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Hi everyone-
I am attempting my first hand drawn animation playing with new TVPaint (I am the proud holder of not one but 2 Mirage keys that I have to run in a virtual environment).

Can some one explain to me the difference between an instance and an empty frame or exposure?

I am drawing a 2 second animation (15fps). So, I made a 2 second empty animation clip and drew keyframes at 0:01, :10, 1:01, 1:07, and 2:01.

Then I used the light table to draw in-betweens at :05, 1:13, 1:06, and 1:13

This all worked fine, and the animation was coming together. However, now when I go to draw even more defined in-betweens, it is treating the entire instance as a frame.

Can some one explain what I am doing wrong? I thought each frame was individual, but it keeps sometimes grouping 3 or 4 frames together with one drawing.

More detailed screengrab attached.

For the record, I made everything an individual frame (went one at a time, drew a line in it then cleared the frame. but I am still pretty perplexed as to how the best way to go about the animation is.

I would like to be able to stretch out an event, make keyframes, then draw the in-betweens using light table. should be easy, right?

It is easy and as far as I can tell, you started off correctly. An instance is what the name implies; just another instance (repeat) of the image. To create further inbetweens, all you have to do is to keep breaking into those instances so that you replace a repeat of an image with a new empty frame to draw a new image. The beauty of this system is that as you have you first four key drawings spread out in time the way you perceive your animation to run, you see them through the light table just as image #1, #2, #3 and #4.
As you keep breaking into instance spaces with new drawings, your animation begins to run tighter.

The idea of the instance is that it is like a single image that can be held across multiple frames. When you created your empty clip, you likely created a single instance of 30 frames. The 'head' frame is the first frame of the instance, when you change the head, all of the subsequent frames will change as well (this is similar to "loops" used in audio applications).

If you draw on, say, frame 10 of the instance, a new instance starting at frame 10 is automatically created, so you will now have 2 instances, frames 1- 9 (head is on frame 1), and then frames 10 - 30 (head is on frame 10).

For what you are doing, what you probably should have done is added 30 separate empty images (each image is a separate instance). If you decided you then wanted your clip on twos instead of ones, you'd stretch each instance to two frames long each, and as long as you change the head of each instance, the second frame will reflect the changes.

Pgae 133 in the manual (page 6-12) goes into much more detail about this.

One more note: In the main menu at the top, look under Image>Instances and at the bottom you will see two options; Auto Create Instance, Auto Break Instance. If you check Auto Break Instance then each time you place your cursor over an instance and start drawing, a new image will be automatically created. I prefer to have this unchecked and make my break ins manually with a key command.

Once you start working with the instances, you'll wonder how you ever got along without them

Thanks guys, that is all very helpful information! I really appreciate it!.

Paul Fierlinger wrote: I prefer to have this unchecked and make my break ins manually with a key command.

yeap, me too, and the reason is mostly I need a Break&Clear process,
you have the 2 buttons (commands) in the Animators Panel, "Break", and "Break&Clear",
the second one is the one I always use when inbetweening, giving me a new empty instance,
ready to be drawn (with the LightTable in Instance mode).

I always use the method to break the instance by selecting a frame, then draw or erase in it. Feels natural to me and is quite fast. Additionally, I've changed the assignment of the arrow keys so they bring me to the next instance head instead of next frame.

Mark, just an aside: do you know that the plus symbols at the bottom of the preview player now jump to instance heads? BTW, I have programmed my Wacom 4 buttons also to do this, besides two keyboard keys.

slowtiger wrote:I always use the method to break the instance by selecting a frame, then draw or erase in it. Feels natural to me and is quite fast. Additionally, I've changed the assignment of the arrow keys so they bring me to the next instance head instead of next frame.

This is actually a great idea and I may have to try it. I too often break instances that I didn't mean to by drawing on the wrong frame of an exposure.