Question about selection tools

[M]

Hi all,
I'm getting to grips with the Animation Pro demo and I love the drawing tools, but I think I must be missing something very straightforward regarding the selection tools. I'm coming from years of working with Axa digital ink and paint, Digicel's Flipbook, Flash and Photoshop. I'm looking to moving across to totally paperfree 2D bitmap animation after 23 years of confirmed 2D paper animation and I'm hoping TV Paint will be one of the tools I use along with Flipbook.

When I define a selection using any of the selection tools and try to move or transform that selected area, it doesn't work. It moves the whole of the frame. In Flipbook, Flash or Photoshop you can define a selection, then move that selected area to a new position or transform it. What am I missing here?

Also is it possible to just click on different frames in different layers in order to select them to work on rather than clicking on a layer and then clicking on the frame bar (in the timeline)?

A great thing about Flipbook is that the ink and paint (line and fill) are separate elements, but combined within the same frame/layer/level. Is this something that can be acheived in TV Paint, or do I have to use 2 layers, one for the line and one for the fill?

If this is the case, can I recommend adding this function to TV Paint. It works like a dream in Flipbook.

I've noticed elsewhere on the forum about acquired scans loading into TV Paint vertically. I use an Epson 1500 A3 scanner and I have the same problem. Scans are acquired correctly and rotated in Flipbook by a small preference requester window that gives rotation options. Again, is this something that could be included in future versions.

Cheers,
Mark.

[ZigOtto]

welcome Mr M!

... When I define a selection using any of the selection tools and try to move or transform that selected area, it doesn't work. It moves the whole of the frame. In Flipbook, Flash or Photoshop you can define a selection, then move that selected area to a new position or transform it. What am I missing here?

it's a frequently asked question, and I think it should be answered in the FAQ section of this forum ...
yes, the selection tools works differently here,
it works basically like a stencil, preserving unselected areas,
f.i., you can disable/enable it by using the "disable/enable Stencil" button.
at least 3 different ways to move/tranform a selected area :
a) to "extract" the selected area(s), after selected, click on "Cut to Layer" button (Tool : Select panel),
then "clear" the selection, and "pan" with the panning tool,
(or Pan the selection with "Apply to Image" and "Apply to Selection" checked in the Tool panel,
b) idem, but click on "Cut to Brush" button, so the selection become a new Custom Brush,
(attached to your cursor), then left-click to past it wherever you want,
of course, you can edit your CB (size, rotation, alpha map, ...) before pasting it.
c) use directly one of the cut brush tools, then idem b),

... Also is it possible to just click on different frames in different layers in order to select them to work on rather than clicking on a layer and then clicking on the frame bar (in the timeline)?

don't click ON the frame's thumbnail, but UNDER it. (see pict.)

my 2 cents for this evening, I let others answer for the rest.

[M]

Cheers ZigOtto,

The selection tools do work differently. Thanks for the info though; and I'll have another look at the FAQs to see if I can find the info in there too.

Clicking UNDER the frame... ah... I knew there had to be a way to do it. I'd clicked about everywhere but under.

I'm running on Windows 2000pro and the TVPaint demo seems to be working fine. In addition to my other questions, has anyone had any problems running on 2000? (Sorry, I must sound like a dinosaur; you're probably all on Macs, XP or Vista!)

[oliveuk]

ah yeah selections in TV Paint ` They are so counterintuitive. They don't seem to have been tested with first time users

[Peter Wassink]

ah yeah selections in TV Paint ` They are so counterintuitive. ...

"counter intuitive" is not the right word...
"counter to what a lot of people have gotten used to by working with adobe software" would be a much better way of putting it.
because i can assure you that photoshop is also very counter-intuitive before you learn it.

But for this you can hardly blame TVP, because both TVPaint and photoshop are about the same age (both around 17 years old).
And when TVP first came out there was no universal standard for paint software. in fact i believe at that time photoshop was still only 8-bit, while TVP was 32-bit from the start (does someone know some more details on this?)



its a pity that the software business is one of the few businesses in which being the oldest is not exactly a recommendation.
"TVP the oldest 32-bit paint software in the world!"
.... hmmm don't think it'll help sales much ...

[malcooning]

They don't seem to have been tested with first time users

Let me back Peter up here.
TVPaint Developpement is still tapping to what's being requested in the PUBLIC forums.
On the other hand, photoshop is being developed in Adobe labs, which draws it's requests by affiliated factors.
Put a CS3 copy in the hands of a person who never used a painting program in his life and you can go and bake a bread loaf (or 30) while he's trying to understand how to crack that cowboy tool named Lasso.

[M]

"counter to what a lot of people have gotten used to by working with adobe software" would be a much better way of putting it.

I started a long time ago on Amiga computers using the Take2 linetester and DeluxePaint. (Both about the same age as TVPaint) With both of those, you click ON the frame not above or below it. Both programs were great pieces of animation software, designed for the purpose. I later moved onto AXA2D to scan and paint animation, and again you click ON the frame, as you do with with Flipbook and Flash. None of these were Adobe programs. (Yes, I know Flash is now.)

TVPaint as I recall wasn't designed for animation originally. It's evolution into a piece of animation software is fantastic, but there are still counter intuitive aspects (from the point of view of very traditional 2D animators) which havn't been screened out. Not being able to click on the frame is one of them.

If you want to pick up a piece of paper, you grab the paper. You don't slap your hand on the table above or below it and expect the paper to move.

[Peter Wassink]

Weird, i don't remember dpaint having a timeline interface?
i worked with dpaint more then 6 years funny how you forget stuff like that.

But anyway, i agree that to be able to change the current frame by actually clinking on it does make a lot of sense.

selecting multiple frames will still be done by draging a range under the layer because:
.... draging ON the layer will drag the layer on.... you cannot tell me that aint logic

[M]

selecting multiple frames will still be done by draging a range under the layer because:
.... draging ON the layer will drag the layer on.... you cannot tell me that aint logic

Yes. That'd be ok. Or you could click ON frame 1 and then Shift click ON frame 12 (for example) to highlight multiple frames.

Weird, i don't remember dpaint having a timeline interface?

Yes, you could animate with it. I worked on an animated title sequence for a Sega game years ago. "Chuck Rock II". All animated using DPaint. Infact a friend of mine, still in the games industry used to spend all his time animating characters in DPaint for computer games. DPaint was the only program other than TVPaint where I encountered Anim Brushes. Over the years I'd forgotten how good they are.

Nostalgia; it ain't what it used to be.

[Peter Wassink]

Lol ...did i know you could animate with Dpaint!?
i animated with Dpaint from 1994 till 2000, and all that time it was pretty much the only program i used!!
I actually learned to be an animator using Dpaint .
Before Aura came it was the only serious 2d animation software period.

What i was trying to say is that i forgot how exactly the interface for using frames looked. I don't recal a timeline.
and i thought, forgetting such a thing, was a bit weird/(worrying?) considering the many many hours i worked with it..

[oliveuk]

TVPaint Developpement is still tapping to what's being requested in the PUBLIC forums.

Which Public forums are you refering too? I think you are refering to the TV Paint one but unfortunately my feeling is that the TV Paint forum is only populated by previous users of either DPaint, Aura or old versions of TV Paint and seem to be using those softwares exclusively.

A standard user interface as emerged in the past 10 to 15 years, probably driven by Adobe, and a lot of people would disregard a software just because they don't know how to interact with it without opening the manual.

From what I understand, in the previous version of TV Paint, the Undo shortcut for example was U instead of the usual CTRL+Z. That's not much but that kind of things tend to irritate or put off people who have a bit of experience with other softwares.

Just like M, I find the current way of selecting frames in the timeline very counterintuitive. I think I gave up on Mirage the first time I used it, just because I couldn't figure out how to select cells, without opening the manual.

I haven't used Flash for a long time but I think the way it works is just like 3dsmax or Premiere. You Right click on an individual frame to select and move it, you surround a series of frames by clicking on them then drag that selection to move them.

Also the way it works now makes it akward to use TV Paint on TAblet PC with small screen resolutions. I would prefer to reduce the timeline to the minimum but if I do so, I need to keep expanding, minimizing the timeline to be able to go from "layer" to "layer", since the bottom part of the cell is missing when minimised.

I hope this makes sense

Olive

[ZigOtto]

... Also the way it works now makes it akward to use TV Paint on TAblet PC with small screen resolutions.

my chatty little finger told me about good news on this front,
and don't ask me what or when ...
all I can say is : "Tablet-pc owners, stay tuned! "
"with spring, come buds", (and sometimes bugs too...)