flipping/bookmark suggestion and off pegs suggestions...

[bluecarrot]

I'm exploring the awesome off pegs feature. I want to use it to inbetween elements in my drawings that are spaced far apart. I think that's the intended use (in addition to a pure place&trace). I have found the controls in the light table parameters for this, the boxes at the bottom that bring up the placement and rotation controls that I need for this. So far so good. I can now do a mechanical line-in the-middle inbetween, using the light box. At this point when working on paper I like to turn off the lightbox and just use light from top and flip the 3 drawings to fine tune volumes and line quality. In TVPaint I was hoping to be able to do the same, flip the drawings in this off-peg mode and keep the heads or hands or whatever I'm inbetweening basically in the same spot and flip using the left/right arrow keys and fine tune the drawing. This is an essential part of the off-pegs method. So far I have not figured out how to do this in TVPaint. Is it possible? Thanks!

[Elodie]

If I understood you well, I advise you to combine the out of pegs with the image mark panel.

With the image mark panel, mark the 2 key images that needs inbetweens, like this :

mark image + light table00000.png (59.93 KiB) Viewed 24733 times

Then, active the light table and change the parameters : use only the previous and next image + change from "instance" to "image mark"

mark image + light table00001.png (76.83 KiB) Viewed 24733 times

Now, you will have the possibility to flip between previous images, but you'll still see the marked images only in the light table

mark image + light table00002.png (81.89 KiB) Viewed 24733 times

[bluecarrot]

Merci Elodie! I like the marking feature, but it does not seem to solve the off peg flipping problem.
I hope these screengrabs will explain the problem. (I have to divide this into 3 replies because I can only attach 3 images at a time.)

[bluecarrot]

more screengrabs

[bluecarrot]

Final screengrabs. I hope there is a solution for this. Flipping the drawings while they are "taped down" off peg is a really important part of this method. You want to be able to finesse volumes and lines while the elements are basically on top of each other. If this is not possible yet it should be included as soon as possible. This feature is an important one that's available in TVP-Pro only (not in Standard). For me this could be a selling point if it would actually work. Thanks!

[Fabrice]

there is a shortcut to flip out of the pegs.

It's not assigned to a key by default.

[bluecarrot]

Great. What is it?

[Fabrice]

Preview: Flip Book + Out of Pegs.

It uses the current framerate.

[bluecarrot]

Thanks Fabrice! Can I try this out with the trial version? The assign and unassign option is greyed out in the configure short cuts panel.

[Fabrice]

should work, yes, even in the demo version.

did you select both the ""software function"" and ""a keyboard key"" to assign ?

[bluecarrot]

Thanks for the tip Fabrice. I was able to assign a hotkey for Flipbook+Off Pegs.
This function is going in the right direction. It stays off pegs and plays my above images for one time in off-peg mode in chronological order 1-2-3 whenever I press the hotkey. I like it at 4 frames per second. Very nice, but it doesn't quite emulate the way we do it with animation paper. I have some suggestions.

The typical inbetweening situation with paper using my above example drawings would be that you put drwg1 on your light box, then drwg3 and on top drwg2, which is the inbetween in progress. Now you would start drawing using the light box, but also light from top and you keep flipping back and forth between the drawings 1-2-3-2-1-2-3-2-1 etc.
Currently when I'm not using off-peg mode I can get close to this by using the left and right arrow keys, left-left-right-right-left-left-right-right etc.
The flipbook function we get with the W key is good when we animate straight ahead; it emulates rolling the drawings. When I'm inbetweening I much prefer manual flipping. I really like flipping between bookmarks or marked frames as Elodie described above, which emulates pulling certain drawings and working on them out of shooting order. I feel that all these ways of manual flipping should just work in off-peg mode.

In addition it might be worth trying to add additional options to the flipbook mode. I would like it if I could set it to Loop Back and Forth like in QT player. And keep on looping at the set speed (in my case 4fps) as long as I press the key. When I let go it would land on the current frame which is the inbetween I'm working on.

[bluecarrot]

In paper animation we work on our drawings often out of order for example if we use different charts for inbetweening different parts of the drawing. In TVPaint I just learned about how bookmarks and marking drawings can help with that. I have an additional suggestion which I feel could be useful.

I would like it if we could use the number keys to bookmark drawings. It could work like this:
Go to an instance or frame depending on the mode you selected (light table). Hold Shift and click 1. Go to another instance/frame. Hold Shift and click 2, same for 3, etc. Now whenever you hit 1, 2 or 3 (or any number you assigned that way) you go to that instance/frame. In addition it could be useful if we could choose to set this in a way that either keeps us on the frame after we release the key or it could be like a toggle that lets you only see the frame as long as you are pressing that key down. On release you would pop back to your current frame. This would be really useful when inbetweening because with 2 fingers you could rapidly flip between your current instance/frame and 2 other instances/frames that you assigned to number keys.

[Fabrice]

interesting, I had this discussion with Don Perro too, in this same forum.

Would a flipping option 1 2 3 2 1 2 3 2 1 2 3 ... (ping-pong mode) do the job ?

[bluecarrot]

Yes. I just did a quick search on YouTube and found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hw5eQF99ng" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The author of the video, Dan Kuenster is an old Bluth veteran and has worked on Secret of Nimh. This is a very established technique. Being able to emulate this as closely as possible would be very helpful. Currently it's difficult to control tight inbetweens, in areas of slow motion.

[piano]

+1 i've always liked the "flip previous" hot hey but always felt that a "flip next" would also be useful, so why not go all the way and make a "flip stored bookmark". great idea !