4 noob questions about TVpaint.

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Zetariver
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4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by Zetariver »

Hello. I have 4 questions.

Is it possible to change colors of a layer keeping its opacity?
I want to do something like Photoshop's Tool bar menu "Edit - Fill" with"Preserve Transparency" option checked.
Something like this.
This layer has 2 squares. Left is R255 G0 B0 A255.Right is R255 G0 B0 A150
1-red.jpg
1-red.jpg (6.65 KiB) Viewed 25960 times
I want to change it like this. Left is R0 G0 B255 A 255.Right is R0 G0 B255 A150
2-blue.jpg
2-blue.jpg (6.6 KiB) Viewed 25960 times
And I want to make a selection area that keeps opacity from a layer.
Are there any functions like photoshop's "select pixels" in TVPaint?
I want to make a selection area from a layer like this.
Left selection's alpha is 255 but right selections's alpha is 150.
3_selection.jpg
3_selection.jpg (9.62 KiB) Viewed 25960 times
And TVPaint does not have Clipping Mask like Photoshop? It's very useful to paint shadows.

Last Question.
I always paint drawings without antialiasing. I mean I always paint zaggy drawings and smooth it in composite software.
but, when I paint lines using PenBrush size 1.00 and its pressure option on, I can't paint anything if I draw really softly. Is there any option to keep minimum pixel of PenBrush? If antialiasing option is off, minimum pixel must be 1 pixel and its alpha value is always 255, so I want to keep it regardless of how much pressure, strength I draw with. Is it possible?
Zetariver
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by Zetariver »

Last question will be clear with this picture. Please see this.
I draw a line using PenBrush stroke size1.00, size pen pressure on and no Antialiasing. It get something like upper one if I draw it softly.
I want to draw lines like below that keeps minimum 1 pixel width. It is possible in Photoshop.
4_penpressure.jpg
4_penpressure.jpg (11.97 KiB) Viewed 25958 times
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slowtiger
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by slowtiger »

Two keywords: Stencil and Preserve Alpha. Read about these in the manual, play around with them, use them. (Questions 1 - 3)

Thin line: In my experience this depends heavily on your personal habits while drawing. I manage to keep a "middle pressure" on the pen which produces a fine line while the pen size maximum is set to something thicker. Try different settings, and don't forget that you can edit the pressure sensitivity curve as well.
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Elodie
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by Elodie »

To complete Slowtiger's words :
profile editor.jpg
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Zetariver
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by Zetariver »

Thank you for you comments and advices.

I am reading the manual right now and I read about Stencil and Preserve Transparency, but is that all? Um. It's a drawback.
Clipping Layer is much easier. And I push one keyboard shortcut and can change color using "fill with preserve transparency" in Photoshop.

And about pen pressure, I tried Elodie's way, but it kills pen pressure because if I use large size pen, I can't draw thin lines.
I am sure if you use pen with anti-aliasing option off,you never need to draw lines smaller than 1 pixel(I know minimum pixel is 1 pixel but let me say it). You try to draw but nothing can be drawn? It means nothing. I just want to draw jaggy lines with no opacity changes to do easy flood filling. All painting softwares(Photoshop,CLIP STUDIO PAINT) I am using understand the meaninglessness and give me an option to keep the minimum 1 pixel for no-antialiasing pen. It's a huge drawback.
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slowtiger
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by slowtiger »

It's a huge drawback.
No, it's just different.

It's normal for everyone used to one software to feel lost when using a different software for the first time. In TVP things are done in a different way, so all your little tricks to overcome Photoshop's deficits are of little use here. (I was the same when I started here ...)

1. Nearly nobody uses a 1 px line here. TVP is excellent at mimicking natural media drawing, with all the expressivity of a dynamic line. Some people like a more graphic approach, a clean line without width changes, and TVP can do that as well. Since most of us work in HDTV resolution, a 1 px line might be too small to be visible on screen. Something 3 px wide is perceived as a very fine line on the big screen, along with anit-aliasing.
I just want to draw jaggy lines with no opacity changes to do easy flood filling.
2. There's no need to cope with jagged outlines in TVP just to get a clean fill. Instead, most of us colour their animation on a separate layer. Make yourself familiar with the flood fill and its modes, like "above/below" and "display", and play around with the "expand" value. And that's just the beginning.

3. While the non-destructivity of clipping masks in PS is nice, TVP can't do that. Why? Because TVP deals with a much higher amount of bitmaps (each for any combination of layers and frames) than PS. Doing animation means dealing with hundreds or thousands of bitmaps. TVP does this exceptionally fast, but this comes for the price of cutting off anything outside the project window, and some other restrictions.

It is, however, totally possible to create masking layers for the sole purpose of using them repeatedly. You'll get the hang of it quite soon. Read the forum and search, most tasks have already been done by other people.
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Elodie
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by Elodie »

Try with this custom brush made for you (Merry Christmas <:o) )
for zetariver.tvpx
(54.5 KiB) Downloaded 927 times
custom tool for Zetariver.png
custom tool for Zetariver.png (83.38 KiB) Viewed 25900 times
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D.T. Nethery
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by D.T. Nethery »

slowtiger wrote:
I just want to draw jaggy lines with no opacity changes to do easy flood filling.
2. There's no need to cope with jagged outlines in TVP just to get a clean fill. Instead, most of us colour their animation on a separate layer. Make yourself familiar with the flood fill and its modes, like "above/below" and "display", and play around with the "expand" value. And that's just the beginning.
Yes, it is just as Slowtiger says. Look into the TVPaint User Manual to understand the Flood Fill Tool (and also Filled Stroke and Filled Rectangle tools useful for some sorts of flood fill/paintbucket coloring. )

See LESSON 6 of the user manual.

When Slowtiger mentions : "most of us colour their animation on a separate layer." Here is a picture to show what he means (illustration from user manual , Lesson 6 ) =
TVP  Color On Layer BELOW Line Art.jpg
TVP Color On Layer BELOW Line Art.jpg (78.34 KiB) Viewed 25883 times
The advantage to having the color on a separate layer below the line art is that you can easily change the color of the fill layer under the lines , or change the color the lines on top of the fill layer underneath.


You may also want to consider the Plug-In called Lazy Brush which offers many refinements to basic flood fill painting. -

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=6901" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



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Zetariver
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by Zetariver »

Thank you Elodie. I downloaded it and used it, but still it tries to draw 0 pixel lines If I uncheck anti-aliasing option. It does what my 4th picture depicts.
And D.T. Nethery, thank you for your tips. Lazy Brush looks nice.

Ah and one more question, is it normal to make only 1 base color layer?
I always separate all colors, I mean I have like, a layer with hair color, a layer with skin color, layer with shirts color, layer with trousers layer for boots color in photoshop, but It's not good in TVPaint? I think so, because TVPaint has no layer group, it will be messy.(I know it has something like tag group, but it does not look compared with photoshop's.) And If I make lots of layers, TVPaint gets slow?

And yes, I know what you guys are saying. Lots of TVPaint users won't need to use pen tool without anti-aliasing because its flood fill is more powerful than photoshop's(but it's similar to Clip Studio Paint's and RETAS's I think.So I can imagine what TVPaint can do.), but I need it, because I use After Effects and it has nice 3rd party plugins which are really good at processing no-anti-aliasing bitmap images, like OLM smoother, P-soft's anti-aliasing filter, or K.W Effects.Those plug-ins can add anti-aliasing to zaggy bitmap images and blur areas where base colors and shadow colors meet and can keep its contour line intact. I always have 3 layers. Contour layer, base color layer(layer mode normal) and shadow color layer(layer mode multiply) and merge them and render them, and import them into AE and change the shadow color(that multiply layer made. It's kinda dull because it's made from multiply layer + normal base color, so I change all shadows manually in AE.)and blur them and add anti-aliasing. So If I am stick with zaggy bitmap images, I don't need to think about how do I flood-fill,how to draw animations that has lots of opacity changes.

I think some RETAS users(including OLM)do what I do. It's a popular way of making 2D animation in my country. I know TVPaint think highly of warm, hand-written, analog animations, but I like typical cell-painting animation.

And I understand what slowtiger said about clipping mask. It will slow things down, but photoshop can do that because they have video layer. Video layer is something like animation layer in TVPaint, and they can be used as clipping mask, so I thought TVPaint could do that in much better way, but yeah Photoshop's animation function is really bad. Its timeline interface is really bad, its light table is bad too, and worst part is, It's so slow. Soooo slow that I can not make an animation, but AE has Alpha or luma matte..ah sorry AE isn't painting software. I know It's a difference. I just expected too much.
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slowtiger
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by slowtiger »

is it normal to make only 1 base color layer?
You can have as many layers as you want. No limits.

Could you perhaps post an example of your finished animation so we can understand which result you try to achieve? I'm puzzled about the part where you try to "improve" jaggy bitmaps - that's something I wouldn't do, I prefer to work with material in a fitting resolution (my bitmaps get really big this way). See http://www.enigmation.de for my work.

The trick is to know which software does which jobs best and fastest. There's lots of stuff nearly any software in the field is able to do, in this case it's a matter of speed and maybe not breaking the workflow by switching to other programs. And there's the stuff only one software is really able to do. I'm quite happy with my combo of TVP, PS, and AnimeStudio. I don't need AFX or 3D (right now).
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Zetariver
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by Zetariver »

Nice works slowtiger. So many long length animation works. I can't make that much.
I make flash contents using bitmap images(I hate vector images), and always make small images to keep swf small for viewers sake.
I can't show my works here, but I always make something like OLM's Pokemon cartoon things, and my workflow is something like this.
vault_robot.jpg
Picture No1 is the zaggy aliased drawing with monotonous shadows,(which I want to make in TVPaint.). It's the base painting. I changed the color, blurred it and added anti-aliasing in After Effects. That is the No2.
And No3 is a matte image made from No2 image. And I made texture using No3 matte image, it's No4.
Finally I combine No2 and No4 to make No5 image.

So aliased images are important for me to to make clean matte and texture and of course to keep quality.
AE plug-ins make it easy for me to control animation quality, because it adds same effects throughout animation.
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slowtiger
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by slowtiger »

From a quick look I'd say you could save 2 steps of this in TVP.
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Zetariver
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by Zetariver »

Maybe I can, but I will need more time to do it. I am not good at using anti-aliasing pen.
Svengali
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by Svengali »

Zetariver wrote: I always paint drawings without antialiasing. I mean I always paint zaggy drawings and smooth it in composite software.
but, when I paint lines using PenBrush size 1.00 and its pressure option on, I can't paint anything if I draw really softly. Is there any option to keep minimum pixel of PenBrush? If antialiasing option is off, minimum pixel must be 1 pixel and its alpha value is always 255, so I want to keep it regardless of how much pressure, strength I draw with. Is it possible?
If you want a continuous non-antialiased line, DON'T use pressure sensitivity for SIZE. Instead, set the set SIZE to NONE [C] and, while you're at it, set the size value to .75. You should get a continuous, single pixel width, jaggy line without breaks.

If you want continuous non-antialiased variable size jaggy line, USE pressure sensitivity for SIZE [P] and enter some max size value, but also (as Elodie suggests) set the PROFILE for SIZE... but start the curve above zero on the Y axis.
aliased lines in TVPaint.png
aliased lines in TVPaint.png (58.16 KiB) Viewed 25822 times
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Zetariver
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Re: 4 noob questions about TVpaint.

Post by Zetariver »

Thanx Svengali. I need pen pressure, so I should edit pressure profile.
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