10bit or more support in TVPaint? Anytime soon?

[D.T. Nethery]

But if it's just for coloring artwork with flat colors, why don't you just color it in Tvpaint? CTG layers are pretty good tools for this, i dont see how faster you would be able to do it in photoshop even if you have structure.

The only thing that would make me want to export to photoshop timeline is to be able to have a mix between compositing like in after effect while still being able to draw.

Then if you export in 8 bit, just convert all the resulting pngs in 16 bit and there should be not much of a difference while doing compositing unless it's not flat colors and gradients. But maybe i'm wrong...

This is good to know . Thank you for the additional information.

You're absolutely right that coloring in TVPaint is faster . The ONLY reason I have any interest in coloring in Photoshop was because I had a compositor fussing at me about the 8-bit color for artwork coming out of TVPaint (exactly the same reasons mentioned in the original post above by Peteris Sudakovs ) so I thought if I did the coloring in Photoshop in 16-bit color mode, it would solve the problem. Now that I'm getting a better understanding that it doesn't really matter so much for the regular flat fill-colors , but is more of an issue when there are gradients and FX with transparency, I'm less likely to ever do any flat coloring in Photoshop, I'll just do it all in TVPaint as normal (for me) , but make sure that gradients and FX with transparency are done in AE.

Well, actually , there is one other reason I'm interested in coloring animation frames in Photoshop. It is because sometimes I've had students who wanted to enlist their friends to help them with things like doing simple click-and-fill coloring of frames (thousands of frames ! you know how it is ...) , but their friends did not have TVPaint and were not going to purchase TVPaint just to help out temporarily on a friend's film. But they ALL have Photoshop. So if frames can be colored in PS they can be re-imported back to TVPaint or imported as image sequences to AE for compositing and camera moves with backgrounds.

[schwarzgrau]

Well, actually , there is one other reason I'm interested in coloring animation frames in Photoshop. It is because sometimes I've had students who wanted to enlist their friends to help them with things like doing simple click-and-fill coloring of frames (thousands of frames ! you know how it is ...) , but their friends did not have TVPaint and were not going to purchase TVPaint just to help out temporarily on a friend's film. But they ALL have Photoshop. So if frames can be colored in PS they can be re-imported back to TVPaint or imported as image sequences to AE for compositing and camera moves with backgrounds.

Till there is a way of exporting/importing animations between TVPaint and Photoshop there is a great tool by the wonderful Duduf (which also enhanced Mads AE importer together with Nathan, if I remember correctly). It uses the OCA (Open Cell Animation) format, which is also just a JSON and some image files. But you can use it to import/export files between Blender, Krita and TVPaint. So the helping students could at least use Krita (which doesn't seem too bad for a free software and has better animation capabilities than Photoshop).
https://rainboxlab.org/tools/oca/

In terms of banding: I mostly agree with Nathan. Most of the time it probably won't make a difference if you work in 8 or 16 bit in TVPaint. At least if you work with flat fills. But if you do smoke, soft shadows and stuff like this you can get banding pretty fast. The only way to really avoid this is to apply a tiny bit of noise, while you still work in 16bit, so the 8bit file you export in the end won't have banding. If you already got some banding from working in 8bit there isn't much you can do about it.

[slowtiger]

Reminds me of, oh, nearly 30 yrs ago when I had to colour a poster (for "Asterix in America") in Photoshop. That file needed 15 min to open and 15 min to save ( on a Mac Quadra 950). And it had a sky background with only a short gradient, so banding was very visible. Had to apply noise to each of the 4 channels separately because of lack of processing power ... but it printed nicely.

[D.T. Nethery]

Well, actually , there is one other reason I'm interested in coloring animation frames in Photoshop. It is because sometimes I've had students who wanted to enlist their friends to help them with things like doing simple click-and-fill coloring of frames (thousands of frames ! you know how it is ...) , but their friends did not have TVPaint and were not going to purchase TVPaint just to help out temporarily on a friend's film. But they ALL have Photoshop. So if frames can be colored in PS they can be re-imported back to TVPaint or imported as image sequences to AE for compositing and camera moves with backgrounds.

Till there is a way of exporting/importing animations between TVPaint and Photoshop there is a great tool by the wonderful Duduf (which also enhanced Mads AE importer together with Nathan, if I remember correctly). It uses the OCA (Open Cell Animation) format, which is also just a JSON and some image files. But you can use it to import/export files between Blender, Krita and TVPaint. So the helping students could at least use Krita (which doesn't seem too bad for a free software and has better animation capabilities than Photoshop).
https://rainboxlab.org/tools/oca/

Thank you for the link to the OCA tool by Duduf. I agree with you that Krita has some good animation functionality and can certainly do click-and-fill coloring as well as Photoshop (and it's FREE !) . I'll have to check into whether Krita has 16-bit color mode .

[NathanOtano]

Well, actually , there is one other reason I'm interested in coloring animation frames in Photoshop. It is because sometimes I've had students who wanted to enlist their friends to help them with things like doing simple click-and-fill coloring of frames (thousands of frames ! you know how it is ...) , but their friends did not have TVPaint and were not going to purchase TVPaint just to help out temporarily on a friend's film. But they ALL have Photoshop. So if frames can be colored in PS they can be re-imported back to TVPaint or imported as image sequences to AE for compositing and camera moves with backgrounds.

You can tell them to just export the project as a layer structure .psd sequence then and they can do it easily in photoshop by importing it either as a sequence or just opening frame after frame, they should'nt need the structure right?
Happy I helped for the rest

Till there is a way of exporting/importing animations between TVPaint and Photoshop there is a great tool by the wonderful Duduf (which also enhanced Mads AE importer together with Nathan, if I remember correctly). It uses the OCA (Open Cell Animation) format, which is also just a JSON and some image files. But you can use it to import/export files between Blender, Krita and TVPaint. So the helping students could at least use Krita (which doesn't seem too bad for a free software and has better animation capabilities than Photoshop).
https://rainboxlab.org/tools/oca/

Dufduf is definitely the best <3 but i think the tvpaint exporter isn't there yet right?
And it shoudl still be 8 bit from tvpaint i think, but i agree it would be easy to replace photoshop with krita even to do the above : open .psd files exporter from tvp and color them individually

[PeterisSudakovs]

I have to say thank you to the community here! You guys rock!

Last year I was thinking that there should be some method on how to go with Krita or similar as a workaround but I have not have had the time to search for this and artists working in my studio with TVpaint - as it turns out - are not in the loop about this. Talk about ambitions.

Would love to hear from the dev team (I hope they read this forum) - is it even feasible to implement different data structure in TVpaint in a sane and timely manner? I know I probably sound harsh and all - but this is because I want to use the software more standalone and not go trough the dumpster fire that AfterEffects has become since they changed their engine (from cc2015) to the mercury one and since then it has been down hill and all. So this is one big reason why I have to think of a new workflow that does not include Adobe. Ideally zero Adobe products. Have been trying out Krita and Affinity for the last 2+ years and so far it seems Affinity is better for basic stuff and Krita is better for pencil input. Where possible - we have replaced photoshop with affinity and have not looked back. Similar for other parts of the CC.

I really do hope that this more than 8 bits is not something that is next to impossible to implement. Even if the painting tools would still be 8bit but the main compositing engine would allow to import 16bit assets and export all of that composition as layered thing in 16 bits (with some layers as 8bits) for further processing elsewhere - even that would be a great start. This would allow us to use basic compositing features and skip AE altogether.

[slowtiger]

Now that's an idea: would it be possible to introduce 16bit as a special layer? So the bigger part of any project would be 8bit (and fast as hell), and only the few special use cases use 16bit. Of course a PS export would turn everything to 16bit, which shouldn't be a problem. (The other way round .. well, not recommended?)

[NathanOtano]

You can use davinci fusion as a compositing software if you want free solid comp software
I don't see anybody doing serious compositing in tvpaint and even if being able to import then export 16 bit in tvpaint seems fair, I think from a pipeline point of view it's much better to just keep the assets separate and re-comp them afterward

[schwarzgrau]

I don't see anybody doing serious compositing in tvpaint and even if being able to import then export 16 bit in tvpaint seems fair, I think from a pipeline point of view it's much better to just keep the assets separate and re-comp them afterward

I completly agree. If you animate you want a fast responsive software (like TVPaint), if you do serious compositing you want it non-destructive, but that comes at the cost of speed/responsiveness (After Effects). It's nice you can do compositing in TVPaint, but I don't see a way this could replace "real" comp tools like After Effects or Nuke, without getting annoyingly slow or destructive.

Dufduf is definitely the best <3 but i think the tvpaint exporter isn't there yet right?

I need to check this, but I somehow already imported a JSON trough his importer in After Effects. But probably just an importer for the existing JSON exports from TVPaint so far. But yea, I donated several times to him, Duik alone is such an amazing tool, which still keeps improving.

Thank you for the link to the OCA tool by Duduf. I agree with you that Krita has some good animation functionality and can certainly do click-and-fill coloring as well as Photoshop (and it's FREE !) . I'll have to check into whether Krita has 16-bit color mode .

Krita has 16-bit color mode. I learned the basics of it, since I gave an animation course at my former art school and while they allready followed my advice and bought some TVPaint licenses it wasn't that practical to use them while home schooling. It's really annoying to set up (shortcuts and ffmpeg), but it's by far the best free 2D animation tool I tried so far. And it's great for people to get a sense of 2D animation. Some of my students which dived deeper into it already bought a license of TVPaint, since it's still superior.

[skomdra]

I want to address something here, as I feel certain aspects haven’t been fully covered. Working in artistic animation, our films often undergo a color grading process because the artists prefer using brushes and the feel of natural media. It's true that for simple mechanical gradients where stepping is visible, I've encountered limitations when trying to process images with 8-bit color. While line drawing and animating are perfectly adequate in 8-bit color, the expectations in artistic animation are high. Artists seek the flexibility to fully exploit the capabilities of 16-bit and 32-bit color.

With the advancement of technology, computers are now faster, and engines like Davinci Resolve can handle 32-bit image sequences in real-time. Given this, I see no reason why the TVPaint team shouldn’t put in extra effort to cater to the needs of their target audience, which includes the artistic short film projects I work on in France. This would enhance the visual richness of the output. People are experimenting with various tools, including Blender, to achieve the desired look. Therefore, it might be time for TVPaint to evolve and find ways to support higher bit depths in images as well.