Welcome to TVPaint Community forums !

Thanks Paul for advocating my idea and making it more clear.

Sewie wrote:I don't see how that's more efficient than my suggestion where you would just be able to see what's in a layer without having to click or drag anything. No click, no drag, you can just see whats there in the thumbnails of the timeline the same way you can now when your drawings are bigger.

How will you see anything, if a drawing would be bigger than the stick-man example? for example - this:



As you see - there is nowhere to zoom. The stickman example only works cause it's small enough to zoom in. it won't work in most other cases.
If the only reason for that is finding an empty drawing, then this could be indicated in a much easier way. some color label, or some other mark. Otherwise - this has no point at all

The point is to recognize what is in the frame, not finding empty frames. At least that's not my intention.

In your example I can see a lo-res version of what's in the your frame, and thus I can reduce what part of the animation I'd be dealing with. Makes it easier to navigate through the timeline and the animation.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn't need high-res pop-ups to recognize that. I agree with your point though, with a light blue pencil like that it is quite hard to see.

I guess your and Paul's ideas go beyond what I am suggesting. But I have doubts if that will be necessary or needed or will make the timeline easy to use.

(Very nice drawing, btw)

Sewie wrote:The point is to recognize what is in the frame, not finding empty frames. At least that's not my intention.
In your example I can see a lo-res version of what's in the your frame, and thus I can reduce what part of the animation I'd be dealing with. Makes it easier to navigate through the timeline and the animation.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn't need high-res pop-ups to recognize that. I agree with your point though, with a light blue pencil like that it is quite hard to see.
I guess your and Paul's ideas go beyond what I am suggesting. But I have doubts if that will be necessary or needed or will make the timeline easy to use.
(Very nice drawing, btw)

Haha, thanks
I agree that currently thumbnail recognition on timeline is almost impossible, yet it should be improved somehow. My suggestion would not contradict yours, so they can be both implemented in my opinion. The popup window wouldn't make timeline use more difficult, as it would be a custom shortcut that a user would assign by himself.

Well, we keep an eye on that topic to read where it goes

It's pretty much talked out already (unless someone else cares to add a voice).

It'd be interesting to see how the rest of the users think about this.

Sewie wrote:It'd be interesting to see how the rest of the users think about this.

indeed.

I totally agree with sewie!

I also find time line a bit clumsy so I think the Sewie's suggestion of zoomed pixels could be my choice.
But maybe just because I don't have to animate characters like in Soom's drawing quite often

M.

I like Sewies suggestiln the best and think it coild be a good start. A good way to improve the visual readability of the layer thumbnails, which already exists for the same purpose. So we are improving an existing feature.

I dont know with Sooms suggestion. Maybe. It is a complete new feature. So in a way it is a different talk.
it is pretty simple to solo a layer and scub the timeline itself. So I dont know ifit would be a good new feature. But it dont think the one request equals out the other. It is two different things. And as I said I like Sewies suggestion, it improves an existing feature, so I think it would be natuaral to implment it first anyways.
-Mads

While animating this morning, I realized that I am constantly looking out for empty frames along the timeline because of the way inbetweening is done. So I don't see this as such a strange request anymore. For me it is easy to spot which frames are still empty because I can simply see them by glancing a little closer at the timeline (even though I use frames that are anywhere between 130% to 150 % larger than 1080p, which is pretty large).

But if I imagine having to draw a tiny figure within a frame larger than that, say by 200% or 300%, I can understand how frustrating not being able to spot at a glance which frames need to be filled would become. But I still cannot see how zooming into frames would be of much help with a single tiny character drawn in the corner. So what if each frame containing a drawing would receive a color mark as soon as pen connected with frame -- and vice versa, whenever a frame was cleared, the image mark would clear with it?

It seems to me that this would have to be a simple implementation of a useful solution. I wouldn't be surprised if I was to find that I could benefit from such a solution myself, because I wouldn't have to focus into the monitor with the layer panel so closely anymore.

A solution to this would be an indication of empty frames. Just make them look a teensy bit different from frames with something in it, maybe with a diagonal stroke?

Or that.

Though I like the idea of differentiating between drawn-in and empty frames this is a different request altogether. So please and by all means: open a different thread for this. I'll support the request.

I'll say again; the original request is not about spotting empty frames, but about seeing/recognizing which phase of the animation is in the frame. Especially useful when there are tiny animations on a layer, like an eyeblink over a held frame on another layer.

But I think if this request will be realised that an option for it would be good, in the preferences panel for example, so that the user can choose between displaying the whole frame or the pixels in the layer thumbnails.

I like Sewie's suggestion a lot, mainly because of these reasons:

Sewie wrote:I want to clarify; I strongly object to timeline pop ups. I find the timeline a bit of an interface mess as it is now; [...] I really don't need an extra convolution in there.

Yes!

Sewie wrote:The point is to recognize what is in the frame, not finding empty frames. At least that's not my intention.

Yes! (And you'll find empty frames immediately too, as a bonus)