4.1 Animation bug/s & suggestions

[LCArt]

Hi, super excited to have the animation feature, so far i found a bug and maybe have 2-3 suggestions.

Bug:
- If you group a frame/layer and hit play, the app crashes
- Exporting doesn't work (tried mp4 and gif both with and without web resolution), only exports background and then the first frame, after you tap the export animation button all the frames in the animation panel are gone, maybe thats what is causing the issue, the frames are not back until you tap in a different layer in the layers panel

Suggestions:
- Related to the bug... is it going to be possible to use groups as frames? if not, it would be nice to have that so we can use lineart + color layers in a single frame
- Option to set/extend the duration of frames, so instead of duplicating frames we can make certain frames have a duration of half, double, triple, etc frames instead (saving file size and memory)
- Drag and drop in the animation panel to re-order/sort frames (i know we can use the layers panel for that but i think it could be handy to have that in the animation panel too)
- I think onion skin should have some kind of "opacity steps", so is easier to tell apart what frame is right before the active one
Something like this if we set onion skin to opacity 30 and frames to 3 -> <10%> <20%> <30%> <current> <30%> <20%> <10%>
- Option to pick Onion skin colors for the frames that comes next and the ones that are behind
Something like this if we set previous to red and next to blue: <red> <red> <red> <current> <blue> <blue> <blue>
- Option to show "loop" the onion skin of the end of the animation if we are on frame 1 (for easier seamless loops)
- Couldn't try gif export but... are the gifs looped forever? if not, could you please add an option to toggle that? are transparent background  gifs supported? if not... could you add support for that too? transparent background gifs are usually a pain to do if the app didnt export em as transparent
- Could you add a top root layer too? totally love that you added the bottom one but a top one is also helpful for watermarks, signatures, text, overlay, etc

I'll keep toying around with the update, so far it looks really promising so good job

[kagebonito]

Thanks for pointing out all this stuff! I noticed the color fill/bucket seems to be wonky now too. It can either only be white or 100% hue, nothing in between.

-Would also be nice to be able to go above 15fps.

[mattnava]

So cool to see an animation feature come to ArtStudio Pro! I agree with all those suggestions from LCArt. A couple more:
-I would love to be able to scale the anim panel wider so I could see more frames.
-I would love to be able dock the anim panel to the bottom edge of the screen.
-It might be a bit of a ui challenge but I found myself wanting to be able to multi select frames and also delete frames within the anim panel.


Grouped layers seem to act strangely in this build. For me, they do show up as a frame per group, but only a single later in the group renders, the rest are invisible. Onion skin also treats all the individual layers as separate frames, which seems like a bug.

[Icezimy]

I love it so far and agree with all the suggestions already made and also here are some of the things I noticed so far and also some more possible features:

Bugs:
-the onion skin/frames/opacity numbers doesn't get saved in the settings if you change it and then open the animation settings again, it goes back to 15 frames, 3 onion skins, 30%opacity, the values do get changed but it doesn’t show it correctly
-app crashes after merging down a layer and pressing play
-app crashes also when grouping layers and pressing play
-app crashes when using the undo gesture with 2 finger hold, after I've added several empty layers while animation panel is open
-sometimes the layer thumbnails in the layer panel change their ratio to square, or are not shown as empty with an "X" even though they are empty (and I have set preferences>Interface>layers>Clip thumbnails to image bounds) idk when it exactly happens, it seems to be kind of random when reopening documents or adding several layers, or generally playing around with layers, or even after crashes, all while animation panel is open
-exporting works for me, but after exporting the animation, a lot of things in the menu bar are greyed out, this only gets back to normal after restarting the app
-the resolution when exporting as mp4 or HEVC is really low, around like 1 K (same is true when exporting canvas recordings btw, wanted to report this since a while ago) even though I have set video recording preferences to 2k, the resolution is really low, definitely not Full HD, and now it's the same when exporting the animation as MP4 or HEVC, exporting GIF seems to have good resolution
-animation panel disappears when switching between documents
-panel also disappears sometimes when switching to different app and coming back to ASP, I think when it's kinda reloading in the background
-animation generally doesn't work when multiple documents are open, it goes trough the frames but doesn't hide the other frames, only gets fixed after restarting the app
-when opening a second document with animation, while the first animation is still running(not pressing pause), the animation panel disappears, but animation is still running and when reopening animation panel it's not possible to pause the animation
-layers>add>add layer via file is not working, it just shows grey window (it's the same in current offical version)

Suggestions:
-the background color for all the layers/frames in the animation panel is white, I think it would be better if the actual background color would be shown, or if it is transparent with a white border only, and the first (background layer) has the actual background color, like in the layers panel
-option to add the "animation panel" and "export animation" to the toolbar/quick menu/shortcuts for faster access
-add "simple" motion layers / paths like in Adobe fresco on iPad
-option to import videos/gifs and turn them into frames/layers
-option to import videos/gifs and keep them as a normal transformable Video/gif, maybe by adding a sepereate "video timeline" to play them
-option to export/import HEVC with transparency/alpha preserved so you can have transparent backgrounds

That's all so far, thank you!

[mattnava]

Another good little feature would be to have another button to add a new frame to the left of the current one, in addition to the behavior of the current add frame button in the animation panel that adds it to the right.

[Pikachu]

is anyone else experiencing this transform/elastify opacity bug? it's avoidable by closing the animation panel but i dont think it's intended

[mattnava]

I see something similar, the opacity renders incorrectly when going into transform tool with the anim panel open. it also shows images from the other frames, if you have more than one (which is weird). however when I commit the transform the opacity doesnt actually get messed up like in your vid, it pops back to normal. Seems like a bug!

[Lucky Clan]

We are reading your remarks and ideas and implementing some of them... Most bugs were fixed in the latest beta...

[LCArt]

sadly export is still bugged, shows the background layer as a frame, then frame 1 then dont know what happens but some frames become half transparent and do weird things :s

[Lucky Clan]

Please test the export in the latest beta (build 789)

[LCArt]

Please test the export in the latest beta (build 789)

works much better, noticed the frame preview in the animation panel doesn't update unless u hide and show back the frame from the layers panel. Also, transform and/or move makes teh lines become horrible looking :c

Question, are you going to allow importing gifs as layers? maybe with a trim tool so we can import a bit instead of everything

[Lucky Clan]

frame preview - I cannot reproduce that, could you give me more details?

import animated GIF/PNG as layers - yes, we will consider adding that.

ps. Please update beta to build 791

Please test the export in the latest beta (build 789)

works much better, noticed the frame preview in the animation panel doesn't update unless u hide and show back the frame from the layers panel. Also, transform and/or move makes teh lines become horrible looking :c

Question, are you going to allow importing gifs as layers? maybe with a trim tool so we can import a bit instead of everything

[Lucky Clan]

Import animation frames from GIF/PNG will be added in the next beta

[LCArt]

frame preview - I cannot reproduce that, could you give me more details?

import animated GIF/PNG as layers - yes, we will consider adding that.

ps. Please update beta to build 791

Please test the export in the latest beta (build 789)

works much better, noticed the frame preview in the animation panel doesn't update unless u hide and show back the frame from the layers panel. Also, transform and/or move makes teh lines become horrible looking :c

Question, are you going to allow importing gifs as layers? maybe with a trim tool so we can import a bit instead of everything

Just create a new file, add a layer, draw on it, the preview will show as X until u add another frame or hide/show layers, if u move to a different layer, only updates sometimes.

Were u able to reproduce to lasso, transform, lasso fill and other instances that makes the lines look really bad and not smooth? hope is easy to fix since they are really important.

If you try using Edit > Color Fill, all the frames become visible (i think it has to do with the animation panel being forced to hide)

Sometimes when you create a group using more than one selected layer, the frame acts weird until u draw out one of the layers and then back in

If i find more bugs, ill let u know

[Lucky Clan]

New beta with few animation fixes, and also PDF import will be released probably tomorrow