Hi; I've been asking around the Help forum for some ideas about making the new animation features work with current Krita functionality. I might as well sum what I think are currently missing essentials (don't get me wrong though; I'm having a blast playing with it so far )

* Layers to frames *
Krita can easily load a bunch of files as layers, so a simple command to turn a series of layers into an animation layer (with those layers as frames) would be very nice. The ability to bring in footage for reference or rotoscoping, scanned rough animation for cleanup, etc. (pretty basic stuff for animation), would not really require anything more specific than that.

* Paste into / Merge to current frame *
This was the main focus of my recent help query; as of now, clipboard actions can't really be used with animation layers, as the default new layers that are created when ctrl+v-ing can't be merged with a specific frame (merging down will flatten the pasted layer with the current frame of the animation layer, deleting all other frames).

(Also, on the long run: importing video layers in PSD files! I've got lots of rough stuff animated in Photoshop I'd love to work on with Krita's toolset!)

Hi !

I cannot open ticket on KDE support because of "invalid certificate", so I post here some feature requests for the Animation. I hope devs will find them Please tell me if I had to open KDE ticket for this anyway.

Audio Based Animation

It could be really intersting if Krita could have one audio track, with waveform display, on the timeline. Even better if it can play sounds of course.
Basic audio support would be enough (wav/ogg).
I think it can really help to make dialog animation, or action based on soundtracks (like music video).

Click and Drag on Onion VIsibility
Currently we can set ON:OFF the view of next/previous frames in the onion view.
But we can't click and drag on these, to bulk activate/deactivate them.
It makes a bit painful to switch visivility on of of ten previous/next frames regulary.

Set selected frames intervals
Select multiple of frame,
run the function;
A popup open and ask you for a interval (in frames) you want to set your images regulary.
For exemple, you have images at frames 1, 3, 4, 10
You select them, you ask for "3", and now you have frames at 1, 4, 7, 10
Could very handy to determine the timing of a particular action after having set few keyfraes.

Fill tool with Onion View
If next/previous frames view are activated, it seems that the fill tool interpret the pixel of this previews.
As they are just guide, I don't think this is an expected behavior.
They should be only visual and not influence the fill tool, IMHO.

Layer Onion View
The icon to set the onion view visible for a layer is a lighbulb. Why not having an onion ? We will fill a closer relationshio between this icon, and the onion view icon.

Animated Image Export Format
I don't see any GIF (or alternative format, like aPNG) in export menu. It would be nice to have animated formats export, so we don't have to compile the image after the export.

Thanks for listening !

Wow I didn't know there is animation in Krita!!
An animated brush sounds amazing, I find the TVPaint anim brushes extremely useful. In TVP btw you just make a random canvas selection and and selection of frames, and that's it, and then you can optimize the brush automatically and adjust lots of parameters for it.
And you can draw some crazy stuff with anim brushes, like leaves and bricks and stones and any textures and even cities and castles and so on.
If I manage to get Krita to work I'll definitely look into this! XD

It would be nice if the file layer would manage image sequences, e.g. you give the file layer the name of the first image (img0001.png). When viewing frame 0, img0001.png is displayed, when viewing frame 1, img0002.png is displayed, frame 2, img0003.png etc. This would be useful for compositing and creating animations with multiple layers.

Hi! I have a few more suggestions:
It would be very useful to:

1) have a Do The Last Action Again But With The Current Tool button.
1a) when selecting several frames, the Do The Last Action Again button applies it on all selected frames.
1b) whenever some key frames are selected, apply any action to all of those (but not to the empty frames in between, those will follow suit anyway).

2) easily make animated brushes by painting all frames of the brush on different frames of an animation layer, selecting the relevant frames, and with a Make Brush tool, selecting an area containing all the relevant bits of all the frames. And then in the tool options of the Make Brush tool, you would have a slider allowing to use such and such frame instead of cycling through all in the right order (first to last, first to last), and have a little menu to choose if they should go in the right order, or play in reverse (last to first, last to first), or ping-pong (first to last to first to last), or at random, or stay (always the same frame).

3) have layer continuation modes so after the last frame of a layer it can be: still (show the last frame of this layer forever), nothing (show a blank frame), loop (keep cycling, showing first to last frame, then again, first to last, first to last), reverse loop (loop last to first), ping-pong (loop first to last to first to last), random (show frames of the layer in a random order).
3a) allow to define the duration (in number of frames, or in cycles as long as the layer) of the layer continuation modes.

4a) have an option to make the layers X times longer or shorter, by espacing the keys.
4b) have an option to make the layers X frames longer or shorter, by espacing the keys.

5) be able to easily toggle on and off the Start and End of the animation preview. When disabled, the computer plays from first drawn frame to last. The default position is: "disabled".
5a) when frames are selected, only play those.
5b) have a Short Play toggle - the Play key only plays the last X frames


It would be useful to:

6a) allow to add a shortcut for a brush
6b) make a brush shortcut that remembers all options, including color, mode, and everything that is cutomizable.
6c) Maybe have freely-customizable dockers containing those hyper-specialized brushes?

7a) import image sequences as layer keys
7b) import videos as layer keys

8a) link layers so when one moves (in the timeline: like, actually that guy is gonna scratch his chin ten frames later) the others always do too.
8b) link layers so when one moves (resized, moved right or left) the others always do too.

9) have the Escape key automatically stop the animation playing

10) rename the Animation docker into Animation Settings


It might be a good idea to:

11) have a Select From This Frame On tool or shortcut, and Select Till This Frame

12a) start at frame number 1, not 0.
12b) allow to switch between a frames-based timeline (frame 1, frame 2 ... frame 12... frame 59... frame 440) and seconds-based timeline (at 12 fps: 00:00:01, 00:00:02... 00:01:00... 00:04:11... 00:36:08)

13) have an on-off button for each onion skin frame on top of the opacity slider.
13a) maybe a button to save and load onionskin settings?

nolanfa wrote:Hi! I have a few more suggestions:
It would be very useful to:
1) have a Do The Last Action Again But With The Current Tool button.
1a) when selecting several frames, the Do The Last Action Again button applies it on all selected frames.
1b) whenever some key frames are selected, apply any action to all of those (but not to the empty frames in between, those will follow suit anyway).

Please explain how you would use this? This is a very abstract request?

2) easily make animated brushes by painting all frames of the brush on different frames of an animation layer, selecting the relevant frames, and with a Make Brush tool, selecting an area containing all the relevant bits of all the frames. And then in the tool options of the Make Brush tool, you would have a slider allowing to use such and such frame instead of cycling through all in the right order (first to last, first to last), and have a little menu to choose if they should go in the right order, or play in reverse (last to first, last to first), or ping-pong (first to last to first to last), or at random, or stay (always the same frame).

I like this idea, but it really depends on the person who is currently dealing with import/export to animated brushes if we can see this :3

3) have layer continuation modes so after the last frame of a layer it can be: still (show the last frame of this layer forever), nothing (show a blank frame), loop (keep cycling, showing first to last frame, then again, first to last, first to last), reverse loop (loop last to first), ping-pong (loop first to last to first to last), random (show frames of the layer in a random order).
3a) allow to define the duration (in number of frames, or in cycles as long as the layer) of the layer continuation modes.

That sounds so complicated O_O. What do you need it for?

4a) have an option to make the layers X times longer or shorter, by espacing the keys.
4b) have an option to make the layers X frames longer or shorter, by espacing the keys.

No idea if this is planned.

5) be able to easily toggle on and off the Start and End of the animation preview. When disabled, the computer plays from first drawn frame to last. The default position is: "disabled".
5a) when frames are selected, only play those.
5b) have a Short Play toggle - the Play key only plays the last X frames

Short play toggle is planned, but no idea for when...

It would be useful to:

6a) allow to add a shortcut for a brush
6b) make a brush shortcut that remembers all options, including color, mode, and everything that is cutomizable.
6c) Maybe have freely-customizable dockers containing those hyper-specialized brushes?

I think we call that the pop-up palette? You can tag brushes and then select them in the pop-up palette.

7a) import image sequences as layer keys
7b) import videos as layer keys

A is something that I find amusing everyone is asking for, on every post, in the same thread, in seperate threads, on twitter, on tumblr, facebook, etc, regardless of anyone else asking for it half-a-centimeter above them... Yes there's someone working on this as we speak. Don't know when this is finished.
B isn't going to happen anytime soon. Movie formats are really really complicated.

8a) link layers so when one moves (in the timeline: like, actually that guy is gonna scratch his chin ten frames later) the others always do too.
8b) link layers so when one moves (resized, moved right or left) the others always do too.

We call these clone layers. Dunno if they work for animation yet.

9) have the Escape key automatically stop the animation playing

Not sure if even possible with the shortcut system.

10) rename the Animation docker into Animation Settings

Why? You made it even longer now.

It might be a good idea to:

11) have a Select From This Frame On tool or shortcut, and Select Till This Frame

Please state how that would work? What problem are you trying to solve, how do you imagine this soves it? Because right now I cannot read the workflow, or even the desired effect you have in mind from this sentence.

12a) start at frame number 1, not 0.

Why?

12b) allow to switch between a frames-based timeline (frame 1, frame 2 ... frame 12... frame 59... frame 440) and seconds-based timeline (at 12 fps: 00:00:01, 00:00:02... 00:01:00... 00:04:11... 00:36:08)

No idea if this is planned.

13) have an on-off button for each onion skin frame on top of the opacity slider.

? This is already there? You can tick the relative frame number to turn it off?

I appreciate your input, Nolanfa, but you are expecting us to be telepathic here and there, could you please elaborate?

1) I use it mostly for color: If you have a relatively still character, select all frames then click in the middle of the character to fill it in the right color on all frames. If the character moves around a lot but is one color, fill the whole image in its color, then select all frames, click somewhere he never goes in eraser mode, and you have its shape in the right color.
I use it to batch-draw stuff: did I leave an unwanted, unnoticed line on an early image and then went on animating, and all of my frames have that ugly line somehow and I want to erase it on all 100 pictures? Select all, erase.
Or I have an animated brush of a rat running. I click somewhere, it draws the first frame. It want it to draw the rest of the brush at the exact same place. Do It Again shortcut.
Or you could make a shape with a Shape Fill brush, and add an outline in a different color with a Basic Pen brush using the Do It Again shortcut.
Sometimes I use it when I mistakenly was in eraser mode instead of normal mode (or wrong color or whatever), so I don't have to make the line again, but that's more of a lucky by-product than its primary use.

It's more of a Do It Again With The Current Brush than With The Current Tool, actually.


3) Basically, animated backgrounds.
Let's say I have a kid on a swing in the background? Or the sea? Instead of copy-pasting my keys a hundred times, I put the layer in "loop" continuation mode.
Let's say I have an animated texture on my still character. I draw five of them and put the layer on "random" continuation mode (you can probably do the same to a moving character by using masks).
Let's say I want to make an atmosphere animation of a garden at night, with a swallow flying, a lantern gently swinging (ping-pong mode), fireflies, and like ten other different elements. I make them all, with different lenghts, and since the layers will not all start again at the same time, since they did not stop at the same time, the loop will be a lot more varied. Sometimes the swallow comes at the same time as the fireflies. Sometimes not.
You could achieve it by copy-pasting a lot of times, but it's way better to have a dedicated option. Plus random copy-pasting is a pain. Ping-pong copy-pasting (the one that goes back and forth) too.

6) It doesn't include colors; and the custom colors palette there is doesn't seem to include naming and tagging individual colors like the brushes palette does. Names are nice for knowing what color is skin, skin (shadowed), lips, hat, shirt, whatever. One way around it is to have a palette image to import in all your scenes that use it, though, so it's not that important.

7) At least you know it's popular But really, if people refrain from asking for a feature because someone else already asked for it, how are you going to know what lots of people want and what just one person does? Do you check with artists you trust?
Maybe you could add a sticky topic to this forum with a list of features being worked on/considered/definitely too hard to implement for what it is, so people don't bother you about those any more?

8 ) It's not quite the same. I was talking about following a layer's movements, not copying everything that goes on with it including painting (though I didn't know about clone layers before just now so maybe it -is- the same and I misunderstood how clone layers work)

9) That's fine. I feel like every other animation/sfx/editing software I know does it, so it's a deeply ingrained habit for me, but habits change.

10) I just find it really confusing. You don't -do- any animation in there, it's just a bunch of settings. I went there thinking it would be the timeline. Granted, it's not really important.

11) I meant to use it for moving key frames around to change the timings. Because TVP's system of exposure change (someone suggested it for Krita here: viewtopic.php?f=288&t=129555 ) is really handy, so I was trying to mimic it while keeping your current flash-like design (I dunno how flash handles it though, they probably have something that works better than what I suggested, which, I can see now, would not work that well).

12a) Er... Actually, forget it. I was disturbed by something someone else wrote in the forum. It made sense for the first image to be image number 1 and not 0, but it's a matter of personal preferences.

13) Oh, my bad. Sorry, I had overlooked it.

Thanks for working on Krita! I use it a lot for drawing those days, and the animation version already looks really nice, though I haven't used it a lot yet.

Hi,

I don't know if I am missing something but in te last beta when I try to copy paste a section of a frame layer to another frame of this new layer it doesn't work.
It just create a new flayer, without animation.

Am I missing something ?
If not, please consider this "copy paste section of a layer on a different frame rather than a different layer" as a feature request



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It would be nice if the file layer would manage image sequences,

+1

I believe that some ideas are better implemented in external editors and that Krita should focus on core animation functions to make animation workflow streamlined. animated bg effects looping etc. may be best implemented as a video layer in external software such as blender or hitfilm express etc.. I admit the ability to having a time line based audio player is very helpful to drawing phonemes and timing lip-syncs, yet I can understand that Krita shouldn't focus on exporting audio or videos its not necessary really as most video editors support image sequence import and are more well developed for video and audio work. A simple workaround to lip syncing for now that may work is using papagayo program running it in a separate window on top of active Krita window using DeskPin program. Then using Papagayo as reference. you can set papagayo to match the amount of frames you are using in krita animation. scrolling the papagayo frame number to match krita animation frame number. Using papagayo phonemes pictures as references to draw your own in desired frames with better timing, later adding in sound with external video editor.

Now I guess since others are voicing Ideas I guess I'll make a suggestion, In studies I seen that most camera angles in films last only 3 secs. and animation is usually done in multiple small sequences, with time line animating a larger animation may take up a large amount frames in the timeline, a scene manager or system may be of use to keep navigation of animation easier. saving each small animation sequence as a seperate krita file (scene). having a button next to the end of time line called next scene, that automatically creates a new or opens a previous file (scene) and remembers its order could possibly be helpful if working on larger projects, and help to keep things organized.

Multiple tools! It's the Unix Way!

I'm using Blender, Papagayo, and Krita together happily lately: Papagayo for planning and phonemes, Krita for animation, and Blender for final composite. Merging audio directly to the paint tool has some very important benefits (like being in line with the present direction of animation technology), but "traditional animation" has traditionally been done with x-sheets that look essentially like what Papagayo gives you.

I just found that there is no pasting into current animation frame. A 'merge down to current frame' would work too.
Ability to transform selection/layer across multiple animation frames would be great too.

Hi would suggest this one too : improve the start/end options of the animation docker.
Thanks !

the option to have a timeline that scrolls vertically would be useful to save screen space since most users will already be having dockers on the left or right sides of the work area. Example, I could put the vertical timeline and the layers docker into one box as two tabs saving space.