Copy and paste mystery Topic is solved

[David_Fine]

I am often so amazed at what TVPaint does, but when I encounter a basic function that seems to not work, I am baffled. Is it me? This may be related to a previous question, but not specifically. This concerns the simple task of copying and pasting. Not incidents on the timeline, but artwork in the incident. So I select an area of artwork using the lasso and I want to copy it on to a number of other incidents. Select, copy and then select a range of incidents and hit paste. I expect that bit of selected artwork to be pasted on to the other images, but the strangest thing happens. All the incidents disappear from the timeline! Yikes! Thank goodness for undo!

I hope I have properly explained this simple task, which is exactly how I would do it any other graphics app, like Photoshop. How does hitting paste make the selected incidents disappear? In fact, it replaces the incidents with a single new blank incident with only the selected bit on it and nothing else. I know that I can create a new layer and place the bit on that layer and then merge and then "recompute many incidents into one incident with several exposures", but it's a heck of a lot of steps to just paste something. Surely I must be doing something wrong and so I ask, fellow community forum users, for your advice. Thank you!

[Paul Fierlinger]

One of the ways I do this is pretty straightforward; With the Free Cut Brush I cut the image with my mouse, take it to the layer with the sequence of images I need to paste the image upon, hold the image in place and click, using my "go to next instance" key, I advance to the next instance, click on mouse/paste, advance, paste, advance paste and it's done.

If I'm dealing with too many frames, I paste the image on the first frame, undo, highlight all the frames to be pasted upon, and hit my key that has :Shape: Apply" assigned to it and all the underlined frames are done. You have come across this trick already but to explain the logic of what I have done, this is what goes on: I pasted the image on the first frame, undid this, underlined all the frames and re-did it -- TVP thinks it has replaced the image back on the first frame but I fooled TVP by underlining a lot of frames so TVP, unknowing, pasted the image on all the selected frames. If there happen to be hold frames in the lineup, I use "Recompute" (the stupid long name thing).

There must be at least 5 or 10 more ways of pasting on several frames and you'll hear about these from others.
Personally, I don't think there is anything strange that I cant just click and have them all appear as if the timeline were a single piece of paper. I am pasting on several sheets, so why would I find it objectionable that it takes two or three clicks to make it happen? But I don't need to do this too often. If you like to paste multiple frames all the time, I can understand you start thinking there must be a better way and there probably is -- I just can never remember them all.

BTW, do you have Multi Backup set in your preferences? You can set any number of backups up to 99 and anytime you hit Save, a new backup is created with a unique name (It's the date and precise time.) You can mess up, you can find previous saves and reload them. If you select a smaller number, like 10, your saves will rotate around and around so you can go back at any time and day ten times over and over again.

[furushil]

So I select an area of artwork using the lasso and I want to copy it on to a number of other incidents. Select, copy and then select a range of incidents and hit paste.

I assume that you are using Cmd+C to copy artwork. In TVpaint Cmd+C is for copying frames on the timeline, you cannot copy artwork on the canvas with that.
For your purpose you have to use "copy to brush" or the "Free Cut Brush" and then "stamp in place" or stamp it by hand -as Paul said.

Use Cmd+C and Cmd+V to copy & paste frames on timeline.
Use "Copy to brush" and "Stamp in place" to copy & paste artwork.

copy to brush.png (16.15 KiB) Viewed 32553 times

If you want to make it into a button it is under Set KeyStroke->Shape Select->Copy to Custom Brush

[David_Fine]

Thank you Paul and Furushil. These are good tips and I will use them, but it does confirm that TVPaint requires a multi step process to do this simple function which I feel should be as simple as hitting copy and then pasting to whatever is selected. One move, just as in any other application I know. Wonder why TVPaint requires these multi steps, or the trick that Paul describes. This is very odd to me. If I select a range and then paste, what I paste should just go on all the images in that range. Wonder what the logic is for not doing that.

In a related note, if I select an area and copy it, when I go to another incident and paste that selected area, instead of pasting it on top of the image, it pastes the selected area, but also deletes everything that existed on that incident. I expect it to paste it on top. Hate to refer to Photoshop again, but as I say, exactly as it would in Photoshop. Why is it different here? To me, counter intuitive and makes learning this harder, but maybe I am missing the reason for this.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Does Photoshop do this on a timeline layer? But I'm curios; why do you not want to use a separate layer; it's the most obvious solution that is even simpler than copy and paste and you did make it clear that this is not what you want to do? This baffles me and I can't think of any reason to avoid this solution.

[Elodie]

David, if you use Cut brush tool to copy and apply a drawing, it's acutally as fast as use à Select tool, hit ctrl + c then hit ctrl + v.

Most of the time, people used to Photoshop always think with "selection tool", when "Cut brush" is usually faster and more flexible to use

[furushil]

but it does confirm that TVPaint requires a multi step process to do this simple function

It is not a multi step process.
On my computer it is CMD+Shift+C to "copy to brush" and CMD+Shift+V to "paste in place" . Two buttons just like in every other application.

You just have to assign two keyboard shortcuts once.

I use the selection tool just as you described. Hit CMD+Shift+C, select multiple frames and hit CMD+Shift+V.

[David_Fine]

Sorry, you are right. Copy to brush and then paste in place, or stamp in place, does the trick. I just have to then use that "recompute many instances..." trick that Paul mentioned to get it back to how it was, which is another step, but I'm not complaining about that. I guess I was thinking more in terms of simple copy and paste rather than using a brush, but it's a different way of thinking which is easy to adapt to.

In terms of Paul's question about making a new layer and pasting to that, yes, that does work and how I did do it, but again, it means making a layer, pasting to it, timing it out over the frames you want it, then merging that layer, where I was thinking simply copy, select range, paste and you're done. The brush and stamp in place is closest to that, but also requires the recompute, which is no biggy once you know. In fact, it's all good, but since it did not paste as I expected, I thought I was doing something wrong.

Thanks for the helpful comments.

[ZigOtto]

... I just have to then use that "recompute many instances..." trick that Paul mentioned to get it back to how it was, which is another step, but I'm not complaining about that.

no need to recompute everytimes, you just have to force your "stamp-in-place" command to "respect" the Instances (working on heads only) ,
as I've already said in this thread, I often use the same way as yours (freehand selection, Copy to Brush, select target sequence, Paste-in-Place),
without invoking our ancestral "Recompute" thing.

here's my couple of buttons (hotkeys assignable as usually), if you're interested.

[Paul Fierlinger]

without invoking our ancestral "Recompute" thing.

I get it. Your fault. You never told me about this Z.O.

[ZigOtto]

I get it. Your fault. You never told me about this Z.O.

I think I did, a while ago, but I don't remember exactly when ...
maybe to somebody else, you know ... memory gap ...

[Paul Fierlinger]

But how do you use this? I copy, but paste does nothing; leaves all the images with the same drawings that were there but doesn't paste anything.

[Svengali]

Paul,
I think you have to freehand select what you want to copy before clicking the C icon.

Sven

[Paul Fierlinger]

Sven,
That's what I tried first and nothing happens either. Have you tested this script?

[Paul Fierlinger]

I got it working. Nice script and I have no idea why my previous tries weren't working because it's really a simple case of cut and paste.