transform tool blurs my drawings

Vakis · Post by **Vakis** » 27 Apr 2007, 16:41

Hi , well the transform tool blurs my drawings whenever i pan or scale them and then press apply.
The pan tool does not do this when anti aliasing is off, so i use that for panning, but when i need to scale something it always blurs it.

I tried to get around it by making my drawing a brush, so i can scale from there, but when i do that it always adds some weird pixels around the lines of my drawings.

Any ideas how to fix this with the transform tool? Is it even possible for it to stop doing those blurs?

Thanks.

Patrice · Post by **Patrice** » 27 Apr 2007, 18:06

Hi Vakis,
I have done some test with the Transform Tool and I can not reproduce your problem. Can you post some images to show us the problem please?

Vakis · Post by **Vakis** » 27 Apr 2007, 18:30

here it is, the top (first) one is rotated with the transform tool

on thick lines the blur isnt that obvious, but on the thin lines it is.

ZigOtto · Post by **ZigOtto** » 27 Apr 2007, 19:21

it seems to be the antialiasing,
to minimize its effect, I use to work at double size of the output size.

Vakis · Post by **Vakis** » 27 Apr 2007, 20:05

I work at a bigger resolution as well, the thing i want to do is import a character's face and make it a lot smaller . Because the lines of the face are very thin, the bluriness is very intense, it seems i have to increase the resolution even more, but im already at 1920x1440 so i hope i wont have problems with processing power.

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 03 May 2007, 14:54

I've noticed the same problem when I'm doing work where I have a part of a drawing that I Cut-To-Layer, then use the transform tool to enlarge or rotate , then merge the transformed layer back to the original layer. The line quality is noticeably not as sharp on the part of the drawing I transformed . I'm trying to avoid doing any transforming on finished, cleaned-up drawings , so if I do all my transforming/resizing on rough drawings it's not so much a problem. However, there are times on a clean up drawing where I will notice that I wish I had made a hand a bit larger or positioned a mouth at a bit more of an angle and it would be nice to transform those a bit , but the fuzziness of the line after being enlarged and rotated is a detriment.

I am usually working at 2K film resolution , so to go higher I'm into the 4K film resolution and that starts to make things go very slowly if I have more than a single image I'm working on (i.e. if it's an actual animation scene, with multiple layers and many frames. My computer can't handle that at 4K without noticeably slowing down.)

ZigOtto · Post by **ZigOtto** » 03 May 2007, 15:35

well, just to mention a workaround, to get back some lost sharpness on the line layer in your workflow :
after your "Cut-To-Layer, then use the transform tool to enlarge or rotate" action,
and before your "merge back to the original layer", you could apply
a "Sharpness Recovering" FX, which is in fact an Alpha Curve, (see pict.)

ps: this tip works fine on line layers only, not on final colored/merged drawings.

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 03 May 2007, 16:04

ZigOtto wrote:well, just to mention a workaround, to get back some lost sharpness on the line layer in your workflow :
after your "Cut-To-Layer, then use the transform tool to enlarge or rotate" action,
and before your "merge back to the original layer", you could apply
a "Sharpness Recovering" FX, which is in fact an Alpha Curve, (see pict.)

ps: this tip works fine on line layers only, not on final colored/merged drawings.

Thank you, ZigOtto. I will try this. I appreciate your help.

malcooning · Post by **malcooning** » 03 May 2007, 16:47

I was always annoyed by this problem.
it is most annoying when I duplicate frames, transform just a bit, duplicate, transform and so on (i.e. animating a layer with one arm on it by duplicating the last layer). The accumulated result of all the transformations is very blurry, and very wrong.

It would be great if this issue can be addressed.

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 03 May 2007, 16:56

malcooning wrote:I was always annoyed by this problem.
it is most annoying when I duplicate frames, transform just a bit, duplicate, transform and so on (i.e. animating a layer with one arm on it by duplicating the last layer). The accumulated result of all the transformations is very blurry, and very wrong.

It would be great if this issue can be addressed.

Yes, as more than a workaround. I'm grateful for any workarounds that people suggest (thanks again to ZigOtto), but this is definitely something that should be fixed.

Part of the appeal of going paperless is the ability to cut and paste parts of drawings , reusing , transforming the parts, so we don't have to redraw every part of the frame each time . The transformed bits (enlarged, rotated, etc.) should not go blurry and need to be fixed.

A1 · Post by A1 » 03 May 2007, 22:03

I agree, and by doing so hopefully strengthening this request

hisko · Post by **hisko** » 03 May 2007, 22:19

It seems as if the way the program interpolates pixels could be improved.
I don't have a clue how much work it is to change that, since I'm not a softwaredeveloper, but I see it as a serious problem, because I don't want things to look blurry when thay are transfered to 35mm film.

A1 · Post by A1 » 04 May 2007, 07:41

I'm working on a short at this time and have already done a transfer test to 35 mm. Because i don't work with very sharp edges anyway(and because every frame only shows a 12th of a sec

), the minimal blurring (in my case) is not noticeable on a fairly big screen. The results are satisfying.
If you work with sharp edged drawings, it might be a problem if you use the transform tool a lot.
In any case, it is an issue and it should be addressed as stated before.
Perhaps the tvpaint people could join this discussion?

Post by **TVPaint** » 04 May 2007, 08:11

Hi guys,
We keep an eye on the discussion, sorry not to have participated sooner.
This issue needs obviously to be fixed and it will be.
We will work on it asap (you know us), we won't let you struggle with that kind of bug, don't worry.

I'm not the right person for further technical explanation for those who want some though.
Stay tuned, i'll try to have a little summary of the situation next week !

D.T. Nethery · Post by **D.T. Nethery** » 22 Nov 2007, 23:34

TVPaint wrote:Hi guys,
We keep an eye on the discussion, sorry not to have participated sooner.
This issue needs obviously to be fixed and it will be.
We will work on it asap (you know us), we won't let you struggle with that kind of bug, don't worry.

I'm not the right person for further technical explanation for those who want some though.
Stay tuned, i'll try to have a little summary of the situation next week !

Hi,

I'm bumping this topic back up to the top . This is still a problem .

I use the Cut to Layer and Transform/Resize/Rotate on line drawing images constantly and it is cumbersome to have to go back in on dozens of drawings and adjust the alpha to sharpen the line back to what it was originally , before merging the transformed portion with the original layer

ZigOtto wrote:well, just to mention a workaround, to get back some lost sharpness on the line layer in your workflow :
after your "Cut-To-Layer, then use the transform tool to enlarge or rotate" action,
and before your "merge back to the original layer", you could apply
a "Sharpness Recovering" FX, which is in fact an Alpha Curve, (see pict.)

ps: this tip works fine on line layers only, not on final colored/merged drawings.

. That idea (by Zig Otto , up above) works for certain types of very simple line drawings , but the more complex the drawing , the more difficult it is to adjust the line quality with the Curves alpha setting .

What would be nice is if using the transform tools did not degrade or blur the line quality at all .

Any progress on fixing this ?

Thanks .

D