Free Transform Selection Tool?

MooseMouse · Post by **MooseMouse** » 11 Nov 2006, 17:08

Is there a tool that works similar to Photoshop's "Free Transform" of a floated selection? Or is there a workflow that would accomplish this?

For example, I want to move the hand of a character on a frame to lengthen the forearm a bit. It would be great to just "lasso" select the hand, and repostion it, rotate it, scale it, rather than redrawing it.

Thanks,
Shawn

Patrice · Post by **Patrice** » 11 Nov 2006, 17:37

There is many ways to do it.

One way :
- Select the "Magic Wand CustomBrush" and cut the hand
- You will have the hand as a custombrush. So you can rotate, scale and redraw it wherever you want.

Post by **Hervé** » 11 Nov 2006, 17:43

Patrice wrote:There is many ways to do it.

One way :
- Select the "Magic Wand CustomBrush" and cut the hand
- You will have the hand as a custombrush. So you can rotate, scale and redraw it wherever you want.

To rotate use keyboard shortcut * and /
To scale use + and -

evar · Post by **evar** » 11 Nov 2006, 17:51

In the Main panel, right below the selection tools are the brush grabbing tools. Select your characters arm with one of these tools and you'll then have the arm as a brush that you can paint with, and if you go into the edit menu from the Tool Panel - you can perform any changes youd like including rotation, just make sure you hit 'apply changes' or it will seem like nothing happened.

For quickness sake, I attached a custom toolpanel with a button for both rotating, and repositioning the 'handle' (or the pivot point) for the brush you are using.

You can place any brushes in the Brush Bin (right beside Options in the Custom Brush Tool Panel, to save them for use later - or you can add them as icons in your own Custom Panel - for quick access.

(edit, herve et al. responded before I could hit Submit, you're quick

)

Post by **Hervé** » 11 Nov 2006, 17:59

And don't forget to set the subpixel option

ZigOtto · Post by **ZigOtto** » 11 Nov 2006, 19:21

evar wrote:For quickness sake, I attached a custom toolpanel with a button for both rotating, and repositioning the 'handle' (or the pivot point) for the brush you are using.

that's cool Evar!
can you copy it to the content sharing section too ?

evar · Post by **evar** » 11 Nov 2006, 19:41

Minas well I guess, Ill have to make some better icons

ZigOtto · Post by **ZigOtto** » 11 Nov 2006, 20:16

Patrice wrote:There is many ways to do it.

One way :
- Select the "Magic Wand CustomBrush" and cut the hand
- You will have the hand as a custombrush. So you can rotate, scale and redraw it wherever you want.

yeap, but what we need now is a Warp Tool option : a button to toggle Current Layer/Custom Brush,
- when set on Layer => what we have now ( 4 points editor),
- when set on Custom Brush => idem but applying on the brush (setting the 4 corners of the current brush)
("Apply to Image" and "Apply to Selection" ghosted when "Custom brush" selected)

ZigOtto · Post by **ZigOtto** » 11 Nov 2006, 20:18

evar wrote:Minas well I guess, Ill have to make some better icons

icons are OK, just give to them clear and short names!...

_bfdcee28-64f2-ee45-81d4-28277342e98c.dip

_5948547c-f011-5a40-9191-3e3d1d6bb8ef.dip

MooseMouse · Post by **MooseMouse** » 12 Nov 2006, 02:07

Thanks for the tips. The interactive rotate tool is very nice! Thanks, evar!

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 26 Apr 2007, 06:53

Patrice wrote:There is many ways to do it.

One way :
- Select the "Magic Wand CustomBrush" and cut the hand
- You will have the hand as a custombrush. So you can rotate, scale and redraw it wherever you want.

I have tried this , but am having difficulty with this technique used to "free transform" (as in Photoshop) part of a drawing; to resize or rotate part of the drawing selected with the Magic Wand tool .

When I select the part of the drawing which I want to resize and/or rotate, the selection does not stay stationary on screen when I move the mouse/stylus over to the custom brush Options panel to adjust the settings (for instance :change size from 100% to 107% and rotate the angle 25 degrees). When I move the mouse or stylus over to the Options the selected portion of my image moves off screen and I am unable to view it as I make the adjustments in the Options panel . It would be more helpful if the selected portion of the image would stay in view so I can make fine adjustments to the size and angle , so I can better judge exactly how much I want to adjust the size and angle .

Peter Wassink · Post by **Peter Wassink** » 26 Apr 2007, 09:33

... I am unable to view it as I make the adjustments...

thats why i always use the keyboard shortcuts for my 'free transform' actions

Z for scaling
X for horizontal flipping
Y for vertical fliping and
C for rotating

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 26 Apr 2007, 15:49

Tantalus wrote:
... I am unable to view it as I make the adjustments...
thats why i always use the keyboard shortcuts for my 'free transform' actions

Z for scaling
X for horizontal flipping
Y for vertical fliping and
C for rotating

Thank you . That is helpful and it works better .

I'm still puzzled about why it's such a round-about process , instead of a simple free transform of the selection.

See attached images .

Let's say I want to slightly enlarge an arm and reposition it by rotating the angle a bit .

-I select the arm with the Select Tool and Cut To Layer.

-Working on the new Layer for the arm I then select the arm with the Magic Wand tool .

-Keyboard shortcut Z brings up a box which allows me to scale the arm up or down , but for some reason it shifts the arm over to the left , off-center from it's original position. I have to drag it back to the place I want it to be , then do the resize.

-The same thing happens when I use Keyboard shortcut C to rotate the angle --- the arm is shifted over to the left and I have to manually drag it back to it's original position and then perform the rotation.

-At this point I "stamp" the brush down in the new position and then merge the arm layer back on to the body layer .

Am I still doing it wrong ? This seems like a very long, round-about way of doing it. Almost seems faster to save out the image and open it in Photshop, do the Free Transform in Photoshop, then import it back to TVPaint to continue working on the scene.

ZigOtto · Post by **ZigOtto** » 26 Apr 2007, 17:23

what I would do :
- "freehand select" the arm,
- Tool Select: Cut to Brush (or better: hit a shortkey, see pict.)
- then, press /, *, +, -, to rotate, size up/down your arm,
- left-click it at the right place.

edit: if the body stay still, while the arm is animated, draw it on a separate animlayer.

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 27 Apr 2007, 01:53

ZigOtto wrote:what I would do :
- "freehand select" the arm,
- Tool Select: Cut to Brush (or better: hit a shortkey, see pict.)
- then, press /, *, +, -, to rotate, size up/down your arm,
- left-click it at the right place.

edit: if the body stay still, while the arm is animated, draw it on a separate animlayer.

Thanks, ZigOtto. That , too , makes it much clearer.

I still wonder why the keyboard shortcuts Z and C using the Magic Wand tool make the image shift over to the left instead of staying in the original position ? This seems like something that could be fixed in the next release of TVPaint.