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I have been focusing my TVPaint energies on animation, but am now finally wanting to colour some stuff, but I can't find much of anything in the manual or online about the best working method. I know the basics about using fill and setting the tolerance for Expand and Range and I understand that I need to paint on a separate level which uses the line level as a source. That much, I know! What I don't know is how to set everything up to work in an efficient way. For instance, how to make a paint level which has all the same instances as the line level. Basically blank instances ready to receive paint. Right now, I am manually creating each instance, which I figure is not the way to do it. Perhaps they can be created automatically as you go. The TVPaint manual shows a colour layer with blank instances matching the animation, but does not explain how you quickly make that happen.

How do I avoid repainting the same image again and again? That is, if I have a three drawing cycle on hold, I want to paint three drawings and then have the rest use that painted area for the cycle. Do I have to manually set the paint layer to "faux fixe", or is there an easier way? If that cycle repeats later in the scene, then what? how do I avoid painting them again? Do I have to copy and paste the paint layer, or, again, is there an easier or more automated way?

Do I have to set the expand size for each line weight I fill, or can it be done more automatically so that it expands to fill under the line, but does not go beyond the line? In my case, my line is a charcoal type line and so has some transparency which I want to have colour below, but of course I don't want it to bleed outside, so setting expand to 8 works for one line thickness, but not another.

The manual refers to a "fill inside" option, which is really useful, but this option does not appear to exist in version 10.5. Where did it go?

If anyone can point me to a good online tutorial which shows these kind of basics, that would be great.

David_Fine wrote:I have been focusing my TVPaint energies on animation, but am now finally wanting to colour some stuff, but I can't find much of anything in the manual or online about the best working method. I know the basics about using fill and setting the tolerance for Expand and Range and I understand that I need to paint on a separate level which uses the line level as a source. That much, I know! What I don't know is how to set everything up to work in an efficient way. For instance, how to make a paint level which has all the same instances as the line level. Basically blank instances ready to receive paint. Right now, I am manually creating each instance, which I figure is not the way to do it. Perhaps they can be created automatically as you go. The TVPaint manual shows a colour layer with blank instances matching the animation, but does not explain how you quickly make that happen.

How do I avoid repainting the same image again and again? That is, if I have a three drawing cycle on hold, I want to paint three drawings and then have the rest use that painted area for the cycle. Do I have to manually set the paint layer to "faux fixe", or is there an easier way? If that cycle repeats later in the scene, then what? how do I avoid painting them again? Do I have to copy and paste the paint layer, or, again, is there an easier or more automated way?

Do I have to set the expand size for each line weight I fill, or can it be done more automatically so that it expands to fill under the line, but does not go beyond the line? In my case, my line is a charcoal type line and so has some transparency which I want to have colour below, but of course I don't want it to bleed outside, so setting expand to 8 works for one line thickness, but not another.

The manual refers to a "fill inside" option, which is really useful, but this option does not appear to exist in version 10.5. Where did it go?

If anyone can point me to a good online tutorial which shows these kind of basics, that would be great.

Fill Inside option is still there in 10.5 -- look for it in the Filled Rectangle tool and Filled (Freehand) Stroke tool .
(Fill Inside option for Filled Rectangle and Filled Stroke is still in TVPaint 11 , as well .)

One great new feature in TVPaint 11 is the new CTG layer for coloring , especially for coloring "rough line" drawings with greater precision, even more so than the older "Fill Inside" option . Hopefully there will soon be a completed TVPaint 11 manual and some new TVP 11 tutorials showing how this works. What is there so far in the currently under-construction TVPaint 11 manual is accurate , but it needs to go much further. http://www.tvpaint.com/doc/tvp11/index. ... pplication" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; -- http://www.tvpaint.com/doc/tvp11/index. ... w-examples" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . It doesn't help that the manual refers the user to look for projects (The "Bob project" and the "Lilly project") which are not found under those names in the Contents & Examples folder . (hint: the projects are there in Contents & Examples, called "Running_Guy.tvpp" and "Pretty_Girl.tvpp" , but it's confusing that those example projects are referred to as different names - - "Bob Project" and "Lilly Project" - - in the TVP 11 User Manual). The other things you mention about handling repeated instances , semi-automation of the painting process , are there in the 10.5 manual, but could probably be made much more explicit.

This may not be what you're looking for , but for what it's worth here's a quick 'n' dirty tutorial I put together for students , using TVPaint 10.5, which does cover the basics of standard flood fill coloring with the Paintbucket - "Coloring Animation Drawings in TVPaint" . Here is a related tutorial - "How to Color Characters in TVPaint" .

This (not by me) is useful - Coloring Rough Drawings in TVPaint - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeXEagfaVwc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But these tutorials are more like a traditional "cel painting" approach (with digital tools) and probably not as streamlined as what you are looking for.

Something I found pretty useful when doing the whole coloring work is the ... ehm ...."ENTER-repeater", sorry I don't know it's name.
But as you probably already know you can repeat your last action by pressing ENTER (return).
If your character stays roughly in the same place you can pick a spot in your framing where he is visible in all frames and click there with the fill-tool on the first frame. After that mark all frames and hit ENTER. Now the fill tool get's applied on this spot in every frame.
This technique works of course well with the CTG layers too.

Thank you DT. Helpful stuff. I did see that Youtube video, but without any voice description, I find it rather hard to follow. Spoke with Paul Fierlinger who helped with all this too. Sounds like version 11 is a big step with painting.