User tips for a newby

[David_Fine]

I just learned that hitting the Z key puts the pen in resize mode, which is a great shortcut. I wonder if anyone has any little things like that which may not be obvious to the new user, but which they find really useful. If so, please post them here! Even if they are second nature to you, I may not know about them.

Here's one I did myself. I made a button which toggles on and off the main, palette and tool panels. One button pops all three panels on and off, which is handy for quickly clearing them out of the way if I need more screen space. See, I'm not looking for earth shattering secrets, just little hints like that.

[Peter Wassink]

Good idea

Maybe because of its age TVPaint has lots of these little semi-hidden wonders.
like your toggle button... did you try F12?
Be ready to keep discovering this kind of stuff for many a year

One powerful feature, that is not directly obvious is the Enter key.
This will repeat whatever was the last input for each of the main panel tool types.
When combined with a selected range of frames you can very fast and directly modify an animation.
say for instance move a character to a different spot. you use the pan tool to shift a character on one frame, press u to undo, double click under the layer(to select all frames) then hit enter...


but the problem is off course that for most experienced users its hard to know whats not obvious.

[hellofilms]

I have used TVpaint for a time but just made shorter things. Coming from the "animting on paper"-tradition I am trying to get comfortable with animating in the computer.
And there are these small great features everywhere.
I discover things and try to find the best way to work.

It would be interesting from you TVpaint animators nto hear how you animate. Not the drawingitself but going from the sketch to the final image in TVpaint. What kind of tool and shortcut setup do you use that make you most comfortable with the workflow?

[Sewie]

The best advice I can give is keep an eye on this forum. There are often great tips, custom buttons and brushes exchanged that can help a lot.

[furushil]

If so, please post them here! Even if they are second nature to you, I may not know about them.

here are some things that I can think of right now (in random order)

-the difference between the keyboard shortcut "go left/right" and "go to next/previous instance". I was using "go left/right" at the beginning but now mostly using "go to next/previous instance"

- you can hide a layer by clicking on the small arrow on the left next to the layer name.

-the importance of groups, you can apply effects and transformations to groups etc.

-image marks! use keyboard shortcuts to go to the next/previous image mark (very useful for keys)

-there is an image mark panel (windows->tool->image mark panel) with that panel you can delete all image marks on one layer

-in a custom panel you can click between (in the tiny space) two buttons to e.g. paste a new button between them, that way you can organize your panel

-you can rename a section in the custom panel by right clicking on the horizontal line

rename.png (13.48 KiB) Viewed 16943 times

-you can double click on an instance to quickly rename it (not below, but directly on the instance thumbnail)

-maybe a good tip is to just right click on everything and you may find new options that you did not know before!

- you can quickly jump to a frame with the keyboard shortcut Shift+F (go to frame)

-if you are working with a alpha channel, you can change the background at the bottom left to any color you need
(if you are going throughout the particle generator library/browser make sure to set your alpha/background color to black otherwise you may not see some particle presets)

-always keep an eye on your smooth setting, set it to medium or best to avoid pixelation!

smooth.png (18.75 KiB) Viewed 16943 times

-you can also erase with the flood fill tool. it is very handy if you want to paint your character opaque.

-everytime you pick a color, it is being saved in the bin.

color bin.png (14.95 KiB) Viewed 16943 times

-you can make an animated cut brush by first selecting more than one frame in the timeline and then cut out the brush

-you can save cut brushes (e.g. body parts of a character) in a custom panel

[papparaffie]

Hit "C" when you have cut a brush > this enabeles rotaring the brush.

Hit "A" to make the layer you are currently working on shake.
This feature is very usefull when you are working on a lot of layers. It will help you to determine if you are working on the right layer.

[David_Fine]

These are all really good little tips. Thank you so much for submitting them. Elsewhere, I griped that I cannot order the buttons in a palette, so I am interested to learn that I can insert a button by clicking on the space. I will try that... Cheers!