Draw with MyPaint brushes and color on toonz-raster level

[Lukas Krepel]

What would be a good workflow to achieve this?

I want to:

1. Draw line-art with a MyPaint brush because the style needs it.

2. Color with the paint-bucket so I can easily change colors in the palette.

3. Be able to add new line drawings.

Right now I draw on a Raster level, and when the animation is done I "Cleanup" and use the paint-bucket on the Toonz-raster level. But when I want to add another drawing I can no longer draw because the original raster level is gone.

Any tips are appreciated.

I don't understand why I wouldn't be able to use a MyPaint-brush on a Toonz-raster level, that would be ideal. What's the reason for this restriction? Any chance of this being possible in the future?

[Rodney]

There are different approaches... but one that I use...

Set up a raster level on the left of your xsheet and the Toonz raster and Vector levels to the right of that.

Then you can paint on underneath the Toonz raster and Vector levels.

This is also very useful because we can copy/paste from the Toonz raster and Vector levels directly into the (standard) raster level.

So you might color something in Toonz raster or Vector... but then just transfer it to the raster level.

Then think of the raster level as the color level and the other levels as (primarily) line and fx levels.

That's a basic breakdown... lots of variations to that theme.

The main takeaway is that it is easy to move from Toonz Raster and Vector to (standard raster) but not so easy the other way around.

Still we can leverage the strengths of each of the levels when we use them together.

Keep us posted on your progress!

[Jane Eyre]

All 3 level types have different advantages and disadvantages. Raster levels have really great brushes (and the most variety) but can’t use the fill tool, type tool, nor updatable palettes. They are great for a sketchy or painterly style. Toonz Raster levels have arguably the weakest brush options (in terms of variety) but are particularly great for cel shading techniques. Vector levels have a decent variety of brushes, resize well without losing image quality and have the most automatic tweening options. Unfortunately, no one level type can do everything, so it’s often best/necessary to layer multiple level types.

You might want to take a look at the various vector brushes in the style editor (under vector). If you can find a brush that works for you, you could skip cleanup altogether.

If you do need to add a new Raster drawing to an existing level after running cleanup, you can always re-expose the original raster level in the Xsheet. You should be able to find it in your project’s extras folder (unless you changed the preference to not save cleanup raster levels as a backup).

[Lukas Krepel]

Thanks for the replies guys. I will try and not use Raster levels and see if I can create a style (with only Toonz Raster levels) that's not dependent on the MyPaint brushes.