Serious Problem: FX Preview Not Working with "Current Group" Curve Tool

[TheQuestionMark]

I'm having trouble tweaking color on TVPaint with Curve FX. There seems to be a problem.


When I tried to color curve preview certain groups of layer's it only preview only one layer. And that a huge problem. I need it preview on 'current group' so I can decide if it looks good or not. Please Fix as soon as possible.

I set it to two groups. 1. Line Group and 2. Color Group.

1. Line group - 2 layers

2. Color Group - 3 Layers

Here are my FX settings. And Highlighted 'Current Group' on Red.



Am I doing anything wrong? The preview isn't working with 'current group layer such as color group layer', it only works on one layer, and it's very frustrating, this and everything about TVPaint.

By the way, what's wrong with TVPaint they haven't update since two years. That's really concerning. Mean while Krita just updated with .Webp and HDR which I was suggested for years on this forum. You can do .webp and HDR and it's a free software and it can do animation. What the heck is wrong with TVPaint you pay for it, it's alot of money, and you don't get any updates. All my suggestion thrown out the window like Warp Tool, which I really need to do background and I think doing background is just as important as animation! Yet Krita Brush has great feature like HSI, HSL, HSV, HSY, and Mix Brush Blending Mode see below. We need more brush control like Krita with more control of jitter in, 'size, opacity, color, luminosity separately, and even jitter needs more control like x-axis and y-axis separately, Custom Brush isn't good enough it's not random enough and it's really time consuming trying to randomize it.

I'm only complaining because you can do Curve on a Group of layers on Krita. And you can't on TVPaint!

[slowtiger]

Pardon me, but how many films have you not been able to make because TVPaint doesn't provide updates to your liking? I'm just asking because I managed to animate films ten years ago successfully with the then-recent version of TVP, and others even earlier.

Of course any tool should work as announced. Until it gets fixed, in the meantime you could cutbrush the entire image with "display" and paste it in a new layer, to check your colour tweaking. I recomend to do that not with single scenes, but several at once, to maintain continuity.

[TheQuestionMark]

Pardon me, but how many films have you not been able to make because TVPaint doesn't provide updates to your liking? I'm just asking because I managed to animate films ten years ago successfully with the then-recent version of TVP, and others even earlier.

Of course any tool should work as announced. Until it gets fixed, in the meantime you could cutbrush the entire image with "display" and paste it in a new layer, to check your colour tweaking. I reccomend to do that not with single scenes, but several at once, to maintain continuity.

That's a good idea on the cut brush display! Hmmmm...now that I think about it, I want to leave out the line layer from the cut brush display. The cut brush with display grabs the line with the color. I don't want Curve Fx with my brown lines of my drawing.

You're right, I'm sorry. I'm just a little worried and panicking in the animation and illustration industry that I get outdated and become obsolete. And I'm also worried that have to fork in serious dough into the next TVPaint and can't afford art hardware needed. I have to mobilize most of my money into software into art and never been upgrade my art hardware, and even then I'm still not sure I can afford on software. My drawing tablet is prehistoric and needs an upgrade, I need an on-screen tablet to catch up with all the new and prevailing artist. Way more than half the People in my country can't even afford a saving of $500 and I know can't either, I'm extremely worried that I can't get the next version of TVPaint and get left behind. If I'm getting left behind I don't want to get to attach it, like TVPaint, so I have to get ready for alternative methods. If I go Krita I can finally afford my art hardware like the other Art Streamers such as Twitch. They don't have to devout on paying alot on software and can focus on art hardware. Which frustrates me and makes me jealous. I think I can draw alot better if I upgrade my art hardware. You see all these protest in Europe, I'm not the only one struggling financially, I'm pretty sure they can't afford the next version of TVPaint as well.

[slowtiger]

My drawing tablet is prehistoric and needs an upgrade, I need an on-screen tablet to catch up with all the new and prevailing artist. Way more than half the People in my country can't even afford a saving of $500 and I know can't either, I'm extremely worried that I can't get the next version of TVPaint and get left behind.

I feel you. I'm in a pretty much similar situation, only the numbers are a bit higher here. As for tablets, I've bought my cintiq in 2008 and it still works flawlessly, maybe the screen is a tad bit darker than in the beginning. The nearly 3000.- € I paid spread to less than 300.- a year, and it's been worth every cent. Computers I only buy second hand, the machine I'm working on right now is more than 10 yrs old as well.

As for TVP, you will not fall behind if you can't get the newest version. I noticed that after an initial phase (some years), most animation software has got the basics right, and any features after that are maybe nice, but mostly just icing on a cake which isn't to my taste anyway. TVP is really great already, as you will notice by the questions in this forum: no bugs in basic features any more.

My setup is still as basic as possible: TVP, Moho (they are a perfect pair), Finalcut, Photoshop (an ancient CS5). None of my clients ever accused me of not being up to date with my work or style, so using the newest releases really doesn't matter that much. The most important part is to be really familiar with your software (all of them), so you can work fast, and establish a standard workflow of which you know that it works every time. Only then you can explore the more fancy features, but never accept a job which depends on them. Experiment a lot, do stuff in all your available software and try to make it look similar enough to get it work in the same scene.

[Soom]

Man, I am sorry, but your statement that you will fall behind if you don't get an update in 2 years (of a perfectly good software, by the way) is really weird - to this logic, if I draw with charcoal, I am still in the prehistoric times, and if I draw with a pencil, I am left in the Middle Ages? How a hardware or software make you draw better or worse?
As for the brushes - I think that with the Animated Custom Brush TVPaint is absolutely ahead of any animation software I know - you can literally create endless original custom brushes and use numerous blending modes. Randomization is perfectly possible with editing the curves of each setting and attaching them to different functions. You have to understand, that in animation you usually need to prepare only a few brushes for the whole project, so investing some time into setting them up is normal - you are going to use the same brush probably at least for the next half a year.
As for TVPaint and other software – there is no comparison, not even close. TVPaint is not Photoshop or Krita, and is designed purely for paperless animation, and for that it's priceless. Personally I like to use it for sketching too. I work 10 years in feature films industry and most 2D films I know are made in TVPaint, simply because it's an amazing professional software. The only worthy rival I know is ToonBoom Harmony, but it's more expensive, and it's vector (and I don't like it personally - too cumbersome). So if you want that real natural paper feel, TVPaint is the ultimate solution. I also use Adobe Animate, but mostly for lower budget cut–outs animation, although it was used on several really good hand drawn feature films too. So in the end it all comes to how you use the software to your advantage. No software will make your skills any better, or put you ahead of others - in the end it's more about your talents.

That being said, of course TVP is not perfect, and the bug you are talking about should be fixed. As a workaround meantime - if you want to preview the whole animation and not just one frame (like with cutbrush as suggested before), you can Merge the necessary layers and it will create one merged layer, which you can preview in the FX stack. When the FX is prepared, you can then save it and apply on all the separate layers...

About Warp tool - but they did the WARP tool! Unfortunately it only exists in the PRO version: https://www.tvpaint.com/doc/tvp11/index ... sform-warp
Although I agree here too - I think a basic Warp tool has to exist also in the STD version...