Welcome to TVPaint Community forums !

Hello! I just did the big leap and bought TVPaint after using it a few days with my Cintiq. Cannot wait to get the full version.
While waiting: Any recommended set-up for using the Cintiq with TVP - eg. the touchstrip and the express keys?

Looking forward to sharing my work later.

Thanks in advance
John
Brussels

Hello Jbotofte,
Cinitiq and TVPaint, I think is the best choice
Welcome.

Great to hear! Look forward to some serious animating!

How did you set up your touchstrips and express keys?

John

Jbotofte wrote:.
While waiting: Any recommended set-up for using the Cintiq with TVP - eg. the touchstrip and the express keys?

Hi, John,

Welcome to the wonderful world of TVPaint (and Cintiq !) . I'm running TVPaint on my Macbook with Mac OS 10.4 , with the Cintiq attached to the Macbook with an adapter.

Here's how I have mine set up :

Wacom pen front button set to Flip Drawing Horizontal - [ , rear button is programmed for Undo - ctrl-z . I use the Flip Drawing Horizontal a lot to check the symmetry of the drawing shapes , like holding up a drawing to a mirror to spot any flaws . I used Undo constantly as well, so those make the most sense for me to have at my fingertips on the wacom pen.

Wacom Cintiq Touchstrips: both left and right touchstrips set to
Zoom In and Zoom Out , so I can enlarge the image with a touch from either hand , whichever is comfortable at the moment.

Cintiq Express Keys:

I have one of the left Express keys set up to toggle the Light Table on and off and another one set up F12 to hide all the toolbars so I'm full screen with the drawing area and another set up with key V to enable/disable Full Screen mode. Another key is set to Open/Close Layer Panel (key shortcut 0 ) . The Right side Express keys are not in use except that I have the Light Table toggle on/off also set up on one of the right buttons.

I use two Griffin Powermates . One Powermate is set to Rotate the virtual animation disc and the second Powermate is set to the right and left arrow keys so I can scrub back and forth over the drawings in the timeline to simulate "flipping" between the drawings like in traditional pencil & paper animation.

My Cintiq is retrofitted into my animation desk, so I have the Griffin Powermate knobs mounted to the surface of the desk with "high-tech" method ... push pins

See photos.

Thanks for the suggestions. And what a cool setup you got! Very inspiring. And lovely drawing!
My Cintiq is also connected to a Macbook. Seems to work great. I have 2 gb ram and hope it is sufficient for shorter animations. I will experiment with your settings. The undo sounds like a clever idea.
I had hoped I could use one of the touchstrips for rotating the canvas - as I don't always feel like rotating the Cintiq. Is that possible at all?
Thanks
John

Jbotofte wrote: I had hoped I could use one of the touchstrips for rotating the canvas - as I don't always feel like rotating the Cintiq. Is that possible at all?

Yes, absolutely. You can set up one of the touchstrips for keyboard shortcuts K and L and use the touchstrip to rotate the canvas.
I use the Griffin Powermate wheel because I like the feel of it more for rotating and scrubbing through the timeline , but the Cintiq touchstrip will do that , too.

That's great! Thanks a lot.

BTW: Did you run into ram problems with the macbook so far? And one more question: Is it best to divide longer anims (5 mins or so) into different projects or can TVPaint deal with such long sequences? What do you suggest?
Thanks
John

I need more RAM. (everyone always needs more !) . I'm maxed-out on the MacBook at 2GB of RAM . It starts to bog down as the project gets bigger , with more layers. If I was going to do a large project I'd want to be running a Mac Pro tower with as much RAM as possible . I'll buy the Mac Pro when I get the project !

Yes, definitely divide up a longer animation (5 mins or more) into different projects helps to keep the CPU from getting too slow.

It also helps to set up a Temp File Directory in the Preferences .
I have my Temp directory set to an external firewire drive.

Thanks again! Waiting impatiently for the software to arrive early next week...