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Hi, possibly a silly question, but I've just upgraded to the Professional version of TVP on Friday so bear with me..

I'm working on a project at the moment where the animation is being done in CG (Maya) and I have used TVPaint to make an animatic based on the storyboard. This worked great but what I'd like to do now is as I work on each shot in Maya, I'd like to make playblasts, save those as image sequences and then import those to the TVPaint animatic project and replace the still images with the playblasts. This works fine when I do it the first time, but the issue I'm running into is if I make changes to the Maya animation and save out a new image sequence (overwriting the original) and then I reload the TVPaint project it is still showing the old version. Is it possible to tell TVPaint to reload the images so they are updated ? (I guess I'm thinking of a similar function to the 'reload file' command in After Effects).

Any ideas appreciated. At the moment I am just loading each new sequence manually and deleting the old layer but it's a little slow when there are a lot of revisions (and what client doesn't want those?! )


Regards,
Brian

Try to import your pictures without using the "preload" option at the top of your import menu. But be sure to begin your timeline with an unused frame and set the mark in point at image 2, because there is a bug and the first image isn't updated correctly. So you just have to skip it and it's ok
And to update your frames you have to refresh the proxy (when you flip/scrub it's always updated because it diretly reads the file, no need to relaunch your project, but when you hit play the images are still the same as calculated before). Just create a new layer with invisible frames on top of it and hit play, it should refresh properly. And you just have to desactivate it when needed so tvpaint will again refresh your pictures.

I made a little panel to help me. So i don't have to do all this things manually (one button for importing on frame 2+refresh layer and one for refreshing every clip), it's usefull cause i can now do editing with tvpaint. And when i have camera movements on hi-res images it is really slow but if i export the frames and just read it frame by frame it's really smooth. So with it i can split my project in multiple files for each shot and i can have an updated main project for reading and editing.

So i can skip adobe premiere and i'm really happy to do it...

I'm not at home now but i'll share my panel at the end of my day if i recall. Just remind me if i forgot.

Hey, many thanks for your detailed explanation, much appreciated. It clears up a lot of things for me. I had noticed that issue with the first frame not updating, didn't know it was a bug, hopefully they will fix that in time.

If you can share that panel that would be very cool

Regards,
Brian

Horganovski wrote:Hey, many thanks for your detailed explanation, much appreciated. It clears up a lot of things for me. I had noticed that issue with the first frame not updating, didn't know it was a bug, hopefully they will fix that in time.

If you can share that panel that would be very cool

Regards,
Brian

I would also be interested in that custom panel .

I wasn't aware of the bug in TVP where the first frame won't update when re-importing an image sequence. I can't duplicate that bug . I'm on Mac OS . I'm not using the OPEN/IMPORT from the File menu, but simply drag & drop image sequence . Is this bug a Windows thing ?


.

^ Possibly? Windows 7 here.

If I try the trick of adding a blank layer and then deleting it to refresh the sequence, it does work when scrubbing. But when you play the clip the 'old' frame 1 still shows, while the rest of the sequence has been updated. If I offset the entire sequence so that it starts on frame 2 instead then all of the frames show properly as the 'new' versions when playing back.

So from what I can tell here, on Win7 anyway, everything NathanOtano said is correct.

So yes, that custom panel he mentioned would be very useful when using TVPaint as an editor/previewer like this. Apart from this issue it seems a much more optimized program for this kind of task compared to something like After Effects (which I own too) which always seems very slow to me when previewing and doesn't support audio very well.

Cheers,
Brian

D.T. Nethery : I think that the bug is also here for mac os. It's not a problem of os. I don't know but try with a black sequence of images and replace it on your imported folder with a white sequence of images and tell me if it updates on the first frame of your clip... If it's ok then you're really lucky. On linux and windows it doesn't work

I was reminded in mp to share it so here is my panel. You have just 2 little buttons (no visuals so do as you like...), tell me if it's usefull and what you think and if there is something to upgrade and i'll be really happy to fix it :

- The first button is the importing button. You have to be in the clip:layers tab because if you are in the project tab the mark in/mark out placement does'nt work. Then in the import menu you have to import it as a new clip if it's a separated shot, it's also important (but you can also import it as a new layer if you want to import the background then your animation on that background, it works too. Also you can import it as a new project for the first imported clip to have something clean...). Then it creates a new clip with your imported sequence (tga/tiff images or video or whatever) with a blank frame at the beginning and the mark in one frame after. And you also have a layer on top of your imported sequence (with the post behaviour on hold to refresh everything to infinity and beyond) which you can toggle visibility on/off to refresh your sequence, for playing your sequence when you need to update it cause you have some old sequence calculated on your proxy. The layer is renamed "toggle_visibility_to_refresh_playback", i think it's quite obvious...

- The second button is simply a on/off visibility toggle that runs on every first layer of every clip. So basically if you use the first button to import all your shots in your "editing project", then you can refresh everything with the second button. But be carefull cause it really refreshes everything, if you have just a single clip to update you better just toggle the visibility of the first layer of that single clip, it's faster. Also to update everything you can just relaunch your project... but i always have my editing project opened to check how my entire project look when i'm just animating on a single scene, so all of that is usefull. And it's slower to close/open a project than just updating it where i need to.

Basically in my folders for an ambitious project : i have a main project with all that editing stuff that is my "final project if i export it", i have a folder with one tvpaint project for each shot that i'm animating, and i have a folder with in it one folder for each shot in which i export all the image sequences from each shot's tvpaint project that i import linked on my main project. And you can then do smart editing on your main project by replacing the mark in/out of each clip where it's usefull to have a dynamic editing at the frame you want for each clip, it's really handy (i think it's less confortable do to frame by frame editing in adobe premiere).

For importing audio from your individual clips WITHOUT losing image quality it's another story... The internal avi format is really cool for importing lossless images but you can't import audio with it (and there is a bug duplicating the last frame... that's why i use image sequences). Maybe mp4 can import audio, the you just have to replace you frames just for final editing if you do'nt want to lose quality. On your project tab you can also do audio editing for all your main project so for music it's really handy. For characters talking and lipsynch synch i think i'll prefer to import directly the project with audio to have it correctly synchronised... So there is some tricky things to do to import also your lossless image sequence, and i'll be really happy if tvpaint can create a simple video format that can import lossless audio and frames in a single video clip and without a duplicated frame problem at the end (and maybe a first blank frame just for us crazy fools trying to do editing with tvpaint...).

Sorry i'm french, my english is not as good as it should be but i hope you understood what i wanted to say... If it's not ok just ask and i'll try to explain it better! Glad to know that i'm not the only one interested by editing ambitious projects in tvpaint.

Hi, many thanks for sharing the panel and your detailed explanation. I'm making a note of your comments here and will test out the panel on my own project tomorrow to see how I can use it. I think it will be very useful for me, hopefully for others too.

Thanks again,
Regards,
Brian