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First of all, I am now moving to colour and compositing, so forgive me for the likely onslaught of questions about this new phase. Here's my first:

I have a high resolution BG which will be used in a number of scenes. It is a bigger field size than a number of the scenes it will be used in. If I bring it into a scene which is a tighter field, it will either be shrunk to fit (no good) or it will be arbitrarily cropped (also no good). I need it to load into the scene with the excess floating outside of the scene image. Do I have to enlarge the scene to the full BG size and then compose the camera for the tighter field? This makes the entire scene a way bigger file with blank area on top of a BG. If the BG is an asset referred to, but not copied multiple times between scenes, then of course I don't want to crop it. I want to keep it full size, but be able to move it around within the smaller scene to position it as I need. How do I do that?

David_Fine wrote:First of all, I am now moving to colour and compositing, so forgive me for the likely onslaught of questions about this new phase. Here's my first:

I have a high resolution BG which will be used in a number of scenes. It is a bigger field size than a number of the scenes it will be used in. If I bring it into a scene which is a tighter field, it will either be shrunk to fit (no good) or it will be arbitrarily cropped (also no good). I need it to load into the scene with the excess floating outside of the scene image. Do I have to enlarge the scene to the full BG size and then compose the camera for the tighter field? This makes the entire scene a way bigger file with blank area on top of a BG. If the BG is an asset referred to, but not copied multiple times between scenes, then of course I don't want to crop it. I want to keep it full size, but be able to move it around within the smaller scene to position it as I need. How do I do that?

I would load the oversize BG into it's own TVPaint file , full size . Name and Save the scene . Let's say it's called LARGE_BG_01.tvpp
Now open the first Scene file that will use this BG . Make a new layer underneath the animation layers and stretch it out for the duration of the scene.
Go to FX Stack > Motion > KeyFramer > from the Source Tab select Project LARGE_BG_01 as the SOURCE. Use the KeyFramer X-Y-Z axis parameters to adjust the size and position of the BG to work with the current scene. Apply FX .

Think of the KeyFramer tool bounding box as a Viewfinder through which you can view the over-scale BG (in it's own project) , which can then be used in your current scene, with the size/position of the BG (from the source file LARGE_BG_01.tvpp) adjusted by the Keyframer.

Repeat this as needed with the other scenes that utilize this overscale BG . The original source file LARGE_BG_01.tvpp remains unchanged , but how it is viewed in each of the other scenes depends on how you adjust it with the Keyframer tool.

This obviously becomes trickier if the character levels are registering closely with the BG layer and there are camera moves involved, rather than just a simple "Same As" re-use of the BG fielded at different sizes in different scenes.

Without revealing too much of your current project on a public forum , would it be possible to post screenshots of what you're trying to accomplish ? (or you may private message me) .

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You can also try to use the image library and image guide to temporarily see your BG full size and out of border and still be able to edit it. Then when you're done you import it for good as a custom brush that you place by hand

D.T. Nethery wrote:
Think of the KeyFramer tool bounding box as a Viewfinder through which you can view the over-scale BG (in it's own project) , which can then be used in your current scene, with the size/position of the BG (from the source file LARGE_BG_01.tvpp) adjusted by the Keyframer. Repeat this as needed with the other scenes that utilize this overscale BG . The original source file LARGE_BG_01.tvpp remains unchanged , but how it is viewed in each of the other scenes depends on how you adjust it with the Keyframer tool.
This obviously becomes trickier if the character levels are registering closely with the BG layer and there are camera moves involved, rather than just a simple "Same As" re-use of the BG fielded at different sizes in different scenes.
Without revealing too much of your current project on a public forum , would it be possible to post screenshots of what you're trying to accomplish ? (or you may private message me) . .

So essentially, what you mean is that within any given scene, the Keyframer refers to a totally separate scene (which happens to be the background) and so only uses the part of it I designate using Keyframer and does not make the scene size larger because it is only saving the part that needs to be there. That works, so it's a good solution, thank you! My only beef is that it is a little cumbersome and fiddly to use the keyframer to position and resize the BG. In Photoshop, if you bring in a file which is bigger than the existing one, the excess image is still there, unseen. So you can easily drag it all around to position it as you like. I guess that kind of interaction isn't possible. It would be great if it was, but this is a good solution otherwise, so thank you so much.