Fix for unwanted Straight Line segments in a stroke Topic is solved

[D.T. Nethery]

This problem with unwanted straight line segments occurring in a curved stroke has been occasionally reported by several users over a period of years. I am unsure if all of these reports are exactly the same problem or are different occurrences of similar problems. I have found reports of this problem on the forum going back to at least 2018.

I must say that this problem has never occurred for me. I can not reproduce the problem on my end. However, I have a friend who was about ready to give up on using TVPaint because of this problem. (because it makes drawing in TVPaint a very unpleasant experience) I was helping him troubleshoot the issue earlier today. My friend has been using TVPaint Standard Edition 11.5.3 (Wibu). The first thing I had him try was to update to TVPaint Standard 11.7.1 to see if the problem has been fixed in 11.7.1. After updating to 11.7.1 he still had the same problem with the unwanted straight line segments in his strokes. He is using an iMac running MacOS 13 Ventura. He uses a Cintiq 24 Pro HD with Wacom Driver 6.4.1-2 . He has three monintors: iMac , Cintiq 24 Pro HD , and an Acer monitor. (the iMac and the Cintiq are mirrored.)

When he screen shared with me I could clearly see the problem where he would be drawing a curved stroke and at the beginning of the stroke (or sometimes in the middle of an otherwise curved stroke) there is a straight line segment. We discovered that when he draws with his mouse the straight line problem does not occur. The problem happens when drawing with the Cintiq stylus. The problem does not happen in any of the other apps he uses (Rough Animator and Photoshop) , only in TVPaint.


It appears to be the same issue that is described in this discussion thread: viewtopic.php?p=108059#p108059 . I did not take any screenshots when I was on Zoom with him earlier today troubleshooting the issue, but the straight line segments that my friend has in his strokes are similar to what is seen in this screenshot posted in the other thread:

Here is what seems to fix the problem:

In reading that other thread I found this post from user Jet: viewtopic.php?p=108060#p108060 who wrote:

"Try going into Wacom Tablet settings and selecting your pen, then turn off Tip Double Click Distance."

I suggested to my friend that he try this. I was somewhat skeptical that such a simple solution would fix the issue, but he messaged me this evening to say: It Worked ! So that is very good news. I am posting about this here for anyone else who may be experiencing this issue. In the other thread the user who had reported the problem was running TVPaint on Windows 10 64bit (and the user Jet who posted the fix is also running TVPaint on Windows 10) , but this fix appears to have worked for my friend who is running TVPaint on MacOS 13 Ventura. I don't know if turning off the Wacom pen setting "Tip Double Click Distance" would have any possible adverse impact on the stylus performance (?) , but for me turning it off has no noticeable effect on the behavior of my Wacom stylus when drawing in TVPaint (although I never had the unwanted straight line segment problem at all when I had Tip Double Click Distance enabled).

I would be interested in hearing from TVPaint developers if their own tests confirm that this fixes the unwanted straight lines issue and what could be the cause of this odd behavior ?
(since it only happens in TVPaint and not other apps using the same Cintiq and stylus.)

Turn OFF Tip Double Click Distance.png (69.27 KiB) Viewed 3794 times

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[Matthieu]

Hello David,

Thank you for taking the time to share this!

Others from the team may chime in but I have never experienced the straight line segment issue on macOS myself either. We have recently made some tests with Dean on macOS and the Cintiq we have at the office without being able to replicate the problem.

Still, we had to troubleshoot this issue for some users through technical support. From what I have seen, this behavior can be caused by several things:

-Compatibility issues between the Wacom driver version and the user's operating system version
-On Windows: incorrect setup of the driver (using the Wintab option with TVPaint while allowing Windows Ink to be used in the Wacom driver / )
-On Windows: unusual display preferences when multiple monitors are used
-On macOS: multiple resolution issues (especially when other monitors are involved) -usually fixed by mirroring the display of the Mac on the Cintiq or turning Low Resolution mode on for TVPaint
-For all operating systems: CPU / RAM issues (especially when the user doesn't close other heavy applications)
-For all operating systems: bad quality / faulty USB hubs / HDMI adapters
-For all operating systems: malware hindering TVPaint's performances (this happened a lot more than one could expect: this was also very frequent on macOS)

Sometimes, we have also fixed the issue entirely by creating a special profile for TVPaint within the Wacom driver.

So as you can see, it seems there is no clear explanation for this issue, each case is a bit unique. For example, this is the first time I hear about turning the 'Double click distance' option off to solve this problem.

We also could see that this issue was not specific to TVPaint, as it appears other software is affected too (for example, this thread from Adobe's forums show Photoshop users can encounter it too).

[D.T. Nethery]

Hello David,

Thank you for taking the time to share this!

Others from the team may chime in but I have never experienced the straight line segment issue on macOS myself either. We have recently made some tests with Dean on macOS and the Cintiq we have at the office without being able to replicate the problem.

Still, we had to troubleshoot this issue for some users through technical support. From what I have seen, this behavior can be caused by several things:

-Compatibility issues between the Wacom driver version and the user's operating system version
-On Windows: incorrect setup of the driver (using the Wintab option with TVPaint while allowing Windows Ink to be used in the Wacom driver / )
-On Windows: unusual display preferences when multiple monitors are used
-On macOS: multiple resolution issues (especially when other monitors are involved) -usually fixed by mirroring the display of the Mac on the Cintiq or turning Low Resolution mode on for TVPaint
-For all operating systems: CPU / RAM issues (especially when the user doesn't close other heavy applications)
-For all operating systems: bad quality / faulty USB hubs / HDMI adapters
-For all operating systems: malware hindering TVPaint's performances (this happened a lot more than one could expect: this was also very frequent on macOS)

Sometimes, we have also fixed the issue entirely by creating a special profile for TVPaint within the Wacom driver.

So as you can see, it seems there is no clear explanation for this issue, each case is a bit unique. For example, this is the first time I hear about turning the 'Double click distance' option off to solve this problem.

We also could see that this issue was not specific to TVPaint, as it appears other software is affected too (for example, this thread from Adobe's forums show Photoshop users can encounter it too).

Thank you for the detailed information on this issue. This is very useful to have for future reference . I understand this kind of bug must be extra frustrating because it doesn't occur for all users, seems to have multiple causes , and is difficult to reproduce. (how can you fix something you can't see ?)

-For all operating systems: malware hindering TVPaint's performances (this happened a lot more than one could expect: this was also very frequent on macOS)

Is there a list of which malware causes the problems with TVPaint's performance , so we can be on the look out for it ?

Sometimes, we have also fixed the issue entirely by creating a special profile for TVPaint within the Wacom driver.

This may also have been a factor in fixing my friend's probelm because I had him create a specific setting for TVPaint within his Wacom Prefs.

-On macOS: multiple resolution issues (especially when other monitors are involved) -usually fixed by mirroring the display of the Mac on the Cintiq or turning Low Resolution mode on for TVPaint

My friend had multiple monitors with different resolutions. (but his iMac and Cintiq were mirrored) We tried rearranging the order of the monitors in the Display system settings . I don't know if that also had an effect on fixing the problem , but after having tried these other steps the problem was finally resolved by having him turn off 'Tip Double Click Distance'.

I did not see an option on his TVPaint for turning on Low Resolution mode. (he has TVPaint Standard 11.5.3 and now 11.7) How do you turn on Low Resolution mode ?

Does it also help to change the resolution of the Cintiq ? My friend's Cintiq 24 Pro HD is 3840 x 2160 pixels. I believe his iMac 27" Retina display is 5120 x 2880. I don't know the resolution of his third monitor (Acer).


I have two monitors: Cintiq 21UX 1600 x 1200 and an LG monitor with 1920 x 1080 resolution , but the different display resolutions does not seem to cause any problem on my set up (because I have not experienced the problem of the unwanted straight line segments appearing in my strokes)

This is my set up:

Screen Shot 2023-04-21 at 9.55.03 AM.png (89.37 KiB) Viewed 3747 times

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[D.T. Nethery]

We also could see that this issue was not specific to TVPaint, as it appears other software is affected too (for example, this thread from Adobe's forums show Photoshop users can encounter it too).

This is also interesting to know. My friend said that he only had the random straight lines issue happening in TVPaint , but not in Photoshop (but he doesn't use Photoshop that much) and definitely not in Rough Animator which is the other animation app he uses. (which he started using because of the straight line problem in TVPaint ... Rough Animator is actually a very good app as far as it goes , but it is a very simple application , not even close to the same level of sophistication as TVPaint , but maybe because it is so simple that is the reason it is not affected by the weird straight line issue , because it's a much more light weight program, not as many heavy-duty processes running as in a program like TVPaint or Photoshop).


I did find another reference to this problem with the unwanted straight lines happening in Photoshop on the Adobe forums HERE. This user said that it was happening in ALL the apps they use such as "Adobe Photoshop, Animate. Illustrator, Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, Harmony and more ..." What fixed it for them was turning off 'Tip Double Click Distance' in the Wacom pen setttings.

[Matthieu]

Hi David,

Thank you very much for the additional information, this is very useful!

Is there a list of which malware causes the problems with TVPaint's performance , so we can be on the look out for it ?

We haven’t made a list since the malwares were oftentimes numerous and we didn’t find one that could specifically be the culprit there.

This may also have been a factor in fixing my friend's probelm because I had him create a specific setting for TVPaint within his Wacom Prefs.

Okay, this is good to know too, thank you!

My friend had multiple monitors with different resolutions. (but his iMac and Cintiq were mirrored) We tried rearranging the order of the monitors in the Display system settings . I don't know if that also had an effect on fixing the problem , but after having tried these other steps the problem was finally resolved by having him turn off 'Tip Double Click Distance'.

The different resolutions weren’t a problem when we were doing our tests as well at the office... Still, it seems to have been at the root of the issue for quite a number of users since mirroring their displays solved the problem for them. We will report back if we are able to find a consistent behavior regarding this.

I did not see an option on his TVPaint for turning on Low Resolution mode. (he has TVPaint Standard 11.5.3 and now 11.7) How do you turn on Low Resolution mode ?

This option has been made harder to find since macOS Monterey. Previous versions of macOS would allow you to turn it on by right-clicking on the TVPaint's application icon in the "Applications" folder, selecting "Get info" and then checking the "Low Resolution Mode" checkbox.

For users of later versions of macOS, turning "Low Resolution Mode" on should be done as follows:

-You would have to close TVPaint
-Access your "Applications" folder, right click on TVPaint and select "Show Package Contents"
-Access the "Contents" folder and open the "Info.plist" file with TextEdit
-Right before the last "</dict>" tag, add the following line and save the file: "<key><NSHighResolutionCapable></key><false/>"
-Open TVPaint again

I did find another reference to this problem with the unwanted straight lines happening in Photoshop on the Adobe forums HERE. This user said that it was happening in ALL the apps they use such as "Adobe Photoshop, Animate. Illustrator, Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, Harmony and more ..." What fixed it for them was turning off 'Tip Double Click Distance' in the Wacom pen setttings.

Ah, this is interesting! I will definitely try this solution the next time I see a request about this issue, thank you for bringing that up