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Hi all, please post here all the questions regarding the XSheet tab of TVPaint Animation Pro.

piano wrote:from the little time i ve had to play around with the x-sheet, is there a way to play a preview of the exposure you compose in the x sheet ?
the new blue-pencil type thing looks great and i found the rotate brush that will be very helpful.
however i find the xsheet a tiny bit un confortable. i was hoping for a more direct way to play around with the frame, like drag and drop maybe. anyway i have to look into it further ( when hopefully there s a version that doesn t stop after a few minutes )
thx for your devellopement effort, you re pushing the bar ! keep it up.

Hi Piano,

to answer quickly :
* You can use thumbnails in the XSheet tab to have a quick preview.
* The navigator panel has now a play button for the preview.
* The drag and drop feature already exists in the XSheet. (read the user-manual for more informations about this)

We will certainly post soon some example projects regarding the XSheet in the "content sharing" section of this forum.

is there a way to , say, select all of the frames from a source column to drag it onto an x sheet layer. it would save some tedious back and forth.

You can use [shift+LMB] to select the needed source images and then you can copy and paste them into a XSheet layer. There is also a "select all" option in the contextual menu.

fabrice wrote:

is there a way to , say, select all of the frames from a source column to drag it onto an x sheet layer. it would save some tedious back and forth.

You can use [shift+LMB] to select the needed source images and then you can copy and paste them into a XSheet layer. There is also a "select all" option in the contextual menu.

Or [shift + double click] to select all.

fabrice wrote: * The drag and drop feature already exists in the XSheet. (read the user-manual for more informations about this)

Hello,

I think perhaps I have a different understanding of the concept of "Drag and Drop" . If I used an application which has a traditional style animation Exposure sheet, such as DigiCel Flipbook , Animo, or Toki Line Test I can click on a frame, hold down the mouse button, and drag that frame to a different frame and it will then appear on the new frame ; or if I hold down the option button and drag out the frame for an additional 12 frames it will be held for those additional frames. Or create a new ex-sheet layer and drag a frame from layer A over to layer B .... just click and drag and drop : and there it is on layer B .

I can't seem to get that sort of "drag and drop" to work with TVPaint Pro . In the manual it says to hold down Shift + LMB , but this doesn't do anything for me .

See attached image as an example. Can someone tell me simply how to take frame 1 and drag it to frame , as in the example shown ? (I realize there must be some simple way to do this that I am just not understanding , so forgive my lack of technical ability )

Hi D.T.
I think you must be on an XSheet layer (marked with an X in the head ident)
you are trying to "drag&drop" on an Anim layer, that is not available here,
first, create a source (right side), type = layer, and choose your source Anim-layer,
then, create an XSheet layer, (the [+] button, left side),
now, you should be able to drag & drop, from the source to the XSheet-layer in a first time, then inside the XSheet-layer(s).

To avoid this sort of problem you can hide all Image and Anim Layers by clicking on the "XS" button.

Here's my question, I haven't been able to play with the Demo (alas, my demo time has exprired) of TVP Animation Pro, but have downloaded it and read the Users Guide.

One thing that struck me about the description of how to use the Xsheet is that I can "embed" other TVP projects into the current one. For example I could have a starfield background with moving stars (as in Star Trek the Next Generation) and have that be a looping animation. If I understand correctly, this "embedded" file will be taking up just one Layer in the current project, no matter how many layers the original (in this case the starfield) project has.

Is this correct?

Part of me wants to think that part of what makes a Xsheet layer so powerful is that it kind of treats other (external) TVP files like how Flash treats its symbols ( a flash symbol can have many layers and can be placed in the flash file as a single object, occupying just one layer).

Hopefully I'll be able to play with the real deal soon

cartoonM!ke wrote:Here's my question, I haven't been able to play with the Demo (alas, my demo time has exprired) of TVP Animation Pro, but have downloaded it and read the Users Guide.

One thing that struck me about the description of how to use the Xsheet is that I can "embed" other TVP projects into the current one. For example I could have a starfield background with moving stars (as in Star Trek the Next Generation) and have that be a looping animation. If I understand correctly, this "embedded" file will be taking up just one Layer in the current project, no matter how many layers the original (in this case the starfield) project has.

Is this correct?

yes, it is, but the power of the Xsheet feature is far over there...
the Color/Image Source FX already did allow users to embed multi-layered project (source)
in an animlayer of the target project,
KeyFramer FX did it too (+ allowing to re-scale),
Xsheet is a real frame-sequencer (thumbnails or text mode),
it permits you to time your sequence from your "rough" drawings as source,
and after your linetest validated, you just have to clean and colorize the drawing in the project source,
and "re-active" the Xsheet layer to get your final animation preview, ready to be exported!

the anotation in the soundtrack is also a very useful improvement when you have to detect a lipsynch.