doing this will not change anything in the normal use of this key, that is, you can use it all the time you need to advance your cursor to the next instance. But if the instance happens to be one with an * before its name, it will get colored.

To create a separate layer for coloring, click on the thumb of the original line drawing layer and use the white "x2" icon under the Layer tab of the Animator Panel. This will create an exact copy of the layer, including the changed numbers but clears the line drawings to ready the layer for coloring.

Sandra, who does all the coloring doesn't need to be given any information now. She just goes about her business of coloring and whenever she colors a renamed instance she will find its copies already colored when she comes upon them. The only thing she had to do was to import the plugin and assign it to her "next instance" key.So coloring copied frames is now absolutely automatic. The only thing needed is for TVP to hard code the plugin into the next release (hint-hint).

[Lukas]

Hi Paul, that sounds nice!

I've tried following your steps but I'm not quite following.

Do I understand correctly if the Panel is to automatically color identical frames?

[Paul Fierlinger]

That's right; once you've colored a renamed frame and you copy it elsewhere on the same layer, all the copies get colored at the same time. This also applies to the line drawing frames; if you decide later to change something in your drawing, all the other copies of that drawing assume the change. Sometimes you have to be very careful, because maybe you DON'T want all the other drawings to be changed, in which case you should once more change the name of that one unique frame.

[Sewie]

But it doesn't track, for instance, the color of the characters pants across the screen does it? I'm trying to understand because what I think Lucas is asking for is a function that follows the different colors of you characters and colors them as they move from frame to frame.

But perhaps I'm wrong...

Is there a tread somewhere that explains this panel with some visuals, Paul? I can't find it.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Oh. Is that the question? You use the fill, undo, select sequence, redo trick. As long as the point of fill falls inside the shirt area of each frame, the shirt gets filled. If the shirt has moved away, the fill bucket might miss its target and fill the whole frame.

[Svengali]

Or maybe the Auto Pick Color Option explained on Page 6-40 of the manual about how to setup the Light Table for color sampling from the previous frame, using the ink outlines from the frame above to fill to?

It's not automatic but it streamlines the inking process a bit.

Sven

paul: is this paint-auto-updating-on-duplicately-named-frames something built into TVPaint 10 or do you need Mads button/script to work it?

[Paul Fierlinger]

Sven. The only built in part is the functionality of the renamed frame.

[Svengali]

I downloaded the buttons and see now how it works. nice. Gives me ideas! Thanks for sharing. Thanks Mads, too.

Sven

[Paul Fierlinger]

It is a mystery how some shares get noticed while others become akin to written with invisible ink. I have shared this new feature on three other occasions with no reactions.

[Lukas]

But it doesn't track, for instance, the color of the characters pants across the screen does it? I'm trying to understand because what I think Lucas is asking for is a function that follows the different colors of you characters and colors them as they move from frame to frame.

But perhaps I'm wrong...

You're right, that's what I'm looking for. And if anyone has got a clue...Please post! I'm pretty sure Mirage was somehow capable of doing this with a plugin or something.

Paul's script is nice too though But does something else.