Improved UI , Nodebased Workflow , Unlimited Canvas etc...

[Kwadrope]

There's a lot of text here and no pictures,but bear with me and read it. I think most of them are perfectly possible and a great addition to worklow en workease. I have not found these suggestions anywhere else on the forum ,so excuse me if these suggestions have already been made.


In school and on the workfloor I have been able to familiarize myself with multiple animationsoftwares. My two favorites are TVPaint and Toonboom. I preferedly use them together: TVP for the animation,toonboom for the coloring and the effects. While I totally love TVP, I feel it could be better if it borrows some functionality that toonboom Pro has.

1. The Interface in Toonboom Pro2 is totally divine. You can customize EVERYTHING to your own needs. Put the xsheet on the right,while putting the timeline under everything else,and tool properties floating or docked, effects library,camera view,perspective view ALL where YOU want it AND with the choice of docking and floating.

TVPaint has indeed come a long way but it could be better still if you could for example seperate the Xsheet and the projects/storyboard tab from the timeline and put it where you want,Docked or Floating.Leave the choice to the user.
It doesn't even need to be that hard to organize. Toonboom for example let's you create as many tabs into one squared view as you wish, while letting you also the freedom to take those tabs and dock them somewhere else, just hovering over or close to certain corners or area's,or reorder the tabs or put them in another view.
It's sometimes frustrating not to be able to see my xheet and timeline tabs at the same time.

Also the fx tab should be docklable to be able to put it out of the way. Add also a quick hide function to every tab or panel like you have for the toolbins en you can hide and show what you want at the click of a button or autmatically.

The Drawing views should also follow this line of thinking. By docking them you'll never need to resize windows one by one again. Also Make sure that views of panels are focused upon by hovering,not by clicking,cause that makes everything slower.

The Workrooms where you save your interface should be expanded as well, let the user choose how much rooms he/she wants and and or delete them at will,WITH the option to always default the views when you do things horribly wrong.

An interface in which you let the user choose their way of work that truly is the best upgrade!

For people who don't know toonboom,there is a similar functionality of dockable and floating windows in adobe software like photoshop and afterfx.

2. A network view! Just like toonboom or 3DSmax of other compositing tools/programs. This is a superieur manner of dealing with many,many layers! It's a node based visual aid where you can position and connect the layers how you want right and results in the view you get in the camera/drawing view. Every Layer is a node that you can connect to other nodes.

This could also mean a revolution for the effects stack which just feels kinda awkward sometimes. If effects would also be transformed into nodes this would give you the option to work with nondestructive effects an always give you the possibility of changing the effects. you connect it to certain layers, you can disable them at will,you can combine them and make new powerful effects.

For example only a blur on a certain part that also gets keyframed "in time" while a transparancy node lets you animate the transparancy of the blurred drawing in time and more!
Options linked to that or other effects would can be opened bij clicking on the node and give you a float window where you change parameters.

It could also be added that you can choose to apply those nondestructive nodes ultimatly to the drawing so you can't go back anymore,and continue working on the resulting drawing, but let that be a choice ,not an obligation.

Nondestructive,always possible to change effects would be another major good feature AND would make tvpaint more independent for compositing purposes,which it now sadly lacks.

3. the drawing view as it is now is too limited. I should have the option to draw outside of the view ,because sometimes,especially for close ups and zoom outs and other views where you don't see your whole character,I sometimes have to guess where the rest and the volumes of my characters would be. If I could animate my character out of the "box" en more inside a frame with a virtually unlimited canvas it would be so much easier to work. Instead of having to animate it much bigger and then crop it or import or export or whatever.

This would also eliminate a problem I have when I transform drawings ands move them sligtly of the drawing board. The drawing gets cut where it leaves the frame and can't be retrieved ,later on in the process.

So = unlimited canvas with framed field. only the framed field gets rendered.

4. Improved Floodfill tool. Perhaps even with a gap closer which lets you invisibly close gaps without closing them visually.
Best example would be toonboom. The "strokes" in toonboom are invisible lines created along with colorart. I know this is harder for a bitmap program. But TVP can already where there are pixel and even their transparancy. So why not provide a layer inside a layer (which you can toggle) to see which pixels are filled en which you have to add , or connect quickly . Then you go to your floodtool and tell it to take those strokes into account while filling.

Now you can already fill based on display,layer or other,but something like this would increase the functionality greatly in my opinion.

5. if you work with cellshaded animation,the ability to grab a certain colour and change al the pixels in that colour instantly.
This is harder if you work with gradients ,but cellshaded should be possible. Again I have to point at toonboom where you can assign a library of colours to a pallette for one character and when you want to change a certain color you just pick it and move the colorslider instantly changing ALL the same colors assigned to that specific ID Color.

6. a perspective view for multiplane animation. Very handy.

7. I also ask for symbols like flash or toonboom. I have seen similar request and think it would improve all else even more


Now I know the options and tools I have asked here are possible in other programs and mainly toonboom,and while I also encourage TVPaints' own identity and toolbox,I think most of these features would greatly improve workflow and have proved themself to be indispensible in the long run. Like some of the tools already present in TVPaint ,that obviously originated in other programs, I don't see a problem with using already proved existing ideas, and applying them in a new and personal TVPaint manner. This would take an already awesome program to the next level


If some things I say are not clear,I'll gladly give more explanation to those who ask.

[slowtiger]

Hm, I'm always a bit reserved about requesta like "make software A exactly like software B" because then you could use B and leave A alone. But some of your points are worth to be discussed.

1. The TVP interface is useful enough for me, although I'd lke some changes as well. I don't get that whole "docking" concept, maybe I should have a look at aTB installation (which version?). In general I don't feel comfortable with how tools are organized in rooms or whatever, and recent 3D packages are horrible to me. There must be a better way to stash away everything you don't need right now - give me a month (on full payment) and I can work out a concept for that.

2. TP doesn't need that network view as much as 3D and compositing packages need it. I agree that there could be an easier way to handle things that belong together (like line layer, colour layer, shades layer), that's why I opted for grouping/collapsing of layers.

About "nondestructive edits": this is simply against the main underlying concept of TVP (as well as Photoshop in that respect). There's a reason why the bigger compositing and 3D packages only run on the biggest hardware. I prefer a program which works reasonably fast on smaller machines (and is affordable).

Remember that with "nondestructive" you need a way to display the result anyway, it must be rendered, either every time the frame is displayed, or rendered once and stored away just for preview. In both cases this will slow down the program on normal hardware.

3. I like this, too.

4. With my settings floodfill works good enough for me.

5. This sounds as if it will only work in a program which doesn't colour the bitmaps, but rather indexes areas (like TB and Animo) which have to be vectorized before. There is no other way I'm aware of to tell the software which area to change and which not.

6. Agreed. (like in AnimeStudio)

7. Somehow agreed. We already discussed this elsewhere.

Some of your suggestions would need big changes deep in the underlying principles of TVP. I'm a bit afraid of those, since I fear that a change would make it impossible to use TVP on my hardware.

[donbartolo]

I would be also very happy with a canvas>working area and with the ability of undocking windows. ^^

[guitartist]

3. the drawing view as it is now is too limited. I should have the option to draw outside of the view ,because sometimes,especially for close ups and zoom outs and other views where you don't see your whole character,I sometimes have to guess where the rest and the volumes of my characters would be. If I could animate my character out of the "box" en more inside a frame with a virtually unlimited canvas it would be so much easier to work. Instead of having to animate it much bigger and then crop it or import or export or whatever.

This would also eliminate a problem I have when I transform drawings ands move them sligtly of the drawing board. The drawing gets cut where it leaves the frame and can't be retrieved ,later on in the process.

So = unlimited canvas with framed field. only the framed field gets rendered.

Yes, yes, yes! I completely agree on this one and I would love to see this in TVP!

[Kwadrope]

Hm, I'm always a bit reserved about requesta like "make software A exactly like software B" because then you could use B and leave A alone. But some of your points are worth to be discussed.

1. The TVP interface is useful enough for me, although I'd lke some changes as well. I don't get that whole "docking" concept, maybe I should have a look at aTB installation (which version?). In general I don't feel comfortable with how tools are organized in rooms or whatever, and recent 3D packages are horrible to me. There must be a better way to stash away everything you don't need right now - give me a month (on full payment) and I can work out a concept for that.

Well the concept is to be discussed and how tvpaint solves this is up for debate but I'm mainly advocating an interface which is flexible and can be changed and adopted to the needs of the user,how you enjoy working, and NOT the user having to live with pet peeves and little annoyances, just because there is nothing that fits you like a glove.

Everyone has other needs and therefore I wish for an interface which lets you choose.

With docking I mean that all is connected and is movable at the same time. Like a big roster, a grid where everything has a panel. When you make one view/panel bigger the other automatically gets smaller ,without you having to do anything more. Sounds like nitpicking perhaps,but in the long run it is so much easier. When I have multiple views open I always loose time dragging them around and sizing them up. If you get more control and can choose whether or not you want it docked, everyone chooses for himself.

Toonboom has this system already from Solo,to digital and now animate pro AND basic. Photoshop,afterfx,flash also have this now. And a bunch of other more obscure programs as well. I believe it's a logical evolution in programs. More flexibility.

Don't get me started on 3D programs. If I could take bits and pieces from each and make my own I would. They are unflexible. Some are good for modeling,some are more enjoyable for anymating but none does all well in my opinion. and my biggest peeve with them is that the major players are all owned by the same company (autodesk). Why they don't just take the best of them all and create one superprogram instead of multiple "not-quite-there-yet's is beyond me.... (money probably...)

2. TP doesn't need that network view as much as 3D and compositing packages need it. I agree that there could be an easier way to handle things that belong together (like line layer, colour layer, shades layer), that's why I opted for grouping/collapsing of layers.

About "nondestructive edits": this is simply against the main underlying concept of TVP (as well as Photoshop in that respect). There's a reason why the bigger compositing and 3D packages only run on the biggest hardware. I prefer a program which works reasonably fast on smaller machines (and is affordable).

Remember that with "nondestructive" you need a way to display the result anyway, it must be rendered, either every time the frame is displayed, or rendered once and stored away just for preview. In both cases this will slow down the program on normal hardware.

photoshop already has a form of nondestructive edits you know. With those layer specific modules which you can apply. Brightness/contrast+blur+toher.... That is basicly what I mean. And you can always remove it. So it IS possible in bitmap based programs.

A network makes it just more visual. I personally don't like working with lists. A node based environment makes so much more sense to me BUT
If nondestructive layering would be possible,like in photoshop,or in lesser extent Corel Painter,then already TVPaint would have made a huge step.
Let those effect stacks be assignable to layers but always give the opportunity to go back to those who want it. This would give a production process that much more flexibility.

Grouping would indeed be a step up,and I would like that as well,but it could be so much more.

4. With my settings floodfill works good enough for me.

What settings are those then,if you please ? ^-^

5. This sounds as if it will only work in a program which doesn't colour the bitmaps, but rather indexes areas (like TB and Animo) which have to be vectorized before. There is no other way I'm aware of to tell the software which area to change and which not.

Oh well I just thought of something. Basicly its like the magic eraser tools (sketch tools) in TVPaint. They are applied ONLY to a certain color right? The other sketchtools ,like repaint line and so on,as well. Why then not make a magic eraser tool which works on the color of YOUR CHOICE and not only the 3 pre-chosen colors. Or the repaint line tool (also in the sketch tools) that only touches pixels of the color you pick with the colorpicker. Or even the delete only a certain color tools (also sketch tools)

Now if you would ALSO expand this way of thinking a bit, let the tool be flexible and the color that you pick for example red, let it also repaint or erase pixels which are very near the chosen color in hue,or in saturation or in color value or variation.

And now,if you could already remove,change or repaint every color which you can pick with your dropper, why would it not be possible to select all your drawings and apply these changes to all? Even if you need to wait a bit before it is applied,think of the possibilities!

In my opionion TVPAint already has with the sketchtools a bit of this functionality ,it just needs to be stretched further.
I know it's a bit of a wonky explanation but do you feel what I'm getting at?

An enhanced Magic eraser or Magic repaint or magic delete tool would be the next best thing.

[Peter Wassink]

Oh well I just thought of something. Basicly its like the magic eraser tools (sketch tools) in TVPaint. They are applied ONLY to a certain color right? The other sketchtools ,like repaint line and so on,as well. Why then not make a magic eraser tool which works on the color of YOUR CHOICE and not only the 3 pre-chosen colors. Or the repaint line tool (also in the sketch tools) that only touches pixels of the color you pick with the colorpicker. Or even the delete only a certain color tools (also sketch tools)

Now if you would ALSO expand this way of thinking a bit, let the tool be flexible and the color that you pick for example red, let it also repaint or erase pixels which are very near the chosen color in hue,or in saturation or in color value or variation.

And now,if you could already remove,change or repaint every color which you can pick with your dropper, why would it not be possible to select all your drawings and apply these changes to all? Even if you need to wait a bit before it is applied,think of the possibilities!

In my opionion TVPAint already has with the sketchtools a bit of this functionality ,it just needs to be stretched further.
I know it's a bit of a wonky explanation but do you feel what I'm getting at?

An enhanced Magic eraser or Magic repaint or magic delete tool would be the next best thing.

Actually most of this can be done (more or less easy) with the current FX stack
did you try the Color replacer FX for instance?

[D.T. Nethery]

That's a long list and I have no idea how difficult some of that would be to implement (we'll have to hear from the dev. team) , but of all those suggestions the one I am most interested in is your #3 .

Unlimited drawing canvas with framed field. Only the framed field gets rendered.

3. the drawing view as it is now is too limited. I should have the option to draw outside of the view ,because sometimes,especially for close ups and zoom outs and other views where you don't see your whole character,I sometimes have to guess where the rest and the volumes of my characters would be. If I could animate my character out of the "box" en more inside a frame with a virtually unlimited canvas it would be so much easier to work. Instead of having to animate it much bigger and then crop it or import or export or whatever.

This would also eliminate a problem I have when I transform drawings and move them slightly off the drawing board. The drawing gets cut where it leaves the frame and can't be retrieved ,later on in the process.

So = unlimited canvas with framed field. only the framed field gets rendered.

Yes, yes, yes! I completely agree on this one and I would love to see this in TVP!