Layer Icon Display

SunWuKong · Post by **SunWuKong** » 13 Oct 2006, 07:16

First I would like to thank the admins for the quick response they have given my last few requests. I notice they are on top of nearly all the questions people have with quick and thoughtful answers.

I have a question about the layer icon display. Right now the icon is a tiny image representing what is drawn in the layer. I was wondering if that could be changed.

Here is what I am thinking. I work at 1600 x 1200 screen resolution and layer images are tiny and nearly unintelligible. I would prefer the Flash way of doing things where the icons for 'occupied' layers are a solid black dot. I honestly don't think the layer icons offer much more useful information than a black dot (which is much easier to see).

My real issue is when I’m doing facial animation for things like eyes, brows and mouth's. The TV Paint icon in the layer area for a pair of eyeballs is so small I can hardly tell if anything is there. I come from a 2D Flash background and I find the way it handles layer information to be much easier. I’ve attached a sample image of the way Flash and TV Paint handle this so you can see what I am talking about.

I’m not saying the layer icons aren’t useful but I would prefer the option to simplify them further. I mostly want to know if there is information on any given layer. A little representational icon is cool but not needed (at least for me). Perhaps this information I am talking about could occur in the 'closed' layer information view.

I don’t know if this is a big deal (I assume it’s not) but I would like to put out this request for your consideration.

Thank you,

-Sun

Peter Wassink · Post by **Peter Wassink** » 13 Oct 2006, 08:10

Hello Sun,

I agree with your opinion of the tvpaint team, they do respond swiftly to most requests.
But this time they are even ahead of you!

check this out: http://www.tvpaint.com/display_news.php ... =34&lang=2
this new Pro version will have an Xsheet!
This means you will be able to time your animations much easier!

Because you will be able to choose between having the frames represented by icons (that are bigger then the current layer icons) or by names(numbers) for the frames.
So if the icons are still to small you can always identify a frame by its number....
This is even better then what flash offers.

i almost can't wait to work with it
This will make it so much easier to....for instance... time an animation and then simply copy the timing for the color layer.
no longer need to do it twice.

evar · Post by **evar** » 13 Oct 2006, 12:08

I dont see many advantages to displaying a black dot for occupied frames. Generally, even in your example TVP screenshot, there arent any Unoccupied frames, and there wouldnt be a frame Not marked by a black dot...

But I can see some advantage with inbetweening... I think that to be able to mark any given frame that is occupied, and then the adjacent frames you could visually tell are blank. I would personally want to Choose to mark certain frames, and Im sure that pressing a key that stamps a colored dot over the thumbnail on the timeline for any given frame wouldnt be too difficult - either from a programming point of view, or that i dont think it would take any additional system resources. Where I think a Global (for every layer and frame) computation for detecting and marking frames that are empty or not, could be disadvantageous for the speed of TVP ?

SunWuKong · Post by **SunWuKong** » 13 Oct 2006, 20:42

Tantalus - that is awesome. I look forward to it.

evar - Yah, my example is from a more finished piece. Trust me - I have plenty of times where I'm wondering if something is actually in a particular frame or not. Small details do not translate well in those tiny windows. Perhaps a color change or something?

At any rate, thank you for the feedback. Maybe the X-Sheets will take care of my concern.

Cheers,

-Sun