Combining Vector Control Point Lines?

[JJ Parks]

Hi guys, I've started my first animation project and I've run into a tiny snag: I'm currently hand drawing the frames and doing cleanup in OpenToonz via the Geometric Tool (Polyline). This gives me very nice smooth vector lines which are what I'm going for, but it's also a little bit messy structure wise. I end up going over each line and end up occasionally with broken bits of Polyline vectors. I can use the Control Point Editor tool to edit the vector points, curves, etc. but for the life of me I can't figure out how to combine the lines. In flash this was simple: I would just combine the lines so that their end points met and then they'd transform into a single line. It seems OpenToonz keeps them separate, or possibly there's some function I need to do to instruct it to combine? I can't seem to add new points to the line either.

If you have any idea how to do this, please let me know :). Hopefully I'll get a Wacom Tablet again soon, but in the meantime my mouse and the Polyline tool are my only friends ^_^;;.

[Juls_3000]

Tape Tool ?

[Juls_3000]

(1) This command I think is also interesting to clean intersections, but it have an erratic behaviour, if you get it working please tell me how :(

[Willson Baer]

In Synfig Studio this could be done by right clicking on the vertices and choosing 'loop' from the drop down menu. Right clicking doesn't seem to work in OT, but there's a 'join vectors' option in the keyboard shortcuts config, but I can't seem to figure out how to use it. Anyone else know what this tool does?

@Juls_3000 - The tape tool doesn't join the vectors, it only makes a separate vector between the lines:

[Juls_3000]

Good point Willson, this led me to look a little more, I found this, related to "Tape Tool" options bar:

1 Join vectors:  off -  Smooth: off 

2 Join vectors:  on - Smooth: off 

3 Join vectors:  on  - Smooth: on 

The  'join vectors' option in the keyboard shortcuts config that you mention is for activate/desactivate this. That has been the lead! :) 

http://www.toonz.com/pdf/ToonzHarlequin62brochure.pdf

Toonz creators are mathematics, they love vectors! :)))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2u8PaUMrNM

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indexed here : https://workflowy.com/s/JtI13Zub8a#/4c44ec11c6e8

[Kevin N]

You can add new points by holding down control when you click with the control point editor tool.

*Incoming rambling post warning* This post ended up being a lot longer than I expected. Maybe I should post this as a new topic, but it’s pretty relevant so idk...

I've been holding back criticizing the brush tool and the control point editor tool, but maybe now is a good time to bring this up. I’d first like to say that I don't think it is very productive when people come to the forum and say things like, "I wish OT was more like *insert expensive software*". Of course it would great if OT were as powerful as Flash, Photoshop, ToonBoom, or Krita, but with are small community and few developers, trying to be more like the other big software just isn't feasible at the moment. That all being said... I wish that the brush tool were more like Flash’s brush tool.

 

I’ve been very busy with college since OT came out, and therefore I haven't had a huge amount of time to use it, but the options for vector drawing seem pretty limited. A Flash-like-workflow, where you can just sketch out strokes that you later clean up, doesn't work well in OT because lines don’t merge. The brush tool in OT is basically a freehand pen tool, and isn’t nearly as powerful as Flash’s brush tool. Again, I’m in no way an expert on Toonz or Flash, so it could just be that I’m just majorly misunderstanding the options available in OT for vector drawing. This is all just my initial impression of OT. If anyone has a fix to any of the problems I’m having (which I elaborate on below) I’d love to here about it.

 

Anyway, it's important to note that Flash's brush tool creates outline strokes whereas OT makes centerline strokes:

 

A centerline stroke connects vector lines that trace out your stroke.  An outline stroke, on the other hand, creates a shape that covers your stroke, where the fill color is what you see and the outlining vector is of size 0. When you work with outline strokes, it's very easy to merge two overlapping strokes as the outlining vector's themselves cross over each other. This is not the case for centerline, as overlapping strokes do not necessarily have overlapping vectors and can often not simply be combined. As for the tape tool, it works well for closing gaps, but it can't merge vector points, so it's not that great for combining lines that overlap. Drawing out strokes and then merging them with the tape tool is not a very effective way to draw. It's slow and tedious. Drawing like you do in Flash doesn't really work in well OT. There is no good way to combine many lines nor can lines merge at intersections.

OT's brush tool has it's benefits certainly, as it produces strokes with far fewer points than Flash usually does, avoiding a lot of the unevenness that rough Flash strokes have. It is also very easy to control the bounds on the thickness of centerline strokes. For many people, I’m sure OT offers the right utilities needed to do their animations. However, I find it to be lacking. It'd be nice to have outline strokes in OT, but I don't know how feasible that is to implement.

The centerline vectors in OT also make editing thickness difficult too. Trying to make precise edits to the thickness of a stroke just seems impossible. There is the pump tool, but it is useless for any subtle adjustments. At the smallest size, the area affected by the pump tool can still be too large to make the changes you want and it doesn't give you any sort of precise control over the curving of the outlines. The CPE tool’s has it’s problems too. This may just be my computer, but the click-boxes for the vector points are wonky. When I'm zoomed in at anything past 300%, the click area to get the centerline and points become annoyingly small. This wouldn't be so bad if Select All worked or if I could highlight points without already having clicked the stroke, but I can't. This leads to me constantly clicking in the dark to hit the centerlines of strokes. And even when I have the line highlighted, it’s still easy to miss the click-boxes of a point or handle. Sometimes when the point enlarges as I hover over it and click, it will still not register the click correctly and deselect the line. Additionally, if you highlight a couple of points and then move them, it deselects all those points. That makes it a pain to move around parts of a line.

Those are the issues I have with OT. As of right now, I’d like to get around to experimenting with drawing in the raster layer, and then converting to a vector layer with the outline option. I think that might be the most Flash like workflow in OT. I’d also just like to say that I think OT is coming along really well. The fixes to the regressions of the x-sheet and cut-out animation tools have been great, and there has been a lot of good work on fixing bugs. I think the OT community is focused on the right issues right now, but there isn’t a good picture for what work needs to be done in the long run. I think improving the issues I brought up here should become a focus once OT is less buggy and the regressions have been fixed. I’m worried that we’re not going to pull a lot of people away from Flash because of these problems.

[Juls_3000]

Hi, Kevin. Here there is a big priority : https://github.com/opentoonz/opentoonz/issues/264

[JJ Parks]

Thank you guys for not only answering my question but elaborating on it and teaching me some of the other features I was curious about. You guys are the BEST. Much appreciated =). I'll be sure to thank you in the credits of my first real animation ^_^.

[Juls_3000]

Great JJ Thank you. Don´t forget show you animation also here ! :)

[Herbert123]

I agree that the drawing tools in TOonz are in need of an update. Although some of the tools (such as the pump) are very, VERY handy - for overall editing the tools are quite nice.

I regard OpenTOonz as a kind of "InDesign": I do my drawing in ClipStudio and Krita, and import those into OT. If you are interested in excellent vector drawing/inking tools: nothing compares to Clipstudio, in my opinion. The editing and polishing tools are excellent. I do my inks in CS, and export to a high res raster, which I then convert to vector in OT. Backgrounds done in Krita / Blender I keep raster in OT.

OT's animation flow is brilliant - it just feels right to me. The drawing tools are less of an issue for me, because I can rely on CS and Krita for those.

As for Flash: I find the drawing tools in Flash to be kinda limited as well. Never liked doing any drawing in Flash myself.

[Juls_3000]

Fully agree with Herbert123. 

It is important to know the origins of each application. 

Now the user community has one important role in software developement. When this is respected, that you see reflected in the quality of final product (Krita, Clipstudio, Blender, etc). 

I think that Toonz also has been growing very close to its users, the animators comunity. It will be great that OpenToonz will continue that path. 

I think that many of us know that, to draw is one thing, and to animate other, and it is a task for our skills, to get results from the best combination of software available in any moment. The solution is not, to transfer this task, just to software, in this field the perfect solutions always "will come tomorrow".

[JJ Parks]

I'll definitely be sharing my animations here once they're done. Unfortunately I have a busy work and family schedule so I get only 20-30 minutes a day so it takes me a really long time to get anything done. My first animation is a somewhat of a test for me. I'm taking a comic/storyboard that I made with my son and trying to semi-animate it :). It will be using existing characters as a sort of fan-animation and then later I hope to work on some of my own characters. I've always wanted to animate but never had the proper tools or means, so this is a huge, exciting opportunity for me ^_^. I'm so glad the community is already so strong. Thanks guys.