Welcome to TVPaint Community forums !

Fabrice wrote:
Hello ! Glad to have some questions

about Scanning and Colorizing
You can use several method :
* the FX Color > Scancleaner + sketchpanel to recolorize some lines quickly.
* the FX Keyer > ColorKeyer
* the FX Keyer > LumaKeyer
But why not directly draw (sketch + clean) into TVP Animation ?

Then, just color your animation in a different layer than the current one, if necessary you can also use the "Fill > B Color" option, or the "Expand" option

I have tried these effects and the closer to what I need is coloring on a different layer with the expand option.
Unfortunately the expand option expands everywhere, so the color go through the black lines also. I really think that the best solution would have a way for the colored line to turn the same color as the filled color, so it would at the same time keep the antialiasing.

What I am describing here is how the software Retas works in fact. This is a software optimized for japanese animation, 99% of the japanese animation companies use it. Sometimes Toons or Animo are tried here and there but it is the extreme minority. To have a chance to get some place in the japanese market the coloring features I am trying to describe are essential.

isd wrote:... To have a chance to get some place in the japanese market the coloring features I am trying to describe are essential.

well, it seems you just have to learn a bit deeper how to work properly with tvpa,
f.i., the color-fill tool must be used on it's own color-layer, (separated from the line-layer),
so if underneath, (below the line), a small expand value won't cover the line, and you will keep the original line's antialiasing.
the other way is working on the same layer, but color-filling in "Behind" mode,
by tweaking the Smooth/Expand/gap-closer values, you should get exactly what you want.

isd wrote:
I have tried these effects and the closer to what I need is coloring on a different layer with the expand option.

Unfortunately the expand option expands everywhere, so the color go through the black lines also. I really think that the best solution would have a way for the colored line to turn the same color as the filled color, so it would at the same time keep the antialiasing.

When you use the Expand option be sure that you are also setting the flood fill/paintbucket to fill in BEHIND mode, not Color mode. This should keep the color from going through the black lines also.
http://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 034#p13034" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If you don't use coloured outlines, the coloured lines from your example image are just guides to indicate shadow and such, and I don't really get the idea why these must be preserved with the same quality as the outlines, since they will not be visible in the finished drawing.

ZigOtto wrote:

isd wrote:... To have a chance to get some place in the japanese market the coloring features I am trying to describe are essential.

well, it seems you just have to learn a bit deeper how to work properly with tvpa,
f.i., the color-fill tool must be used on it's own color-layer, (separated from the line-layer),
so if underneath, (below the line), a small expand value won't cover the line, and you will keep the original line's antialiasing.
the other way is working on the same layer, but color-filling in "Behind" mode,
by tweaking the Smooth/Expand/gap-closer values, you should get exactly what you want.

This is exactly what I did (color on another layer) and unfortunately the expand function is not a solution here since I should put a valor superior to 3 to colorize completely under the colored lines. And in this case the color go through the black lines and is visible on the other side. Besides, the colors that meet under the colored line are not antialiased(as far as I remember ^^;

slowtiger wrote:If you don't use coloured outlines, the coloured lines from your example image are just guides to indicate shadow and such, and I don't really get the idea why these must be preserved with the same quality as the outlines, since they will not be visible in the finished drawing.

Since they will be deleted, yes there's no need to preserve antialias or whatever. ^^
I just want the antialias on the final shadow line (well, which is not a line, just where meet the shadow color and the, er, color)

D.T. Nethery wrote:

isd wrote:
I have tried these effects and the closer to what I need is coloring on a different layer with the expand option.

Unfortunately the expand option expands everywhere, so the color go through the black lines also. I really think that the best solution would have a way for the colored line to turn the same color as the filled color, so it would at the same time keep the antialiasing.

When you use the Expand option be sure that you are also setting the flood fill/paintbucket to fill in BEHIND mode, not Color mode. This should keep the color from going through the black lines also.

TVP_BEHIND.png

http://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 034#p13034" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I will try with these settings tonight (I'm at work now) thanks ^^

D.T. Nethery wrote:

isd wrote:
I have tried these effects and the closer to what I need is coloring on a different layer with the expand option.

Unfortunately the expand option expands everywhere, so the color go through the black lines also. I really think that the best solution would have a way for the colored line to turn the same color as the filled color, so it would at the same time keep the antialiasing.

When you use the Expand option be sure that you are also setting the flood fill/paintbucket to fill in BEHIND mode, not Color mode. This should keep the color from going through the black lines also.

TVP_BEHIND.png

http://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 034#p13034" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have tried with these settings but the result is the same.
I continued to try with other settings and I found what could look like a solution :
Smooth 3
Expand 1
Gap closer 0
Now I will try to test these setting with different style of drawings to see if there are problems but it looks like a good path. Thanks fo your help.
I deleted the blue and red lines with the color keyer but if someone knows a better way to erase everything but black/grey lines (without deleting the antialiasing) I would be happy to hear it ^^

Now I would like to create toggle action keys for flipping through the previous and next frame. How could I do?
I would like to use the same flipping feature with the light-table flipping feature, is it possible?

About the light-table flipping feature, is there george parameters to display the previous and next drawing of the light table?
If this is possible I could try to create the "flipping toggle action" I need with a george script?
How do I code a button toggle action with george?

I have some problems for the coloring.



As you can see the paint buckets doesn't color when delimiting lines come close to each other (example A).
I have tried different values of the tolerance parameter but it doesn't help.

Example B:
When using the parameters described above (smooth3, expand 1), I still have some color that go through the black lines. As you can see on the right, orange has passed though the black line. But if I use lower settings, white lines(uncolored parts) appear when I delete the blue and red lines.
I guess, this "expand and smooth" options can't really work unless the black line have the same width everywhere. Which can't be possible or even desired (if I wanted that I would use flash heh )

How could I solve these 2 problems?

A problem : Don't enter a number in Gap closer

B problem : Don't enter a number in Expand, or don't modify the original Range

Don't you say you were only missing the Out of pegs playback to buy TVP animation ? Now the feature exists, I'm still waiting your paypal notifcation

I manage your first problem with a normal pen brush on the color layer. Its the last step in my coloring procedure, fixing those things "by hand". Even when I set the "gap closer" to zero. I can imagine that this way is not very practical in an industrial production.

Animark wrote:I manage your first problem with a normal pen brush on the color layer. Its the last step in my coloring procedure, fixing those things "by hand". Even when I set the "gap closer" to zero. I can imagine that this way is not very practical in an industrial production.

I've always understood that this position is held when debating software for big studios, so my question is: are big studio artists really such automatons? Is it too much to ask a colorist to finish up a small imperfection manually?

Paul Fierlinger wrote:

Animark wrote:I manage your first problem with a normal pen brush on the color layer. Its the last step in my coloring procedure, fixing those things "by hand". Even when I set the "gap closer" to zero. I can imagine that this way is not very practical in an industrial production.

I've always understood that this position is held when debating software for big studios, so my question is: are big studio artists really such automatons? Is it too much to ask a colorist to finish up a small imperfection manually?

Correcting manually take as much time as coloring a whole drawing. So if you don't need to correct you double you productivity. I let you imagine how much money this represent for an animation series.

This correction problem is resolved by Toons, Animo, Retas, Flash etc... with different methods but every animation soft has a way to do it rather quickly and the best of them know that these shapes are hard to colorize and correct it automatically most of the time.

I am testing TVpaint with the Demo right now to see if it is possible to use in a production chain, so I can't be satisfied by workarounds or tricks, or solutions that work only most of the time ^^;
Yes, this is a harsh world (lol)

isd wrote:

Paul Fierlinger wrote:

Animark wrote:I manage your first problem with a normal pen brush on the color layer. Its the last step in my coloring procedure, fixing those things "by hand". Even when I set the "gap closer" to zero. I can imagine that this way is not very practical in an industrial production.

I've always understood that this position is held when debating software for big studios, so my question is: are big studio artists really such automatons? Is it too much to ask a colorist to finish up a small imperfection manually?

Correcting manually take as much time as coloring a whole drawing. So if you don't need to correct you double you productivity. I let you imagine how much money this represent for an animation series.

No it doesn't take 'as much time' as coloring a whole drawing. (by hand on a a cel) . It's still faster even if small touch-ups are made when the scene is Final Checked.

But if the ultimate goal is to have "point-click-fill" coloring that can be done by a monkey or a robot then I don't think you'll find it here.

I wonder if one problem you are experiencing with your fills is that your scans are not scanned at a high-resolution ? I find that if I scan at a high resolution (at least 300 dpi) in B&W mode , then run Scan Cleaner FX on the drawings I don't have any problem with Flood Fill coloring.