A separate window for model sheets and/or sketching

[Mark Borok]

It would be nice to have a panel or window with a model for reference, to make sure your character is on model in every frame. This window would always float above the canvas, so you could position it next to your drawing for comparison. It would contain multiple pages of drawings that you could select from a menu, in order to quickly access every character or object.

Of course, it's possible to create a dedicated layer or project to store your model sheets, but I think my idea would be faster and more convenient.

The same idea could be applied to a "scratch pad" window, for those times when you need to rough out a new idea, or solve a drawing problem by doing a quick sketch.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Mark
something along this line already exists and it's called Picture Palette, by Young Monkey in Canada:

http://www.youngmonkey.ca/hands/restaur ... index.html

We've been using it for years. I have nine of these open at all times. Not only can you keep your model sheets in these but also picture references you download from the Internet. You use one of these just the way you would use a painter's palette to dip your pen into for colors. Please let me know if you like it; it's worth every penny in my opinion.

[Sewie]

Thanks for the tip, Paul ! I've been wanting something like this as well.
(Will it be implemented in future versions of TVP ?)

[slowtiger]

I'd definitely vote for implementing this. Doesn't need all those functions, it would be enough to have an "open as palette" option for importing images, just to get the floating behaviour. (Of course it would be nice to have the other functions as well.)

[Paul Fierlinger]

The other functions are VERY functional. We get here into the tricky political area of plugin development. Sometimes I wonder if plugins, which are marvelous save-the-day enhancements when they first appear, don't become hindrances to the overall quality of the host software. As time passes, when is it morally permissible for a software company to say "he got his ride but now it's time for us to get what is ours back"?

When does the cutoff period arrive for the user to expect the software developers to implement what was once a clunky plugin to now become an integrated software feature? How does this generally work in the www of software updates?

[slowtiger]

Since this happened a lot, there are several possible models of compensation to choose from.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Is that supposed to pass for information?

[slowtiger]

Well - I trust TVPaint.com to know about those issues.

[Sierra Rose]

I too love picture palette. For all it's various functions.

When I had it in Mirage, I could get duplicate copies up at one time but now only one. How do you get several going at once, Paul? I've written dhomas about it and he is busy now but said he'd try to get back to me. I thought you might know the trick for TVP already.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Sierra,
go to your TVPaint folder/PLUGINS folder\restaurant\Tools where you will see PicturePalette_0.dll
Copy it and paste it right there and it will appear as "copyPicturePalette_0.dll
Do this 7 more times, so that you have 9 instances.
Now rename the copies, one by one, starting with PicturePalette_2.dll (number 1 cannot be made.)
So you should end up with 0,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

Now open TVPaint, go to Windows/Plugins/restaurant/Tools/ where you should find all the new ones lined up and open them one at a time.
Then I recommend that you save this as a Template, but you don't have to.
It's a somewhat tedious process but well worth the effort; just like inbetweening.

[Sierra Rose]

That worked just dandy. Thank you so much. I'm still recuperating from losing my other computer just at the time I changed to TVP from Mirage so some things fell through the cracks.

[dhomas]

Regarding plugins. A software developer always has the option to decide to support the effort of it's third party developers and avoid copying their work. This is particularly important in small markets where a developer's efforts are discouraged by the inability to sell software due to it being obsoleted. We've put a lot of time into our plugin development, it's never as easy for the third party to create these as it is for the main software developer. We don't consider any of our plugins to be clunky add-ons. In some realms, there is a saying "A program is only as good as it's plugins".

[Paul Fierlinger]

PicturePalette is not a good example of a clunky plugin. I was thinking more about Marker/frame tracker. Is there any progress with making that one work again?

[dhomas]

We should have a new ToolBox release soon. We're waiting on some info from TVPaint to complete the update. Note that the automatic frame tracking function works as long as you don't use multiple exposures (frame repeats). Simply copying/pasting frames as you did before the repeat feature was added to TVPaint resolves the problem in the current version.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Simply copying/pasting frames as you did before the repeat feature was added to TVPaint resolves the problem in the current version.

Hmmm-- I just tried it and it doesn't seem to be the case. For a test I copied a few frames instead of stretching them out as instances and I copied and pasted two other frames into a new place along the time line. But when I dragged down on Frame tracker the result was the first frame appeared on a new layer below with it's marker number in the corner, but minus its image and this frame was stretched out as instances for the length of the time line.