Traditional Lighttable Function

[Paul Fierlinger]

. We still haven't evolved very far from drawing with the first mouse.

I disagree. The Wacom tablet and its pen have made a huge step away from the mouse and there are many unique ways to draw and paint within computer software as long as everybody stops demanding that all software looks and acts like PhotoShop. It's like saying the pencil and brush haven't made any progress since the long ago ages when they were invented. And the fork and knife haven't evolved in any way to make food taste better either.

If you are thinking only of ways to mechanically improve mundane tasks such as inbetweening than you are looking into the sphere of artificial intelligence and I'm not so sure if that would make for happier works of art. The success of creativity lies elsewhere than in the mechanics of tools. This is because we tend to admire other people's ways of expressing individuality through art. That skill lies in the sphere's of the soul and is a spiritual quest.

Surgeons today have fantastic computerized laser machines to carve out tumors with better precision than they could have ever achieved with a mere scalpel, even though a successful operation still depends on the surgeon's personal skills. You seem to be asking for the equivalent of that kind of improvement for the artist's tools, but there is a difference between mechanical skillfulness and creativity. Inbetweening isn't dull mechanics; it has more artfulness to its execution than you give it credit.

[slowtiger]

Obviously I left out an important point. Sorry for being unclear.

When I mentioned the not-so-far evolution of drawing on the computer, I was mainly referring to the computer's restriction to only accept one input at any given time. No matter wether we use mouse or pen, it's basically still one and only one cursor we move. And what we use to increase our expressivity, modifier keys or some external button bank, still isn't as sensitive and flexible as this would be with an instrument.

Now technology has advanced to handle a multi-touch-screen, and at least in the musical domain there's a whole bunch of controllers been invented, mostly fitting for just one piece of software. There's been that famous keyboard by that russian designer which has an LED display on each key, and each key can be programmed to a certain function (still a study, not a working product). But still I miss the tactile feedback of a brush or a pencil, or the fast way I can align two sheets of paper temporarily, instead of adjusting two images on screen. I hope that engineering ingenuity will come up with better solutions. But right now we're still in the stage of adjusting our human gestures and work habits to the needs of a digitally restricted input system.

[D.T. Nethery]

Slowtiger described it well. Here's a visual to further explain (pulled from a little booklet prepared by Jon Hooper and Michel Gagne , for training new inbetweeners called "10 Steps to a Perfect Inbetween" on the site AnimationMeat.com)

Inbetweening isn't dull mechanics; it has more artfulness to its execution than you give it credit.

Yes, and I strongly agree with what Paul said. Inbetweening isn't always just mechancial line-between-line like a machine would do it. Every drawing is important.
But this function to virtually "shift drawings off-pegs" (temporarily transform and then restore) for simulating the same function that can be done easily with real paper and a light table would be useful to have in our paperless world.

Pulling drawings "off the pegs":

I have my two existing drawings A and C and want to inbetween B. The characters on A and C are very far apart or tilted to each other so an inbetween is difficult to do. Assistant's trick: first I roughly indicate on a new sheet where my inbetween B is going to be. Then I take one of the drawings A or C off the pegs and place it over the other so the character aligns, and place sheet B on top. Now the inbetween B can be created easily, but is off the pegs as well.

The corresponding function in TVP would need to handle at least 3 drawings "off the pegs", with an indication of their original position. In real life this would be the corners of the paper. In TVP this could be a set of two crosshairs left and right from the center of the drawing.

The function would need translate, rotate, and scale, since all of these apply to inbetweening.

Don't know if this was clear enough, next week I could do a sketch of this.

[isd]

Being able to temporarily move the drawings in the light box IS GREAT(well in fact it should be the first feature of any animation software but, well...).
BUT there is a VERY big problem that makes this feature less than useful :
it should be possible to flip through the frames of the light box in their temporary position.

If you can't check how your inbetween moves while drawing it you are still one step behing the traditional pen&paper technique.
I must say this is the ONLY reason I decided to not buy the software and wait until it is implemented.

[isd]

The feature has been implemented but is not realy usable IMO. Since we can't flip between the off pegs drawings.
Is there some hope this feature will be implemented?
The only soft thas has it so far is Retas Stylos, but it doesn't allow to paint inside the software like tvpaint, so it would be a killer feature of TVpaint for traditional animator.
Make it possible to flip between the off pegs drawings with the arrows or with "w" or with any other key.

Since I am at it, i must say the current fliping version with "w" lacks features. I would like it to loop betwee the previous,current,and next feature but impossible to do that. It always starts 2 frames before.
It would be nice to be able to chose to flip between key frames or between in-betweens. Retas allows this with the arrows up/down(flip between key frames) and left-right(flip between inbetweens).

[ZigOtto]

I personnally don't miss that, the only thing I need is to flip in-pegs,
because it's "in-pegs" that I need to check if it works or not.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I agree with Z.O. The purpose of off-pegging is to temporarily reposition a drawing so that it can speed up the retracing of a new inbetween and this is exactly what this does. To call this new feature unusable is asinine,

[Peter Wassink]

I personnally don't miss that, the only thing I need is to flip in-pegs,
because it's "in-pegs" that I need to check if it works or not.

That's what i was thinking.
Still...if for some reason you really do need to see the 'off pegs' animated, you can always actually move your drawings (on a temporary duplicate layer for instance)

[isd]

I personnally don't miss that, the only thing I need is to flip in-pegs,
because it's "in-pegs" that I need to check if it works or not.

That's what i was thinking.
Still...if for some reason you really do need to see the 'off pegs' animated, you can always actually move your drawings (on a temporary duplicate layer for instance)

Moving the frames on a temporary layer is cumbersone and there is some lost of quality anytime you transform your drawings.
The reason why I need to check the animation off pegs is, first because I do it with paper, and second because if you need to make some very precise in-between this is the best and the fastest method.
I agree this may be a feature that only half of the animators use, or even fewer, but if you want to get more professionals to use the software it's best to give them a simulation close to what you can do with paper.
I must add that if you don't flip your drawings off pegs you have no assurance that your animation will be really fluid when you have more than 3 inbetweens to draw. This is not the case of all the animations but for high quality inbetweening it is a required feature at least for me. One more thing, you can draw a lot quickly when you check off pegs, you don't have to get back on pegs to check then to return off pegs to correct something you can't check on the fly.

The light table as is is not unusable, but just half way the full-featured inbeweening paperless solution.

Aniway, having thi half-way feature is a good start in the right direction and I'm happy it has been done ^^

[Paul Fierlinger]

Frankly, I can't follow your method because at times you seem to be describing what you do with your papers and at times you seem to have the drawings in the digital space of TVP. For instance, right at the start:

Moving the frames on a temporary layer is cumbersone

What is a temporary layer? Where do you see it and use it?

and there is some lost of quality anytime you transform your drawings.

You transform from where to where and what kind of loss of quality? Are you talking about scanning into the computer, or loss of quality during the actual tracing?

The reason why I need to check the animation off pegs is, first because I do it with paper, and second because if you need to make some very precise in-between this is the best and the fastest method.

Here you have me completely stumped: You make it sound as if the highest precision of inbetweening is achieved off pegs, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Perhaps it would help if you went through your work flow step by step.

[Fabrice]

Hello Isd,

did you try this button ?

Use the left mouse button and move the mouse (then release the mouse button)
or
Use the right mouse button. (it keeps the lighttable settings with the out of pegs)

[slowtiger]

From my assistant & inbetweenig days I remember the workflow like this: first you do a rough inbetween with all drawings on pegs - you need to know where your inbetween goes. Only after that you take the drawings off the pegs and turn the rough into a clean inbetween. Flipping while off the pegs is not for controlling the animation but the accuracy of the inbetween in terms of volume and being on-model.

Since off-peg inbetweening is only necessary in scenes where there's a bigger distance between moving objects in consecutive frames, it's not necessary to be painstakingly exact as one would need to be in a scene with a very slow movement (I'm talking about cramming an inbetween line between thin pencil lines which already touch!). If the scene works on the pegs, it's OK.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Hmmm--- maybe I understand better now but this is because I seldom erased my roughs -- I just retraced them with cleaner lines. But this is so far in the distant past.... Markus, do you understand the parts about the temporary layers and flipping off peg drawings? If this means literately flipping paper off pegs, why would one want to emulate that in a digital environment?

[ZigOtto]

well, the "temporary layer" was a suggestion from Peter (see 7th post above),
to duplicate the layer and really move (via transform tool) the keys instead of off-pegging them,
but I agree this work-around is a bit tedious and require to much work,
making the workflow somehow too alembicated and times consuming.

Regarding the ability to flip off-pegs, Slowtiger explained it beautifully, to get the inbetweens as accurate as possible,
I just think it could be useful in only few cases, but why to go for more accuracy than the eyes can percieve ?
animation (cinema art in general) isn't the art to fool the viewer's eyes ...?
so my credo is : if it works in-pegs, no need to work again and again and reach an extra-accuracy which noboby care ...

... Use the left mouse button and move the mouse (then release the mouse button)
or
Use the right mouse button. (it keeps the lighttable settings with the out of pegs)

unfortunately, no,
I mean, it doesn't work the way ISD is wanting to ... because the offpegs are floatting with the current frame.

[isd]

＞What is a temporary layer? Where do you see it and use it?

This is a method proposed by a previous poster. You may ignore this statement.

＞You transform from where to where and what kind of loss of quality? Are you talking about scanning into the computer, or loss of quality during the actual tracing?

once again this is the problem of the proposed method, just forget this

>Here you have me completely stumped: You make it sound as if the highest precision of inbetweening is achieved off pegs, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Perhaps it would help if you went through your work flow step by step.

The highest precision of inbetweening is possible because of the off pegs technique.
Of cours it also depends of what you animate. This technique is most effective on inbetweening evangelion robots than on bugs bunny.