pixelating

[bolty]

Hi,

I have a question regarding cut brushes and animbrushes. Every time i use a cut brush or rotate an image or something of the sort, my images immediately pixelate, As my images tend to pixelate when i use the animbrush, i cannot use it for my works. Is there any way around this? If not, I think that would definately be something to look at in future updates to the program!

Ps. i am on the 10.0.18 v (64bi) )verrs of TVPAINT

Thanks!

-bolty

[CLO]

I think the problem comes from the Smooth in Custom Brush.
As you can see on the picture below, you have 3 kinds of Smooth on Custom Brush.

[Peter Wassink]

And before you ask, why not always leave it on best?

1) when using it on a drawing tool, "Best" can make your computer slow down
2) "Best" is only best for filled images like foto's or that panelbrush in Clo's example.
"Best" creates very small artifacts along the edges and this can become noticable with linedrawings, making "Medium" the best option for lines.

[D.T. Nethery]

And before you ask, why not always leave it on best?

1) when using it on a drawing tool, "Best" can make your computer slow down
2) "Best" is only best for filled images like foto's or that panelbrush in Clo's example.
"Best" creates very small artifacts along the edges and this can become noticable with linedrawings, making "Medium" the best option for lines.

This is a good point to emphasize. Perhaps it would be worth while to make the distinction between settings to use when doing "Rough" animation line work (when the pixelation that can occur to the line when using Transform Tools is not that critical) vs. working with BEST quality antialiasing and Line Smoothing (in the Shape Settings panel) when you are doing Clean-up line work. I would say that any rotating , re-scaling, or other Transformations should be applied to the ROUGH animation layer, then when you are cleaning-up (inking) drawings you will use the Line Smoothing for clean-up lins , and use BEST quality anti-aliasing on any minor transformations (but as a rule I would try to avoid doing any Transformations/Resizing/Rescaling on cleanup line art). Because by the time the rough animation is finished and given the "OK to Clean-Up" status in production there really should not be any further resizing or repositioning of the line art . That should all be worked out in the rough animation layer.


.

[bolty]

Hello!

Thank you for letting me know about the smoothing settings! I really really appreciate it!

However, I am also super frustrated now that I know about it. I have animated an entire film with this programme without knowing about this absolutely crucial setting. I have gone through the manual countless times and have never found anything on this setting mentioned. I even checked through it again just now to make sure. I really really think this programme needs a thorough manual in comprehensible english. There are so many amazing tools and gadgets programmed in, but I don't even know they're there or can't figure out half of them. What a waste right?

As for the pixelating of rotated/resized/transformed images, unfortunately i have been using them on my inked drawings. I don't see why we should limit our use of such a simple function to rough line work only. For example, i used the rotation on some gears, and used the rotating gears as an animbrush and looped the motion through my scene. by the end of the scene, the gears were jagged and gross. I was very disappointed about that. Plus, the manual has never mentioned anything about this sort of side effect, or that their tools were meant for roughing only. It would be awesome if there was a way to fix this so that it doesn't pixelate in the future...

Thanks again!!! :]

-bolty

[idragosani]

However, I am also super frustrated now that I know about it. I have animated an entire film with this programme without knowing about this absolutely crucial setting. I have gone through the manual countless times and have never found anything on this setting mentioned. I even checked through it again just now to make sure. I really really think this programme needs a thorough manual in comprehensible english. There are so many amazing tools and gadgets programmed in, but I don't even know they're there or can't figure out half of them. What a waste right?

It's documented on page 7-27 in the manual (page 189), under documentation for custom brushes.

[furushil]

It is explained on page 58-59 in the manual (or 2-18, 2-19) "anti-aliasing" or page 189 (7-27)
That is sad to hear that you already animated an entire film . I also had to redraw -well not an entire film- but some drawings once because of this but I don't think the manual is to blame.
I always keep the anti-aliasing setting on "smart" when I transform things but with cut out brushes you always have to check the smooth setting.

[D.T. Nethery]

Thank you for letting me know about the smoothing settings! I really really appreciate it!

However, I am also super frustrated now that I know about it. I have animated an entire film with this programme without knowing about this absolutely crucial setting. I have gone through the manual countless times and have never found anything on this setting mentioned. I even checked through it again just now to make sure. I really really think this programme needs a thorough manual in comprehensible english. There are so many amazing tools and gadgets programmed in, but I don't even know they're there or can't figure out half of them. What a waste right?

As for the pixelating of rotated/resized/transformed images, unfortunately i have been using them on my inked drawings. I don't see why we should limit our use of such a simple function to rough line work only. For example, i used the rotation on some gears, and used the rotating gears as an animbrush and looped the motion through my scene. by the end of the scene, the gears were jagged and gross. I was very disappointed about that. Plus, the manual has never mentioned anything about this sort of side effect, or that their tools were meant for roughing only. It would be awesome if there was a way to fix this so that it doesn't pixelate in the future...

As others pointed out above , the settings for Custom Brushes and Transform Tool -- None, Medium, Best , and Smart -- are documented in the User Manual , but I will agree the User Manual (and the Tutorials page) is in need of updating and improvement to be , well , more "user friendly" . Too often it is hard to find things in the manual. Too many useful functions in TVPaint are "hidden" from the new user.

"I don't see why we should limit our use of such a simple function to rough line work only. Plus, the manual has never mentioned anything about this sort of side effect, or that their tools were meant for roughing only."

Let me clarify, so there is no misunderstanding , the idea that the Transform Tools should only be used on Rough Animation (or very sparingly on Clean-Up line work) is MY personal practice and recommendation , but I don't believe that is recommended by TVPaint , so that idea is not mentioned in the User Manual.

Most bitmap applications will degrade the image somewhat when scaling or rotating. That is the nature of bitmap . It doesn't happen in vector apps , but then in vector apps you lose other things related to line quality . (line can end up being too clinical , too mechanical looking) The line degradation/fuzziness happens in Photoshop , too , but I think that somehow Photoshop handles the problem better. I don't seem to notice the line degradation as much in Photoshop, but then I don't use Photoshop that much , so maybe if I were regularly rotating or scaling drawings in Photoshop I would notice it more. However, this is definitely an improvement that could be made in TVPaint.

I have a friend who inks comics in Photoshop who mentioned that when inking in Photoshop he works at DOUBLE the resolution of his final output to avoid this sort of thing happening . By the time he scales down to the final resolution any fuzziness in the line is not apparent.


What resolution is your project at ? I do usually try to work larger than my final intended resolution, so by the time line work is cleaned up and colored , then scaled down when outputting to the final size (such as 1280 x 720) I really have not noticed visible line degradation . On the other hand I tend to keep my line work a little bit sketchier , not very tight inked lines (if I wanted that I probably would go to a vector app) so maybe that will not be the same in your case. However, with working at a high resolution and/or with the Line Smoothing activated in the Shape Settings panel I have found it is possible to get smooth, "inked" looking lines . I just am not interested in working like that anymore . I ruined my eyesight, my back , and my wrist in years of being hunched over an animation disc doing super tight , fine line clean-up work at Disney Feature Animation , so I'm kind of over that. (unless someone will pay me a lot of money like back then -- hey guys, I didn't mean it , I love tight clean up ! -- but I don't think those days are returning any time soon ...)

.

[Soom]

As a rule of thumb, I always use NONE if I need to just pan or copy/paste the drawing, and BEST if I need to rotate/scale it. I keep NONE as default, and I have set my keyboard shortcuts in the way, that when I press C (for rotation) or Z (for resize), it automatically sets the Smoothing to BEST, so that I never have to check this setting each time. It works similar to the "SMART" Antialising setting in Transform mode (I don't know why they didn't implement it in the Cut Brush tool too). I never use MEDIUM cause I find it very destructive, unless it's some kind of a specific custom brush. Those settings of course are far more important in clean-up process, not in rough animation. Normally, a very slight blur, that the BEST setting produces, is not really obvious (in case you transform the original only once), but if the drawing has small details, it can be a bit destructive, and then we just redraw it - this is though quite a common thing and clean-up is a tedious process. In most cases retracing drawings instead of copy/pasting same elements, produce better results and more organic feeling of the animation.

[D.T. Nethery]

" ... and then we just redraw it - this is though quite a common thing and clean-up is a tedious process. In most cases retracing drawings instead of copy/pasting same elements, produce better results and more organic feeling of the animation."

True , and I come from ye olden days of pencil on paper animation and it was the same thing back then if we had to do a lot of cutting and pasting on a drawing (with an X-Acto knife and using tape to stick it down) to reposition certain things OR if a lot of changes had to be made on a drawing which involved multiple erasures ... after several erasures and changes the line quality on a Clean-Up drawing could start to look very "scrubbed" , so most of the time the better solution was to just re-draw it on a fresh sheet of paper so the line quality would be crisp. If you're doing frame-by-frame full animation that's just part of process. Deal with it. Draw, re-draw, draw again until it's as perfect as you can make it. I'm not advocating unnecessary work, but neither am I shying away from what needs to be done . If only people knew how many drawings are thrown out or re-drawn to get the final result on screen ... the average person thinks this is a crazy way to make a movie ("you do HOW many drawings ??!!") , but that "crazy" is what makes the magic.