Dear community, help me understand this upgrade?

[Peter Wassink]

I would also like to hear more people's opinion on bones. As TVPUSER said above, if I was going to do rigged animation I would use other software, so I would also like to understand the thinking behind why they brought it in.

I don't plan to do rigged animation in TVP either, at least not in the way it is now advertised supporting a character rig.
I'm not sure who would?
So i do not quite understand why it was introduced or advertised like that.
Maybe some studios in France requested this?
i could see it having some function in animating mechanical background elements like perhaps a machine.

[D.T. Nethery]

It is also a bit disappointing there is still no documentation up and no news in that regard. I am still finding a few interesting things that look cool but are possibly not functioning correctly but it's hard to know without documentation.

I confess I am baffled by the release of version 12 with no documentation (user manual) provided.

I would also like to hear more people's opinion on bones.

I have no interest in the bones feature. If I wanted to do rigged puppet animation much better alternatives exist (Moho). My main interest continues to be hand drawn animation.

As TVPUSER said above, if I was going to do rigged animation I would use other software, so I would also like to understand the thinking behind why they brought it in. I have tried playing around with it a bit, but it often crashes and makes it that much more frustrating.

This is also my experience with trying to play around with it. I can see how it might be useful for animating certain background elements or props. I intend to try to use it more just to find out how useful it might be, but I don't see it as something I would use for character animation.

It seems like perhaps the technical improvements that made it possible will maybe open into bigger things in the future like a better FXstack, with better control as we see in the camera layer and bones now, but that is just supposition on my part.

I really hope so. It would be wonderful to see some significant improvement of the established tools in TVPaint such as the KeyFramer, the Multiplane Camera, updating and expanding the Particle FX , and outside of the FX Stack the Warp Tool. The Warp Tool , in particular , seems to me as if it was a good idea that never quite got developed to it's fullest potential. The Warp Tool needs to be keyframeable and have a time profile curve . I've never been bothered by it too much because my primary focus is on traditional hand drawn animation so I have limited use for things like the Warp Tool, but again, I think it has potential as a tool to animate certain types of objects (Svengali has done some very interesting experiments with it and made some useful custom panels to make the Warp Tool easier to use for animation).

[Peter Wassink]

I really hope so. It would be wonderful to see some significant improvement of the established tools in TVPaint such as the KeyFramer, the Multiplane Camera, updating and expanding the Particle FX , and outside of the FX Stack the Warp Tool. The Warp Tool , in particular , seems to me as if it was a good idea that never quite got developed to it's fullest potential.

100% This.

I feel the focus could be more to streamline the existing tools to facilitate 2D animators.
So it would make it really worth for them to upgrade to v12
To improve the UI and UX of all the tools we already have.

And the list is long... lots of little things that might not look sexy on the face of it but that actually help improve the animators experience.
these just some of mine:

• -Brush engine (has not changed in 10 years) it would be great to have some extra connection settings, the new 2-paper function does not help to create better brushes, a paper connection ... now that would be interesting!!!!

• -multiple colorpanels open at once

• -easy config sharing

• -improvement of the 'Off peg' rotation interface

• -folder interface, have them as UI elements that are movable #edit (Léo just promised looking into this!)

• -animatable (keyframable) warptool

• -more drag and drop throughout the interface f.i.: drag and drop frames into the library

• -Projectview - have some zoomscaling presets in timelineview just like the cliptimeline has

• -Projectview - save clips directly as project

• -a ColorPick that can also pick the alpha info > translate this to the right opacity for a tool, So a pixel with rgb = black and alpha = 125 should set brush to RGB black and opacity 50%

• -16 bit colordepth option

• -FXstack - apply an FX to specific layer

• -FXstack - have multiple stacks (with tabs) or group FX's

-FXStack FXs that need attention:

• -particles, needs updating

• -variant to the Rotospline Fx, so it can keyframe animate a brushstroke using the current drawingtool, this would add a great way to spline animate a line in a controlled way

• -Warp grid, an integration or side by side with the mainpanel warp so it can become keyframable, would be powerfull thing

• -stabilisation, many softwares now do this with much more ease and precision.

[kelanhordos]

-Brush engine (has not changed in 10 years) it would be great to have some extra connection settings, the new 2-paper function does not help to create better brushes, a paper connection ... now that would be interesting!!!!

There actually is paper connections! I was going to be making a post about some bugs regarding it, but I am still testing and was hoping there would be documentation by now, but I couldn't believe I didn't see it announced anywhere. They are not working as one would expect(hope) but as I said I will make a thread regarding that.

All of these are really great suggestions by you and D. T. Nethery, they are all things I would like to see too.

Maybe we need a thread to advertise some of the improvements that are less obvious without documentation in the meantime. A couple small changes that stand out to me off the top of my head that I only found looking through the shortcuts/by accident:

Floating Color Picker(in shortcuts) doesn't need to switch to color picker tool, but works on the fly similar to other program color pickers. (Only improvement would be a Floating color picker B as well)
Bezier Curves option in any profile pop ups. Long awaited quality of life for adjusting curves!

[Peter Wassink]

WHAT!!!!!!

you are right!?

...
This is potentially one of the biggest most important new features in v12 and you completely hide it!?
It makes me so sad.

[Peter Wassink]

ah sorry... those connection settings don't Really work as i hoped, yet ....hopefully they will soon?
These parameters only work on a 'per stroke' basis meaning its not continuous
and the value can't change during stroke

Also the UI is a bit finecky, if the opacity is set wrong the stroke doesn't register and you don't see anything at all.
The angle value behaves unpredictable, the 360 degrees slider workes different from the angle dial in the custombrush tool panel, i could not reliably recreate a consistent angle.

but it would be a huge game changer, in terms of possibilities for new tools, to have it adjust continuously like tools connections can do now.

[kelanhordos]

Ya it's unfortunate, I posted about my findings just now here, would appreciate you adding any thoughts!

viewtopic.php?t=16495

[RjLikesToDraw]

EDIT: I have finally disabled moving windows so I'm ready to go now LOL

[TVPUSER]

I feel the focus could be more to streamline the existing tools to facilitate 2D animators.
So it would make it really worth for them to upgrade to v12
To improve the UI and UX of all the tools we already have.

This is such a good list, I'd love for some kind of master wishlist that we're all voting on to surface to the tvpaint team sometime..

[Peter Wassink]

I really hope so. It would be wonderful to see some significant improvement of the established tools in TVPaint such as the KeyFramer, the Multiplane Camera, updating and expanding the Particle FX , and outside of the FX Stack the Warp Tool. The Warp Tool , in particular , seems to me as if it was a good idea that never quite got developed to it's fullest potential.

100% This.

I feel the focus could be more to streamline the existing tools to facilitate 2D animators.
So it would make it really worth for them to upgrade to v12
To improve the UI and UX of all the tools we already have.

And the list is long... lots of little things that might not look sexy on the face of it but that actually help improve the animators experience.
these just some of mine:

• -Brush engine (has not changed in 10 years) it would be great to have some extra connection settings, the new 2-paper function does not help to create better brushes, a paper connection ... now that would be interesting!!!!

• -multiple colorpanels open at once

• -easy config sharing

• -improvement of the 'Off peg' rotation interface

• -folder interface, have them as UI elements that are movable #edit (Léo just promised looking into this!)

• -animatable (keyframable) warptool

• -more drag and drop throughout the interface f.i.: drag and drop frames into the library

• -Projectview - have some zoomscaling presets in timelineview just like the cliptimeline has

• -Projectview - save clips directly as project

• -a ColorPick that can also pick the alpha info > translate this to the right opacity for a tool, So a pixel with rgb = black and alpha = 125 should set brush to RGB black and opacity 50%

• -16 bit colordepth option

• -FXstack - apply an FX to specific layer

• -FXstack - have multiple stacks (with tabs) or group FX's

-FXStack FXs that need attention:

• -keyframer, separation of x,y,z axis for the speed profile!

• -particles, needs updating

• - a line fx, possibility to animate a simple 2 or 3 point spline line (to use as 'rubber hose' limbs for instance.

• -variant to the Rotospline Fx, so it can keyframe animate a brushstroke using the current drawingtool, this would add a great way to spline animate a line in a controlled way

• -Warp grid, an integration or side by side with the mainpanel warp so it can become keyframable, would be a very powerfull thing

• -stabilisation, many softwares now do this with much more ease and precision.

[Thierry]

Did... did you just post the exact same message as you did in July? Why?

Some items on your list are actively being worked on and as a beta tester you should see some of them very soon for 12.0.4.
All requests won't be coming in the short term. In the meantime please refrain from posting the duplicate list from 8 months ago.

Some are already done and will be in upcoming releases or were present in the first v12 bugfixes updates.

Also, we aren't answering every message/request with "Noted, added to the list, thank you" otherwise it would become the majority of our messages, and would make us seem like bots.

[Peter Wassink]

Did... did you just post the exact same message as you did in July? Why?

Hi Thierry yes this was a mistake
I thought of two more items to this list while teaching at HKU, which i thought might be usefull to add to this list.
small (unspectacular) and maybe relatively simple to realise additions that could really improve the live of an animator a lot....
but somehow i lost the browser while adjusting the post...(not used to working on macs i guess) and i though the post had disappeared.
so apologies, for this, i did not intend to just dump a duplicate...

although the two lists are not identical... so somehow it was saved halfway... anyway to be clear i will post these little additional ideas below...

Good to know you are working on this stuff and lists like these can be usefull.
and please do ask if some of the items are not quite clear or well described...

[Peter Wassink]

-FXStack FXs :

• -keyframer, separation of x,y,z axis for the speed profile

_____the keyframer can be hard to control, it would be nice to have some more control in tvp instead of always having to go over to other software for this.
.
.

And this idea, which would offer some quite powerfull new possibilities for doing keyframe animation:

• - a new effect... a line FX, so you can animate a simple 2 point spline line (to use as 'rubber hose' limbs for instance.

_____could be very simple... just 2 keyable "coordinates points" and 4 keyable "splinehandle points" Fx
_____and maybe be additionally some extra animatable shapes... a (filled)square a (filled) circle...?
_____or some extra parameters like thickness...
_____also perhaps a filled circle(elipse)shape could be usefull, f.i. to animate simple shadows under characters.
_____Now for it to work it should be able to take whatever parameters the current drawing tool has (color, brush settings etc...) and apply those...
_____ i imagine this part is probably the trickiest to implement...?