Improve brush tool and or AA in raster levels

[Adveric Megrez]

Hello, good day!

I was recently playing with OpenToonz, I found it a little bit hard to draw something in raster level "I dont like vectors at all" so I wonder if you could take some "pieces" from another freeware such as MyPaint or from my favourite and the best tool for drawing "in my opinion" AzDrawing to improve the brush tool. AzDrawing in particular is amazing, I already did a couple animation exercises in AzDrawing, it is an amazing tool for drawing and it has some interesting tools for animation but not enough and not powerful as the ones in OpenToonz. I would love Opentoonz with the capacities, the brushes and the style of drawing that has AzDrawing, or vice versa Azdrawing with an x sheet and the system of columns or levels that has OpenToonz, it would be more than perfect. I´m not a programmer, maybe I´m saying stupid things so dont take me so seriously

Thanks for the work that You are doing!

PS: Attached an animation test made on AzDrawing and just a frame that I did on OpenToonz before I really wish to go back to AzDrawing

[Herbert123]

I also find some of the tools a bit limiting, but I use ClipStudio and Krita to create the drawings and backgrounds I want, and import those in OpenToonz. I view OpenToonz as sort of an "InDesign" of animation - there is nothing against creating assets and drawings in other applications with more suitable drawing and painting tools. Then create your animation in OpenToonz.

By the way, nice duck animation. Small critique: you may want to ease in and out, and speed up the middle part. Have him look to where he is turning first (lead the action with the eyes), and never create a "straight" non-curved head turn: move the head down a bit while turning. A bit anticipation and overlapping movement would not hurt either (hair).

Check out Richard Williams' "Animator's Survival Kit" and Preston Blair.

[Adveric Megrez]

Thanks for the advice on the animation! about OpenToonz, I wanted to do the animation directly on it, I also tried PAP but also the brush tool and the lack of guidelines disappointed me, I would love a Frankenstein monster child born from OpenToonz and AzDrawing haha, the "feel" of drawing that azdrawing has and the X sheet and the colums that OpenToonz has, the rest could be achieved in the Blender Video Editor, variety of effects can be done with the nodes, You can play with off set values, size values, with alpha values and also you can animate all these values, every effect that you apply to your 3d render can also be applied to an image sequence so in that aspect I wouldn´t need OpenToonz, in fact I mount the duck animation in blender. the things that really get my attention on OpenToonz are the x sheet or the column system and the coloring, I´ve seen amazing videos of coloring with OpenToonz, and both things are related directly with drawing, the other things as to mount the frames, to put the sounds or the voices, to put special effects, all that things could be done in another programs as Blender or After Effects, I did a shortfilm "not so well done" in cut out animation style in Blender, I did the assets in Photoshop and then trace meshes with the assets as references, I put the images  textures, I put the armatures and put the camera on orthographic and voila! My point is that there is not too much animation programs like OpenToonz, one is TVPaint wich price is like to hit to your mom and the other one is PAP, it is a great program but the drawing tool is not so good and it is abandoned, it is free but not freeware, I think it reached to its top, anyway OpenToonz still been a newborn baby, I´m going to wait a couple months to see how he grow up.

Thanks again for the advice Herbert!

[William Nelson]

 Medibang pro and fireAlpaca are good, and free to

[Herbert123]

So is the brilliant Krita, with a brush engine which blows Photoshop out of the water - and the latest v3 betas feature a very nice timeline and onion skinning tools.

[Herbert123]

Have you seen the new cutout animation tools for Blender yet?

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?381203-Cutout-Animation-Tool-Blender

[Adveric Megrez]

I knew all the programs You mentioned, I'm going to talk about them a lines more down, but first I thought about using another programs as you said for example to create the assets for paperless or cut-out animation. The paperless/cut-out animation "I put them on the same category because they are very similar" and the traditional animation are two different process, when You are going to do paperless animation is recommendable and logic to use a program for to drawing, to paint and photo manipulation, to make Your characters, Your assets, Your backgrounds, etc, Your program could be called Gimp or Photoshop, "You can also do animation and other ton of things in those programs but they are not animation programs" anyway, the principal aim or the principal use of these programs is to produce still images, they are very good doing that. Then You have all Your assets, your characters and your backgrounds, these things are still images, they are no animated yet, You can do nothing with them, You NEED to go to OpenToonz or go to Your animation program to give them life, to create the meshes, to put the armature/skeleton to put the keyframes, to play with keyframes, to do lipsync, to do amazing stuff that You can perform, You need to go to OpenToonz to animate it, to make the process of the animation happen, all of this happening inside of OpenToonz. On the other hand, the process of traditional or frame by frame animation is different, maybe the creation of the assets in paperless could be compared with the creation of the characther sheet or background design or mechanical design in traditional animation, and also it would be better to use a program aimed for drawing and painting to work on the design tasks, now we have the character sheets, the mech design or whatever and your beautiful backgrounds painted, and now what? the traditional animation is based on drawings, a drawing over a drawing over another drawing, that's how the traditional animation process happens, and if I have to do my frames outside of my animation program wich would be the point on use that animation program? I can mount the frames of my animation on blender, i can get special effects in blender, I can put the sounds in blender if I have to chosse a program just for to mount my animation I would choose Blender over OpenToonz, not because it would be better, because I know more about blender, i have years working with blender, I´m sure that I can get all the special effects that OpenToonz has, anyway the brush tool is not bad at all, i think i should work more with it to see if I improve my results, but I think if You are making a good traditional animation software it should have first good tools for drawing, again the drawing is the base of traditional animation as tools like meshes or skeletons/armatures are indispensables for paperless animation, so I leave this request/suggestion to You.

Now I go with the programs and the why I see "as all of us" a great potential on Opentoonz:
I like to search for new tools principal aimed for illustration but also for animation thats how i found and get really excited about OpenToonz. I' m NOT looking for a drawing or painting program that can perform simple animation, I already have AzDrawing, it is freeware and believe me is the best for drawing and inking! I was looking for an animation software and openToonz appeared as magic. Fire Alpaca and Medibang are the same software it only changed the name and it is free but not freeware I think You could do animation, in fact you can do animation in any painting or drawing software but these programs are not aimed to do animation, in the particular case of medibang I read in some forum that its installer contain a virus so it made me runaway from it, and again If have to choose i stay with AzDrawing. Krita is very buggy on windows or at least it was when I test it, just check the windows krita forum, and again I' m not looking for a drawing/painting that can perform simple animation, if I have to choose again I would stay with AzDrawing it also has oinion skin. I was trying to do 3D animation and the more I learnt more I felt the need to learn traditional animation, and with it on mind I searched for animation program or tools that could be easier the process of animation, first I found PAP animation it has great tools but "in my opinion" it fails with the drawings tools and also with its "levels" system, anyway I dont like it, the other animation software that I found is TVPaint it is very expensive but I think it has great tools for drawing and animation, I' m thinking seriously on saving some money to on a near future buy a license, and then opentoonz appeared, it has rotation canvas as the real animator´s table, it has x sheet it has that powerful onion skin system you can choose which frame you want to see and which not, the onion skin system in painting programs doesn´t work in that way, opentoonz has that powerful system of columns for complex animation, You can put the background in one column and each character in its own column, you can draw the body of a character and animate just the arm or its head on a separated column, You can not do that in a painting program because it takes the layers as frames so you would have only one column to work, what I´m trying to say is that opentoonz is an animation software, why not to use all these amazing tools also for traditional animation by just making more powerful the brush tool?

Thanks for reading!

[Herbert123]

Wow, long read - you might want to break it up in paragraphs next time :-P.

I just tried AZ Drawing, and I had trouble getting smooth strokes, until I turned on "Curve" in the drawing settings. It is quite good, but the drawing and inking feel can't keep up with ClipStudio for me. ClipStudio feels almost as if I am drawing with a real pencil or pen - it is THAT good. I always put a sheet of A3 paper over my Intuos 5 large tablet, and it just feels "right". Compared, AZ Drawing lacks that feeling completely.

Of course, this is purely subjective. But I do find AZ Drawing a bit too simple for my taste. I don't think I would want to miss all the great functionality in ClipStudio EX (granted, CS is a commercial app).

More importantly, ClipStudio allows me to ink with vector, and the vector quick editing tools are beyond excellent. AZDrawing does not seem to have vector tools, does it? Natural vector drawing tools are essential to me. And ClipStudio now has a proper animation timeline as well - which is nice for exporting parts to Toonz.

The latest betas of Krita 3 work really well on Windows. It hardly crashes for me nowadays (true: this was quite a different situation only a year or two ago). The onion skinning is excellent in Krita - works more or less the same as TVPaint. Really well done.

To me, OpenTOonz is, as I wrote in an earlier post here, like InDesign for animation: I would not paint backgrounds in it (I do this in Krita nowadays) or I render backgrounds and foreground elements or parts of those in Blender. I would then import these into OpenTOonz.

Characters and parts/elements of characters I do in Blender, Krita, ClipStudio, and bring those into Toonz. If I have drawings to clean (either digital or scanned ones), I do that in Photoline, and then bring them into OpenToonz for vector conversion. Same for Clipstudio inks: CS does not allow for vector export, but I can export the drawings at high PPI, and then import into OpenTOonz for vector conversion. Then I colour the parts and inks in Toonz, and start animating.

Because ClipStudio has such a nice drawing feel, I have now started to ink frame-by-frame in it for later export into OpenTOonz.

Anyway, yes: it would be nice to have improved drawing tools in OpenToonz (although the ones available in it aren't that bad). The existing tools could see some improvements. For now I am quite happy with my workflow. I think the vector drawing tools in OT are actually very good, and I do use them. For bitmap drawing I prefer CS and Krita at this point.

PS GP Tools for Blender is starting to look good as well! https://vimeo.com/channels/greasepencil

Animators have never had it so good - 2016 is looking great so far. :-)

[Adveric Megrez]

That blender animation is amazing, i knew from users making animation with the grease pencil but this is amazing! also thanks for the advice with krita!, I'm checking its animation tools, very very interesting!

[Konstantin Dmitriev]

Hello, everyone!  I have posted a bounty to integrate MyPaint brushes into OpenToonz. There is a dev who is willing to take this task. Please read more details here - https://morevnaproject.org/2017/01/14/mypaint-brushes-opentoonz-goes-bounty/