Anti Aliasing problem needs fixing badly!

[David_Fine]

I'm unclear what this means. I don't even use a mouse with TVPaint. What mini arrows are DT referring to? If I use Transform to move something and turn off anti aliasing, can I rely on it not degrading the image at all if I am only moving and not rotating or resizing? Or does "smart" achieve this just as well?

Any tips on the above post regarding the Cut Brush settings? Would love to get some definitive info on what those are meant to do, or if this can be found in the manual or not.

[furushil]

"smart" was introduced in the TVP 10.0.9 update.

TVPaint Animation 10.0.9 is available !

-New Antialiasing mode in the position tool: smart ( none for translation, best for rotation and stretch )

Basically, when you leave it on "smart" the program sets the smoothing to "none" if you just move the pixels around and to "best" when your rotate or scale your artwork.
You can just leave it on "smart" all the time.
Sometimes "best" leaves artifacts around the edges, but I have not seen them in a while and they are barely visible. That is why you have the "medium" option. With medium you don't get artifacts.

You can also learn more about the different options and artifacts here (it is an old thread, so "smart" was not available at that time): viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5711&p=51696" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Cut-brush tool options can be found on page 188 (section 7-18) in the manual:

If you select one of the five icons in the main panel, the Cut Brush panel appears in place of the tool panel.
You may:
* Create a brush by deleting at the same time the area in which it is located on the screen (Cut option in the popup menu).
* Smooth the cut brush (see lesson 3: smooth the contours of a surface).
* Remove as many transparent pixels as possible around the brush (Optimize option).
* The Display option is used to cut your brush through the visible layers. This is referred to as deep cut. Below, the sun, cloud and sky are placed on three different layers. The current layer is the cloud layer:

* With the Keep option you may keep all the previous brush tool parameters (refer to the following section to study the various parameters available). So if this parameter is not set, the new brush tool parameters will be initialized with their default values.
* The Brush Smooth option is only accessible if the Keep parameter is not set. It is coherent, because if the Keep parameter is checked, the previous Smooth option of the brush tool will be kept. This Brush Smooth option is a way to create a new brush tool with default parameters (the Keep parameter is not set), with only setting the Smooth parameter of this brush tool with the Brush Smooth option value of the Custom Brush tool.

[David_Fine]

Excellent explanation of the smart tool. That's what I thought, but now I know for sure. Great. I still don't know why there are any options instead of TVPaint just doing the best always, as Photoshop does.

Thanks for the reference to the manual pages for Cut Brush. I couldn't find it because in the manual, it's listed under Custom Brush. Funny that the tool is called Cut Brush, but the manual calls it Custom Brush. Could add that to the list of things to fix in the manual. I can't see any visual difference when I choose Optimize. It would be good to know what it is meant to achieve. I find the manual seems to sometimes explain what something does without actually explaining what is achieved in the real world. In this case, it removes transparent pixels, but who wants to pick up pixels which are transparent? That means they are not really pixels anyway, so why would that be an option?

The AAliasing option is not explained in manual. I know what it means, but again, what does it do here? Choosing or not choosing it seems to make no difference at all that I can see, so that's why I am unclear about it. It sounds like for most of the time, nothing should be selected in order to get the best results. Display option is good to know about, but the way it's explained, I wonder why the option is not simply called "visible layers" since that's how it's referred to in the manual. That would be an immediate clue as to what the function is.

Anyway, in a nutshell, would I be best served by leaving everything in those options alone? Does manipulating an image using the Transform tool give superior results? I'm thinking maybe it does, but it would be good to know if one tool or another gives better results.

[Elodie]

David, "optimize" allows you to "cut" extra transparent pixels when you cut à brush.

I'm on my phone right now, so it's Hard to explaine. Let's try anyway.

I cut this circle (the lines around are the selection)

Code: Select all

 _____
|  O  |
|_____|

When i'll draw, my cursor will be like :

Code: Select all

O
  +

(O is my brush, + is my cursor).

If I want to have O on my cursor, I hit optimize and it will cut extra transparent pixels. So, my brush won't be this :

Code: Select all

 _____
|  O  |
|_____|

But this :

Code: Select all

 __
|O|

No extra space

[David_Fine]

Oh I see. So if you draw a large box around a small thing, the brush will automatically shrink to the size of the item only and not include the blank area you selected when you dragged the box too big. So a quick and easy way of making a brush which is only the size of the pixels. If that's it, then thanks for that explanation. Done very well on your phone too!

[Elodie]

So a quick and easy way of making a brush which is only the size of the pixels. If that's it, then thanks for that explanation.

That's it !

Done very well on your phone too!

Thank you

[David_Fine]

So here is my suggested rewording for explaining the optimization in that tool: Limits the brush size to the pixels in the selected area only.

You're welcome.

By the way, I know I keep harping on about how Photoshop just does these things without all these settings. Is that because it is really, really hard to make this work as simply as Photoshop does, or is it that there is a particular decision to give these options, even though you could do it more like Photoshop does? That is, it just does the best always and without all these options. Even Optimize seems pointless. Why would you ever not want to only select the pixels? I notice that the Transform tool effectively optimizes by only selected a box around the actual pixels, so why do we need this option for a brush instead of it just doing that? Seems to me that these tools could be so simple if they were just designed to always use the best option to retain quality under all circumstances. Who wants any less than that?

[Svengali]

A few, off the top of my head, reasons to NOT always optimize a cutbrush:
1. If you want to use a cutbrush in a tiling pattern where you control how much spacing there is between the repeating cutbrush pixel image.
2. If you are collecting cutbrushes from multiple frames, you may want or need them all to maintain a common, snap-able cursor point so they can be automatically re-registered when stamping them in some other location (see also Animbrush below).
3. If you want to be able to invert the cutbrush so that the pixel area and the alpha area are to be reversed, while maintaining the same dimensions as the original cutbrush.
4. If you want to capture an off-center image and be able to flip it horizontally and/or vertically, precisely (automatically and symmetrically) mirroring its placement relative to the cutbrush's original center.
5. Easy color separation re-registration.
6. Image processing in a script often depends on being able to read the original cutbrush dimensions so it can be accurately processed in all kinds of ways.
7. And beyond the cutbrush, there is the animbrush, assembled from multiple images/frames, all sharing the same border dimensions and a single cross hair position. Taken individually, each frame would have different cropping boundaries, but for the purpose of sequential stamping, they MUST preserve the option to maintain their original, non-optimized orientation, dimensions and scale.

Finally, it is worth emphasizing that the cutbrush is a crucial, versatile tool to TVPaint users reaching way beyond the simple cut and paste operations. The creation of sophisticated , custom brushes depends heavily on the cutbrush (in all its richness) as a prime source. The cutbrush (and animbrush) have a multitude of acquisition modes, parametric variables and custom-profile curves that permit endless variations in brush design, and as such can stand shoulder to shoulder with most other 2-D paint and animation applications.

Versatility is one of the key strengths of TVPaint. There will never be just one and only "best" way to use it.

Sven

[ZigOtto]

I'm at 100% agreed with Sven here, I need the different options available,
to choose and select the one regardingly the circonstances and what I'm trying to acheive,
also to keep some good old scripts still working (I mean backward compatibility ,
which is one of the strength of TVPA actually).

imo, the only thing that could be changed (if not yet done),
is to tick the "Smart" option "On" by default,
with that, I don't see any reason why David or any other new user would be enbarrassed
by extra-options, everything you don't need (or don't care), don't use it,
it's not so hard to pass away, and leave them to others who use them on occasions.

I never use the "3 Pts Spline" tool, (I feel this one not so easy to control vs the "Bezier" spline
which is my preferated vector line tool), I never got the idea to ask here for removing it,
because I suppose someone else around the earth would enjoy it very much, for one reason or another ...
why to deprive him of this tool, ... if I don't want it, I just have to ignore it, that's that.


another request could be the ability for the tvpaint user to "re-arrange" the UI buttons and options
by himself, maybe in custom palettes, so he could be able to keep/delete/re-organize/optimize them
according to his own needs, but I guess it will require to build another tvpa achitecture,
which is worth considering, but not for tomorrow I presume.

[schwarzgrau]

Maybe somewhere could be written, what's the difference between the options. I thought about the size-interpolation-modes in Photoshop.

Bildschirmfoto 2014-12-24 um 22.02.44.png (72.21 KiB) Viewed 24012 times

It's german in this example, but you get the idea. Could also be a tool-tip.

another request could be the ability for the tvpaint user to "re-arrange" the UI buttons and options
by himself, maybe in custom palettes, so he could be able to keep/delete/re-organize/optimize them
according to his own needs, but I guess it will require to build another tvpa achitecture,
which is worth considering, but not for tomorrow I presume.

Yea, this would be pretty great.

[David_Fine]

I can see that these options are useful for all the brush making options, but I have to say, this is all way above my head. What did take me a bit of time to get my head around originally was the idea that a "brush" can used as a means of picking something up and stamping it and also rotating or resizing. It seemed to me that what TVP calls a "brush" also acts as a kind of copy and paste tool, which I know is useful, but as you point out, the needs for the brush can be quite different than the needs for how I use it, as a grab and move tool. Maybe there should be a distinction for them. One is for creating work with, like a real brush, and one is for image editing and manipulation.

Interesting also the point about the Photoshop options. I have to say, I didn't even know that they were there, but I guess they impact on how the whole image is recalculated.

[Paul Fierlinger]

That dual use of the word brush confused me for a long time too, but the thing is, anything picked up turns into a brush if you care to use it that way; even an animbrush, which instead of something to be stamped can be a series of small elements that emulates the characteristics of paintbrush bristles. You may know this already, but in case you don't I've uploaded an example.
It's a paintbrush called, Bristler:

BRISTLER.tvpx

(581 KiB) Downloaded 878 times

and I apologize that I don't know who made it. After you open it and paint with it, look at your "Tool: Custom Brush" and way down at the bottom of the panel, under the window labeled "Anim:" you'll see a little white handle which you can drag left and right. As you do that you can see the individual splatters in the profile window that the brush is made of. These are individual frames of an animbrush which get stamped down as you paint. So in this case it's both a series of stamps and a brush at the same time. By the way, calling anything lifted from the project window a brush is a universal name across all software programs.

[ZigOtto]

... It's a paintbrush called, Bristler:

BRISTLER.tvpx

and I apologize that I don't know who made it ...

as often, it's a collegial contribution afaik,
an Asaf's (Malcooning) nice variation from Chad's (CartoonMonkey) "SplatterBrush" .

[David_Fine]

I really like the Grunger brush. Thanks for that.

[artfx]

The way I see it, that is not a TVPaint thing. That is a "limitation of working with pixels" thing. Since the days of the Amiga computer I have known that if you're going to be working with, moving, scaling and resizing pixels, doesn't matter if it's in 2D or 3D, it is ideal to work at 2X resolution and scale down for final output. I will continue to do so until the pixel is retired and a hitherto unknown method of creating graphics on screen arises which has yet to be imagined.

Pixels are what they are. Since working with sprite editors on 8 bit video games, their limitations were apparent. One simply has to work with the technology rather than fighting against it.

As far as tutorials go, I have been and will continue to create them for TVPaint and for animation in general. I also, though, didn't see as much a need for them as with some 3D software out there. I haven't had the need to teach a newcomer in ages, so I may be biased in thinking TVPaint relatively easy as software goes. (Though compared to 3DS MAX or something it is)

If there are some tutorials people think really need to be created, by all means let me know.