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Hi folks,

I want my rowing boat to move gently with the waves. I’ve recorded a path for the motion keyframer but we’re talking several layers here (boat, occupant, their colours, etc), which I can’t merge because they have different effects (color, burn etc). If I apply the same motion path separately to each of those layers will they all stay in synch? Or is there a better way?

One way is to set up your scene in two projects.

in one project you copy all the layers of your rowing boat
and in the other project (lets call it the BG project) you have the background and foreground water layers.

then in the BG project you apply the gentle path with the waves.
but before you do... make sure that, in the FXstack, under source, instead of choosing a layer from that project, you select the rowingboat project (all currently open projects show up in the source pull down list)

this method has the added benefit of being sort of none destructive.
if you later want to add..say ... a passenger just do so in the rowboat project.

and all you need to do is to simply re-apply the Keyframer.

(this approach is very flexible, instead of dividing it over two projects you could choose to devide the assets over two clips, say: one BG clip and one rowboat clip. simply choose the rowboatclip as source.
using clips has the advantage of keeping everything in onetvpaint project file. dividing the artwork over two project gives the advantage of being able to work with different resolutions)




but there is a quicker way if you group the row boat layers.
You can make all row boat layers the same group by selecting them all (using CTRL) and then on the far left under the label icon of the layer, choose a colorgroup.
apply the keyframer on the current color group, instead of on the current layer (select this option at the bottom of the FXstack.

Although this last method is faster its also a bit less flexible

btw... this sounds like a Willem de Koning academy animation assignment

Thank you Peter, that's a brilliant response. I love the two clip idea. Will try it right now.

Ha ha, really? Honestly, though in NL, I'm not cheating on any assignments! It's been 25 years since I was in college.

The first solution didn't seem to work - maybe because I created a new layer for it?? The blending modes didn't seem to carry over. I'm trying the second solution with the colour groups now.

The weirdest thing happened! After applying the effect to all the layers in the group, it spent ages rendering and then there's no move visible - but the wee red squares marking the moves are visible in the final render!!! I think I broke TVPaint.