Welcome to TVPaint Community forums !

Hi everyone! In the fall I took a university class which utilized TVPaint Pro (taught by your very own Paul Fierlinger- excellent class, Paul ) and I really fell in love with the program. I would love to buy Pro, but honestly I'm on a tight budget, and even with the student discount Pro is on the extreme end of my price range. I would normally be okay with Standard, but I'm worried about not having the camera. Please be honest: how essential do you feel the camera is for making animated films? Is it a big enough deal that I should spring for Pro, or will Standard be sufficient? I'm not too thrilled about losing the layer options either, but I think I can make do. Anyway, I really appreciate your help.

Should be noted: I am not actually studying animation as a concentration, but rather as a pure passion project on the side. I would use the program to make animated films of my own, but this won't in any way affect my university education.

It depends on whether you use any editing software or not. Some people do complete films in just one software, although this is not recommended. In most advanced video editing software you could move scenes around, thus creating camera moves as well, but it's not very comfortable that way. Personally I prefer Anime Studio to do camera moves, but that would be another 199.–$. If I were in your situation, I'd go for the standard version and try to get AS as well.

The keyframer is definitely the answer in my book. I made half of Tulip with the keyframer and all my other films before the camera tool came along as an additional option. This camera was actually considered a sideshow by the developers who thought it had some limitations compared to what can be done with the KF. Everything that the camera does can be done in KF; the huge advantage of the camera is its simplicity in application without the need to render and that it works for 12fps or for 24fps when exporting 12fps converted to 24, without having to modify the entire clip before exporting.

Hi farenheit and welcome, though I have no idea which former student of mine you are. Give me a hint by describing your final assignment (and thanks for your nice feedback of my class; I can never tell if I give good instruction or not so any affirmation provides relief. Teaching is just so damn hard.)

Depends on what you want to do with the camera... the keyframer can do a lot of the things for you, although it's more work, of course. The multiplane camera is available in standard also. Motion graphics, blur, shaker, and things like that are only available in Pro.

I would mostly use it for zooming and pans- nothing too fancy, I think. I'm a little inexperienced with the keyframer, but I'm sure if I can find some good tutorials I'll be just fine.

And Paul, here is my final assignment:


I hope that jogs your memory.

farynheit wrote:I would mostly use it for zooming and pans- nothing too fancy, I think. I'm a little inexperienced with the keyframer, but I'm sure if I can find some good tutorials I'll be just fine.

And Paul, here is my final assignment: http://vimeo.com/33744423" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; I hope that jogs your memory.

It sure does Call me and I can walk you through the KeyFramer over the phone.

Most of us have made our animations for years without the camera tool in TVP, being that it is new. Don't get me wrong, I love the camera tool, but clearly you can do any project you like without it. As others have already mentioned, the keyframer is the key. Even while the camera tool existed, I continued to use the keyframer for quite some time. There are some things at which it is more powerful.