Improving Out-of-Pegs inbetweening system

[D.T. Nethery]

By the way, I think some version of what Slowtiger wrote and illustrated in his explanation of the process needs to be included in the user manual . (with the running character currently shown in the user manual , but adding some screen captures to cover the step of blocking in a rough inbetween.) At present, the user manual glosses over the need to first draw a rough inbetween (or at the very least, a path of action ) to indicate the position of the inbetween, which is then used as a guide to line up the shifted extremes.

The current user manual only says this:

"Then, open the light table's panel and activate it on your layer (see the screenshot), in order to see by transparency your previous image and your next image.
Thanks to the Light Table, start to quickly draw the inbetween."

The part about "quickly draw the inbetween" needs additional instructions to emphasize that this step of blocking in a rough inbetween must be done BEFORE shifting the extremes out of pegs . Then you will use the rough inb to line up the extremes. After that you do your finished inbetween, checking the accuracy of your final lines by flipping between the two extremes.

block in rough Inb.jpg (77.85 KiB) Viewed 31330 times

When I do inbetweens, especially those with wide spacing between frames, I first indicate the inbetween position of the character/object, just top and bottom, or a circle for the main mass. This way I mark the path of action and the spacing, before I shift anything off the pegs and do the clean stuff.



As you can see, the blue sketch indicates where I want my #7 inbetween. Then I take frame 1 and 13 off the pegs, draw what I need, and put them on pegs again and add the rest. No need for shifting the inbetween because it never left its place. The inbetween (the "0" drawing in the Light Table) is always in position . It doesn't move. You can only move the existing drawings befor and after that, and only they can snap back.)

[Hironori Takagi]

I would like to piggyback on this agenda.
I think it would be nice to be able to change the “change center of rotation” of the transform tool supported in the middle of TVPaint11 even "out of pegs".
Since the peg is set up or down, I think it is inconvenient to set the center of rotation only to the center of the project.

[Peter Wassink]

Interesting exchange i missed here.
I agree with the conclusion that the off pegg function works fine as it is
(i personally dislike Toonbooms OOP because it is much less direct, you have to do a number of steps in selecting the frames etc.. whereas in TVP you simply click the frame you want to adjust off pegs and you have instant control)

I also very much agree wit the last point made by Hironori.
If there is one thing that needs to be aproved in the OOP its the rotation!
the center of rotation should always stay in the center of the projectview and not in the center of the projectdimensions.
When you are zoomed in to a corner of your project, it is now very difficult to do a controled OOP rotation.

[Peter Wassink]

I thought this was another very interesting idea for improving OOP :
http://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic. ... on#p101196

but because of the limitations of scripting not yet working optimal.

[slowtiger]

Oh yes, the rotation in OOP could be improved.

[D.T. Nethery]

(i personally dislike Toonbooms OOP because it is much less direct, you have to do a number of steps in selecting the frames etc.. whereas in TVP you simply click the frame you want to adjust off pegs and you have instant control)

It's better in Harmony v17 . You no longer have to do that extra step of "Send Drawings to the Desk" before activating off-pegs mode.
I did not like it before , but now I do. Still not enough to make me want to switch to Harmony , but I wondered if it would be possible to do something similar with TVPaint's OOP .

I also very much agree wit the last point made by Hironori.
If there is one thing that needs to be aproved in the OOP its the rotation!
the center of rotation should always stay in the center of the projectview and not in the center of the projectdimensions.
When you are zoomed in to a corner of your project, it is now very difficult to do a controled OOP rotation.

Yes, I agree with the center of rotation request made by Hironori. (also something which works very well in Harmony's version of OOP)

[D.T. Nethery]

I thought this was another very interesting idea for improving OOP :
http://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic. ... on#p101196

but because of the limitations of scripting not yet working optimal.

Nathan's "OOP Set Points" is what put me on the track to think it might be possible to do what I was suggesting. earlier in this thread .
But I find the Set Points function in Nathan's custom panel difficult to predict how it will apply . Sometimes I think I understand it , then next time I try it I get unexpected results.

[NathanOtano]

Yeah my tool is always used on a "roughed out inbetween" (even just a point, or two points if you rotate/scale). Sometimes I don't draw my inbetweens, I just click with my tool where i want my inbetween to be then on the two lighttable images and everything is at the right spot.

I understand what you mean, with paper you line up your two drawing and put your current sheet in the middle where you want it. But in tvp you have to align lighttable drawings on the current current image, not the other way around. Also if you want to calculate any position from the position of your out of peg, you would still have the problem of modifying your drawing that is not in place. But all you need is to use your current drawing as the "guide" to move the out of peg drawing, not your already existing drawings, it doesn't take much more time (in harmony I also work the same way as in tvp, I don't move current drawing usually).
I think it's far easier to visualise where the inbetween of one point will be (for example the nose) and just click on this spot, drawn or not, then on the nose on the two surrounding images same for scale and rotate with a second reference point. And usually when I draw the nose out of peg, I can better see the arc for the ear for exemple, so I use my script again and I out of peg the ear directly cause it takes into account the already set out of pegs (you can do that for each part if you want to be precise, beginning with the most obvious reference points for your spacing like the clavicle then the chin, then the inside face details).

(you can do this without drawing the rough nose, just click on the right spot)

I actually never found useful to use the peg visualisation, I just directly place the drawings at the right position in the spacing.
Btw if you have suggestions on my OOP script feel free to tell me on my side, if I take care of ending the flip properly with the button, I never have bugs or problems (except some undo weird behaviours, or if you accidentally flip normally or go to another layer, but you can always undo, and be sure to not use the gradient mode). Personally, I may be biased but I can't use the LT OOP anymore and always use my script for practically all my inbetweens cause it's much more precise and faster to use. I also agree with the center of rotation/scale that NEEDS to be movable, but my script is a nice workaround so right now i'm fine...
I thought at first of being able to flip and out of peg more drawings but actually I caught myself almost always using only two surrounding drawings.

HOWEVER i'd be happy to have a new alternate function for the lighttable that would register out of peg per image/instance position instead of lighttable position (like in toonboom), using the id of the instances. Could be useful to animate things like walks on the spot and be able to flip between drawings without having to reposition everything everytime we change to another drawing (you can do that by stacking multiple paper when doing traditional animation for exemple, but not in tvp).
I thought about scripting it (by adapting the out of peg/drawing when you move to another drawing with a special flip button) but it would be really limited or really complicated.

[slowtiger]

+1 that last paragraph! That would be so great, and definitely will be used by everybody. It's amazing, we have all this computing power now, but still stick to a workflow not much different from the one esatblished in 1928.

[D.T. Nethery]

Yeah my tool is always used on a "roughed out inbetween" (even just a point, or two points if you rotate/scale). Sometimes I don't draw my inbetweens, I just click with my tool where i want my inbetween to be then on the two lighttable images and everything is at the right spot.

I think it's far easier to visualise where the inbetween of one point will be (for example the nose) and just click on this spot, drawn or not, then on the nose on the two surrounding images

But when OOP Set is activated the light table turns off , the previous drawing and following drawing are not visible, so how can you click with the tool where you want the inbetween to be ? I think if the Light Table would stay on when setting the points it would be much easier to click on a point where you want the inbetween to be.

The GIF you posted is interesting . I don't get the cursor with the vertical and horizontal guidelines as shown in your GIF . My cursor stays as an arrow . (I am on Mac OS , so I wonder if this is related to the ongoing Mac issue with the cursor being stuck as an arrow ?)

[NathanOtano]

The cursor appears because of the tvpaint record screen script
Also when you alt-click (or ctrl click maybe) on the oop set button, you should be able to activate and deactivate the option of seeing or not the lighttable. I quote the topic with the script

If you alt click on the panel button, you have two options (more to come) :
- You can choose to hide or not the current frame while setting your reference points on your lighttable images.
- You can choose to temporarily set (or not) your LT images at full opacity while setting your reference points.

I prefer to hide it cause when it's complicated drawings sometimes I don't know where to click anymore, and it indicates which image to click on after the first one, but I understand your point i guess that's why I draw a dot beforehand (but light table disappears only when you click on the inbetween point right? So when you click you should still see the lightable)

[D.T. Nethery]

when you alt-click on the oop set button, you should be able to activate and deactivate the option of seeing or not the lighttable.

I see the options when I alt-click , but no matter what option I set it for , when I click on OOP Set the light table is turned off .

[NathanOtano]

Ah I understand! Indeed there is no option to keep the whole light table on when you set the first point.

It didn't bother me because I put the "OOP set" on a shortcut so I point where I want with my stylus without clicking, I then press my shortcut and click on the spot I want. I guess the only workaround until I maybe go back on this option is to just draw a quick dot where is you in between

[D.T. Nethery]

Ah I understand! Indeed there is no option to keep the whole light table on when you set the first point.

It didn't bother me because I put the "OOP set" on a shortcut so I point where I want with my stylus without clicking, I then press my shortcut and click on the spot I want. I guess the only workaround until I maybe go back on this option is to just draw a quick dot where is you in between

The workaround I came up with is to draw my arc lines and dots on a separate temporary layer , which remains visible when I activate the OOP Set, so I have the reference points to know where to click to set the first point .

[NathanOtano]

Nice