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Hello dear TVPaint friends,

I'm in a bit of a panic because I lost my instance controls in the timeline window. Normally each instance is divided by a vertical and a little square inbetween the instances, but today, while working, they have gone missing. I 've found out that I can get them back by selecting the "fit to frame" option in the "auto fit' pull-down menu, but then TVP zooms in so far into the timeline and frames that it is hard to get an efficient overview of my timelines. Did I do something wrong ? How can I get my instance controls back ?

Hope you can help.

It's the nature of the beast, especially with the wide screen format you are working with. You can click on that little Z and drag left and right to find just the moment when the little squares appear in each frame's corner, or you can assign key commands to jump from CU to WS. I use both. It also helps to have wide screen monitors and at least two of them, if not three.

Hm, the format of the project doesn't matter. It's just that instance controls can only be displayed as long as the single frame is a bit wider than the little square. If it gets too small, there's no room to display that. Use that Z tool to zoom to a size where the handles appear again. You could set up different rooms with different zoom widths.

You can click on that little Z and drag left and right to find just the moment when the little squares appear in each frame's corner...

Hey, that work good enough ! I didn't know about that "Z" button.
Thanks Paul and Slowtiger.

Sewie wrote:

You can click on that little Z and drag left and right to find just the moment when the little squares appear in each frame's corner...

Hey, that work good enough ! I didn't know about that "Z" button.
Thanks Paul and Slowtiger.

Michael, for this you can also use the alt + Rightmouse button (or front pen button) to zoom in and out, just like in the project window.
and use only the alt key to pan around in the layerpanel also just like in the project window.

That's brilliant ! Thanks for the tip Peter !
Every new thing I find out here is such an improvement to the workflow. This software is a real joy to be animating in.