Scanning Directly into TVPAINT

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 27 Sep 2007, 21:53

I am attempting to scan some hand-drawn animation drawings into TVPaint.

I can not get the orientation of the image correct (horizontal orientation of the image , with peg holes along the bottom edge) .

I am on Mac Intel, Mac OS 10.4.10 , using Epson Expression 10000XL scanner .

Here is what I do :

1.) Choose ICA --- Acquire ----Append to Current Layer.

2.) When the scanner interface window opens up the orientation of the drawing is vertical (see attached screen grabs) , so I need to change it to horizontal orientation.
I use Rotate Left from the toolbar of the scanner interface window and the drawing is rotated to the correct orientation.

3.) I set the marquee around the drawing so it will scan the entire image , including the peg holes . (11.97" x 16.97")
Then I click on Scan.

BUT ...

4.) When the image appears in TVPaint the orientation has reverted back to vertical .

How do I make it appear with the orientation that was selected in the scanner interface window ?

ZigOtto · Post by **ZigOtto** » 27 Sep 2007, 23:55

weird, I never had this problem, I use to set the scan orientation by the little [F] gadget (see .gif below, Rotate clockwise 90°), and the exported file come as expected (the preview stay unchanged) ...

OK, it's not an epson, and I am not on Mac, but TVPA seems to respect what the user set within the scanner driver.

looking at your grabs, it looks like you have rotated the scan Preview,
not the Output datas (otherwise W & H sizes should be inverted, no?)

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 28 Sep 2007, 00:10

ZigOtto wrote:
looking at your grabs, it looks like you have rotated the scan Preview,
not the Output datas (otherwise W & H sizes should be inverted, no?)

That's the only option I have within the scanner interface for rotating ... I don't have the little "F" orientation box that you mention in your post above.

Maybe I need to go in to the Epson Scan settings first and make some sort of adjustment . Odd thing is that I use the same Epson scanner to scan art to Digicel and ToonBoom and when I use those apps they see the scanner orientation as the proper horizontal orientation (with pegs along the bottom edge ) .

The reason I am using several different apps to scan and video capture is because I am trying to convince the school where I am teaching why they should have the students using TVPaint instead of Digicel or ToonBoom, so I'm doing comparisons . Unfortunately, it's making it difficult for me to show off TVPaint to good advantage in this case because I can't get the scans to come in at the correct orientation. So , I need to solve this soon, before I do my demonstration for the school, comparing side-by-side the features in TVPaint vs. Digicel vs. ToonBoom.

ZigOtto · Post by **ZigOtto** » 28 Sep 2007, 01:39

oh I see ... it could be a mac version bug ...?
Eric ...?
btw, do they have Epson and Macs at your school ?

personnally, I've left the scanner and taken the camera-on-stand solution,
with a good stand and a good lighting set, it's much faster and more friendly,
I mean you put your drawing in the peg, on the right side, hit the space bar,
change your drawing, with the next one, hit again, etc ...
with usb2.0 connection, it's 5x to 10x faster (depending on your scanner, and your camera of course) ...
the other advantage is when you use animation paper bigger than A4, as 12field or 16field
which don't fit a standard scanner, (your XL model seems to be large enough though) ...

until both my 2 cameras come to die, I don't think I will go back to the scanner way so soon !

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 28 Sep 2007, 02:57

ZigOtto wrote:oh I see ... it could be a mac version bug ...?
Eric ...?
btw, do they have Epson and Macs at your school ?

personnally, I've left the scanner and taken the camera-on-stand solution,
with a good stand and a good lighting set, it's much faster and more friendly,
I mean you put your drawing in the peg, on the right side, hit the space bar,
change your drawing, with the next one, hit again, etc ...
with usb2.0 connection, it's 5x to 10x faster (depending on your scanner, and your camera of course) ...
the other advantage is when you use animation paper bigger than A4, as 12field or 16field
which don't fit a standard scanner, (your XL model seems to be large enough though) ...

until both my 2 cameras come to die, I don't think I will go back to the scanner way so soon !

You are correct that pencil testing is faster with a digital video camera on a camera stand. Both methods are used (video camera capture and scanner) . The Scanner is better for final images that will be taken to color , because the resolution is much higher . However, some students already have a scanner and prefer to use it rather than buy a camera stand and digital video camera. I'm just trying to cover all the possible configurations : Camera stand, scan directly, scan-save-import , and draw directly into the program . I want to show that TVPaint has the advantage in being able to do all these things , so I want to be sure I have a good understanding of how to demonstrate this when the time comes, with no mistakes . I usually do not capture drawings at all with TVPaint, I prefer to use the tablet to draw directly, but as I say , I want to demonstrate that TVPaint can do all those things.

Yes, the school does have several of the Epson 10000XL scanners. It may be that the best method with the Epson is to scan first , save all images to a folder, then import the images into TVPaint afterwards ,rather than trying to scan directly into TVPaint using the ICA Acquire.

------

It seems that this may be a difficulty between the Epson 10000XL scanner and TVPaint . I just tried scanning directly into TVPaint using my smaller Canon LIDE 50 scanner and I had to do the same sort of change in orientation in the scanner preview window (rotate the image to the right , to make it horizontal orientation) but with the Canon the image was captured into TVPaint at the correct orientation (horizontal) and did not revert back to vertical orientation as happened with the Epson.

Is there a list of preferred scanners to use with TVPaint (for Mac) ? In my experience up to now the Epson 10000XL has always interacted perfectly with Macintosh animation applications . It still works fine with TVPaint if I use the native Epson scanner interface , scan the drawings ,save them to a folder, then import them into TVPaint . However, there is something nice about acquiring the images directly without having to save them and import them ...

Post by **ematecki** » 28 Sep 2007, 07:58

I'm investigating !

I guess they use a non-standard but often used by digital camera tag for rotation in the image data.

I'll keep you informed.

EM.

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 29 Sep 2007, 19:07

ematecki wrote:I'm investigating !

I guess they use a non-standard but often used by digital camera tag for rotation in the image data.

I'll keep you informed.

EM.

Thanks for investigating, EM .

To review see the attached screen grabs using TVPaint to Acquire from Epson 10000XL scanner.

1.) I choose TVPaint File menu --- ICA --- Acquire--- Append to Current Layer . (no screen grab for this)

2.) The scanner interface which opens is different than the standard Epson 10000XL interface and the image is on Vertical orientation. (see screen grab below)

3.) the only available tools for rotating the image orientation are Rotate Left and Rotate Right in the toolbar.
I rotate the image Right to correct the image orientation to Horizontal. Then I click on Scan button, but when it appears in TVPaint the image has reverted back to Vertical orientation.

4.) I'm including a screen grab of the usual Epson 10000XL scanner interface that comes up for use with other applications (other than TVPaint) .

Post by **ematecki** » 01 Oct 2007, 08:41

I have a 3590 here and it does the same...

Post by **ematecki** » 01 Oct 2007, 10:08

OK, here is a work around until it is fixed in the next update.

In the "Format" popup in the 'drawer' select PNG instead of jpeg.
In any case you shouldn't use jpeg, because the scanner (or more probably the driver) sends jpeg data in this case, which is a lossy compression and you loses some of your data !
As strange at it sounds, the scanner uses the selected file format even if not saving to a file !

DON'T use jpeg if you scan from inside an application !

Eric M.

carlocodamus · Post by **carlocodamus** » 04 Oct 2007, 03:09

is png ok for animations? what are the benefits? coz i always use jpeg or gif.. does filesize affect animation?
thanks and much appreciated!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
multimeda everything!!

Post by **ematecki** » 04 Oct 2007, 07:45

In this very specific case it doesn't matter as the files aren't saved, just transfered from the scanner to "inside" TVPaint.

In the general case, it all depends on what you want to do with your animation.

GIF in OK for small anims on web pages, but reallly bad for almost everything else as it will only keep 256 colors out of the millions possible.

JPEG isn't an "animated" format, meaning you'll get one jpeg file per image in your animation, and it is a lossy compression, meaning you won't get back exactly what you saved, but if you do that only as the last step, you won't notice it unless you compress too much. But if you use jpeg as your "working" format (meaning you save your work in the evening as jpegs, and reload then the next morning to continue working), these small errors will accumulate and after some days it will start to look ugly.

PNG isn't "animated" either, but it is lossless, meaning you can save your work as pngs and get back exactly what you saved (well, you won't get back the layers of your TVPaint project).

So it all really depend on what you want to do with your animation.
In any case, keep your .tvp file for working on your anims, and keep them in case you have to rework them.
Export in another format to "publish" your work, which format depends on the way you publish it.
And never reload that exported work unless you absolutely have to, i.e. you lost the .tvp file.

EM.

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 04 Oct 2007, 08:04

ematecki wrote:OK, here is a work around until it is fixed in the next update.

In the "Format" popup in the 'drawer' select PNG instead of jpeg.

Thanks, Eric. That did work to use PNG format . The scan kept the corrected horizontal orientation when it opened in TVPaint.

However, here's something else to work on fixing for the next update:

The scanner interface that TVPaint uses with Epson scanner does not save any information or settings from one scan to the next . So, say I have 20 animation drawings to scan.
The first scan is named M_0001 . I select PNG as the format, 150 dpi for resolution, B&W , set the marquee for 11" x 17" and hit the Scan button. It scans M_0001 into TVPaint ... so far , so good .

However , go to scan M_0002 by selecting ICA --- Acquire from the File menu and the scanner interface window opens again , but now it has reverted back to the default settings --- Jpeg for format , 72 dpi, Color Photo, the orientation is back to vertical , no marquee value has been saved, and the number remains set at M_0001 not advanced to M_0002. All must be re-selected manually each time a scan is made with the Epson 10000XL directly into TVPaint.

So, the scanner interface between TVPaint and Epson scanners definitely needs some improvement to make it practical to acquire images from Epson scanner directly into TVPaint.

For now what I do is scan everything using the native Epson scanner interface, save images to a folder as PNG files, then open TVPaint and Load those images into TVPaint .

If you can fix it so that TVPaint can "talk" directly with the Epson Scan interface that would be great .

EDIT: Hmmmm.... playing around with this a bit more , I just noticed that I can't actually get it to scan at 150 or 300 dpi when the Format is set to PNG. PNG will only scan at 72 dpi. This will be so much better if TVPaint can interface directly with the Epson Scan window , instead of what pops up now .

ZigOtto · Post by **ZigOtto** » 04 Oct 2007, 11:40

just for info, (scanner Microtek, Win-XP), here it always keeps the previous user's settings,
even after quitting TVPA, and re-launching it,
even also when switching off the computer, ... then start it and launch the scanner driver again,
the preview is still the last one (previously made), and all the settings are kept and ready to use.
(frame, resolution, orientation, color/histo correction, ...)

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 14 Oct 2007, 15:31

One more question about Scanned animation drawings to TVPaint:

How are scanned Peg Holes recognized and aligned ?

I noticed that one of the features on the Feature Comparison sheet
says: "Peg Hole Recognition and Alignment" .

Does that mean the peg holes on a scanned set of drawings are automatically recognized and aligned by TVPaint ?

I do not know how to access this feature and there is nothing in the manual about it that I can find (I did search for "peg hole alignment" and did not find any mention of Peg Hole Recognition and Alignment in the manual.)

Peter Wassink · Post by **Peter Wassink** » 14 Oct 2007, 18:01

You can achieve good results using the two point stabilisation FX

but it would be good to offer a more automated method, because it requires a few steps like aplying the pixeltracker and this can get quite technical for the novice users

Welcome to TVPaint Community forums !

Scanning Directly into TVPAINT

Scanning Directly into TVPAINT

PNG?

Peg Hole Recognition and Alignment