Paper angle to direction?

[KenC]

Is there a way to get the paper angle to follow the direction of the pen?

Would be great when texturing using papers. Pressure to paper size would also be nice.

[slowtiger]

Any way to change the paper texture from frame to frame would be more than welcome.

[Animark]

I told my students, to create a couple of variations of the same paper and change it from drawing to drawing to avoid paper stills during animation.

Changing the paper by pressure and other interactions with the pen would be really great!

[ZigOtto]

Changing the paper by pressure and other interactions with the pen would be really great!

yeap, but I'm afraid it will taxe us with a serious slow down by using this kind of connexion
on freehand drawing tools when the choosen paper is as large as the project size, as I use to have .

I will have to think about getting a 16 core machine soon !

[Peter Wassink]

i agree with Zigs remarks and like to add that rotating the paperstructure with direction doesnot, in my opinion, add much that cannot be achieved by a well constructed (animated)custombrush

you could for instance make a animbrush with paper structure and connect the angle to direction this way the structure will always be aligned with your stroke

[malcooning]

Of course it would be nice for the paper to change with pressure or with every frame, but Zig is right here - there is no way most machines will be able to handle it.

But you're in luck - it's TVP you're taking about. Time to get creative!

Not only that Custom brushes allow you to play with many many parameters (and soon will have even more), you can also experiment with layering in different blend modes, animate the keyframer with several different textures, stretch and interpolate frames of paint and other interesting approaches. Say, for example,that you paint a few frames with texture only (either from the paper, or from brushes or brought from external images). Then you animate these frames, to create a jitter, or wiggle in the textures, then you push contrast up, play with the histogram of the alpha channel, and then use the whole layer to ERASE another layer below it - a layer that you have already drawn your animation on. The result would be that you'd get your animation (be it characters, abstracts or what may), textured randomly, with unpredictable results. What can be better!

One thing that might possibly be reasonable to implement is that papers could be loaded not as a single image, but a sequence of 3-5 images, and as the brush draws on, the paper cycles between those images. Another method would be to load a single image, but have TVP wiggle that paper as the brush draw on, in order to create randomness in texture. Either way, it probably will work best with papers which are based on a small repeating (tiled) image, as to not tax the computer.

[KenC]

Papers are just so much faster to use when experimenting to get a certain texture, just pick a paper perhaps flip it to negative, tweak size and you'r off, instead of drawing out a whole sequence for animbrushes, messing with transparency to get overlaps correct, tweak a ton of parameters for the brush. An hour or two later you'r ready to try it out, but you lost the idea you were going for.

I agree that animbrushes are very powerfull but they take a long time to create if you want perfect results.

Papers are also great because you can keep all the parameters of the brush you are using, and just try out different papers for it, instead of having hundreds of animbrushes for all kinds of textures.

Not sure about lag, you could just small 256x256 papers for texturing with dynamic angle and size.

I'll try some of the ideas posted though.

Oh btw, in the paper window you can select from "All" or "TVP Animation" groups from the listbox. Can you create your own groups in there? I'd like to have my different papers divided into groups instead of one huge list, I have a ton of texture libraries that I'd like to start importing.

[malcooning]

Oh btw, in the paper window you can select from "All" or "TVP Animation" groups from the listbox. Can you create your own groups in there? I'd like to have my different papers divided into groups instead of one huge list, I have a ton of texture libraries that I'd like to start importing.

Yes you can create groups.
The 'All' option shows all papers available.
The 'TVP animation' shows the papers that are installed by TVP by default (they live in the installation folder of TVP)
The 'User' shows all papers created by the user (on Windows, they live in the app data folder)
So if you go to the preferences folder and find TVP there, you can add new folders to the 'Papers' folder, and this will show as sub-categories of the 'User' papers.

[KenC]

Thanks, seems to work fine. Would be more user friendly if you could create groups from the gui though.

Now to import my texture libraries (Grabs coffe and painkillers)

[ZigOtto]

regarding papers, I would add an advice though :
after trying plenty of custom papers (loaded from PD libraries, or home-made),
keep in the tvpa/Papers folder only the ones you will have selected (useful for you),
and throw out all the others you think you'll never use.
because all the papers are pre-loaded and thumbnailed at tvpa launching,
and it could increase the launching time notably when tons of papers installed,
specially with High Res. specimens (no tile), so be selective in regards of your project/style use,
and keep all other fancy/freaky papers in a backup file far away.

my 2 cents, sometimes "less is better".

[KenC]

Oh, I thought the thumbs were loaded on use when keept in folders.

Most of my texture stuff are smaller 256x256 tiles though so no huge papers. I'll just convert them over to tvp paper format so they are ready when I need them and swap them in as needed before loading if the load times gets bad. Maybe I'll whip up a couple batch files to swap things in and out depending on what I'm doing.

Thanks.

[slowtiger]

ZigOtto is right, keep your papers to a minimum. I don't throw away any, however, I just keep them somewhere else on the harddrive.

I noticed that I tend to reduce options in TVP, rather than always expanding them. I try and load every new brush and tool, but after testing it I decide wether to keep it or not. I already decided about my style and workflow, so I tune TVP to it.

One more tip: Since TVP after a restart loads the first paper in the folder, but not my favourite, I made a copy of my favourite paper and named it beginning with an _ so it loads first automatically.

[Svengali]

I try and load every new brush and tool, but after testing it I decide wether to keep it or not. I already decided about my style and workflow, so I tune TVP to it.

I can't find a way to remove a custom panel from the list once it has been created or inserted via TVPX. How is that done?

Sven

[KenC]

Have you tried context clicking on a panel, then "this panel" and delete?

[Svengali]

Thanks Ken... works for me!

Sven