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Paul Fierlinger wrote: ZigO, Could you please briefly describe, for the benefit of many of us here I believe, how one should use the "Save Project as Template" feature in V 9? When do you save your favorite settings under a name so that it ends up in the left side of the Settings Panel, and when and why do you save under the project's name so that it ends up on the right side, under "From File".

I can't quite figure out the intended purposes of these two windows. Although I enjoy their functionality I often feel that I'm not using the saves in the proper way and needlessly cluttering up the two windows .

Well, (Mildly in topic now), if you think I'm the good one to stand up for this startup panel interface as it is, you're wrong...
f.i. when you have one template (left side), one project file (right side), and one preset format (left-down) both displayed, which one of the three will be used, and which ones will be ignored when hitting "OK" ???
(ex. : see the attached pict., in this case, it will open the template, but with the right-side project's name ...? )
I would prefer tabs, one tab for Templates, one other for Projects, and a third one for Presets,
I think it would be way more clear to understand how to use it like that.

As for the brief explanations, here again, I'm not sure to be the best one for this hard task,
(remember how bad is my english!), I think Fabrice or another tvpaint team's guy should be certainly better qualified than me.

about Templates (load and save), it just does what it says : when you save (your current project) as template,
it saves the project properties (format, fields, frame-rate, ...) and the layers structure (layers status, length, order, names, colors, ...), in other words, it clones the current project, but with empty content (all frames cleared), and store it for a next re-use in C:\Documents and Settings\user_account\Application Data\tvp animation 9 pro\default\templates.

the "From File" (right side) should be recalled "Project File" (a different Tab imo, out of Templates), it allows the user to open one of the last used projects, LMB-click and browse to select which one of the list (chronologic order) you want to open and work on,
basically it works like a "launch tvpa + open selected project" in one step, it loads the Project with all its content, and not the selected project "as template" (empty content).

As last note, when you are working on the same project for a while (WIP), you can set the Startup option in the Preference panel to "Load the Last Opened Project", so you will skip this startup panel doodad and go directly to your current project in work.

my 2,5 cents.

All is as I had thought, so thanks for the affirmation that the confusion is not mine alone. On top of this, the From File side remembers too much, IMO. It remembers everything I export from TVP to Vegas, every little JPG I export to use in this forum -- I wonder if this is necessary and if there shouldn't be a way to define what should be memorized, like just selected file formats such as *.tvp, all files, *.avi, etc. (just like the tvp browser lets you do.)

It would also be nice if we had a way of cleaning up the mess; a delete button, like in the old Mirage.