Compatability with Toon Boom products

[VGmaster9]

Would be nice for the next version of TVPaint be able to fully integrate with Toon Boom Harmony and Storyboard Pro. For animation, animators could use the rich drawing tools of TVP, along with the high end features and professional look of Harmony together. For storyboarding, TVP's animatic tools could be used alongside with scenes in SBP.

[Cardin]

Would be nice for the next version of TVPaint be able to fully integrate with Toon Boom Harmony and Storyboard Pro. For animation, animators could use the rich drawing tools of TVP, along with the high end features and professional look of Harmony together. For storyboarding, TVP's animatic tools could be used alongside with scenes in SBP.

When you introduced yourself to the forum you admitted that you are neither artist nor animator. Quite audacious of you to make suggestions to "improve" software that you don't actually use.

-That's like an Amish guy saying, "Yeah, it would be great if those city folk could run Andriod OS on an Ipad".

Have you finally decided to transition from spectator to creator, VGmaster9? If so, then I will apologize BUT follow up with a question as to exactly how your suggestion would improve YOUR production. Have you been using TVPaint, Harmony, AND Storyboard Pro to speak authoritatively on them? The fact that you made this thread suggests you have not?

....along with the high end features and professional look of Harmony.....

What are these high end features of Toon Boom that we need to utilize? You suggested that we could use the rich drawing tools of TVPaint and then finish up in Harmony? Why would TVPaint Dev invest in Toon Boom's proprietary format when they are direct competitors? Why do you think Toon Boom would even be open to this? You do realize that whatever pipeline you're suggesting would be better served by replacing Harmony or SBP with After Effects, don't you?

-It might be a little different if you were saying, "I'm an animator and I would consider using your product if it had X, Y, and Z" But that doesn't apply to you because you're not an animator.
-What you are saying is, "Yah, I uhh, think it would be like, super nice if you could do Blah Blah Blah. By the way, I'm never going to ever use your product, I just think it would be super cool to see someone else do it".

In all seriousness, I think it's disrespectful to submit improvement and feature requests when you don't actually have experience with the software or even intend to ever purchase it. The staff have to spend time sifting through all of these requests and technical issues. I'm sure they assume that these posts come from a perspective of familiarity in real situations, not from someone who merely makes commentary without even the benefit of experience.

Finally, why would you not assume that the next version of TVPaint would have enough features to make the need for such compatibility even more worthless than it already is? You seem to think its a fact that Toon Boom currently has and always will have some sort of edge over TVPaint? Not so.

[Thierry]

Well, that is an interesting request.
If I wanted to be cynical, I would say: Why aren't you posting on Toomboon forums that it would be nice if the next TB version would be able to fully integrate TVPaint Animation ?
How would you expect TB to react ?

On a more serious note, the likelihood of something like this to happen is close to zero. Cardin has explained that so well:

Why would TVPaint Dev invest in Toon Boom's proprietary format when they are direct competitors? Why do you think Toon Boom would even be open to this?

[VGmaster9]

Well, that is an interesting request.
If I wanted to be cynical, I would say: Why aren't you posting on Toomboon forums that it would be nice if the next TB version would be able to fully integrate TVPaint Animation ?
How would you expect TB to react ?

On a more serious note, the likelihood of something like this to happen is close to zero. Cardin has explained that so well:

Why would TVPaint Dev invest in Toon Boom's proprietary format when they are direct competitors? Why do you think Toon Boom would even be open to this?

This kind of feature is basically for the film industry. Similar production suites like Toonz, Animo, and Disney's Caps were used for feature films, on top of the traditionally drawn animation on paper. They all give that cinematic quality while using the scalability of vector graphics. It would basically be for those who don't wish to animate on paper then scan on Harmony, nor want to use Harmony's bitmap drawing tools, which virtually everyone agrees are limited in comparison to TVP. Opentoonz has a similar feature for Clip Studio Paint, which is something to learn from.

[Cardin]

I'll just leave this here...

Hey, I am new to this forum. I don't use TVPaint nor am I an animator, I'm just a fan of what the software is capable of.
...For TV shows (like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which is my favorite show to watch right now),....

Not sure what concerns me more, the hubris of someone to make suggestions to improve software that he doesn't use for an industry he doesn't participate in or the admiration for My Little Pony

[mclinton]

The OP is a fan of the software who was offering an idea. I'm surprised by the treatment of him/her.

[Anim-Illustrate]

Could`nt it be a bad ass tool if there could be some kind of "vector" plugin for TvPaint? Like an add on kind of thing.......

100% survival "Bear grills go home" software package.

Thanks.

[schwarzgrau]

I guess a plugin wouldn't do it, since everything in TVPaint (all effects, transforms etc.) are based on the idea to change pixels. Vectorgraphics need a completely different "treatment"

[Anim-Illustrate]

Okay.

Thanks.

[daninski]

I use TVPaint to get away from vectors! It's all to often used as an autotune/vocoder for drawing (half joke/half serious)

[Greenlaw]

As an artist who works at a studio that uses many different animation packages, I really don't find the OP's request so unreasonable.

That said, as a user of many different software packages, there are some common output and motion formats with each program that can be shared with other programs, so this hasn't been too big of an issue for me.

I do wish there was an industry standard universal format available to 2D animation and compositing programs for sharing camera and layer transform animation data, like some 3D animation and compositing programs have for cameras, geometry and animation (FBX for example.) At the moment, I have to rely on custom scripts in different programs to get what I need transferred. Unfortunately for most users, these scripts don't always come with the programs or they aren't available to the public.

Not making a judgment on any particular package or developers, it's just something I often wish existed for more 2D animation software.

[NathanOtano]

As a side note, you already have a script in this forum to export to after effect. Toonboom also has scripting possibilities, so you can definitely jump from one software to another (after all it's only sharing sounds, edits and images), the software being any TB iteration or Adobe Animate for exemple. It all depends on your studio pipeline and having some TD to write it... Definitely doable.
The thing is every software package is also enough by itself at the steps TVP performs. I understand the need of having after effect to complete tvpaint's compositing limitations, but regarding storyboarding and animating I don't see what could be achieved from switching from one pipeline to another. Unless you have different artists that wants to work on different softwares but... Well, as a supervisor you just adapt cause it's drawing after all. And you switch software at the next step (Like if you have a team of storyboader in Animate + TBSBP + TVP, well you edit all the exports on your editing software like Premiere and everything is smooth). Regarding animation it mostly depends on your cleanup and automations need, but for full 2D animation I guess you animate wherever and for simple plain stroke cleanups you can also clean any animation in any software with a jpeg export

I'm sure any storyboard can also be exported with separated layers and imported the same way with scripting. But hey if layout begins, people will draw it again anyway so no need to bother with complicated exports at that point. After animation and background yes, but before it's a waste of time and efforts in my opinion (but if you're a big studio, hey, you can still script it so...)

[D.T. Nethery]

I've had times where I have moved artwork back and forth between TVPaint and Harmony , as PNG image sequences with transparency. Where it becomes tricky is if you've applied any FX nodes or special blending modes on layers in Harmony , those will not transfer intact if you move it back to TVPaint , unless you export each layer as fully rendered layer , but then of course the FX are "baked-in" at that point . But for just moving line drawings or line drawings with simply flat fill color layers back and forth , it's not that difficult.

I use the JSON export and import to After Effects a lot more. I use the Camera Tool or Keyframer in TVPaint for any fairly simple, straightforward from Point A - to - Point B camera moves , but if it's for more complex camera move(s) I import all the layers from TVPaint to After Effects to accomplish the camera moves.