Tape Tool in Toonz Raster level? OT 1.2.1

[p nelson]

I can't seem to get the Tape Tool to do anything in a Toonz Raster Level drawing.   If I click on it in a Toonz Raster level drawing I get the scotch tape icon and depending on the Type setting I can get it to make little dotted lines or other indicators while I move it around, but nothing I do seems to get it to detect or fill in gaps in lines.    Nor can I seem to find any online video tutorials that show someone using it on a Toonz Raster level, although there are several showing its use for Vector levels.   But the documentation says it should work for Toonz Raster too -

For Toonz raster drawings the Tape tool ( ) automatically joins the open ends detected in the drawing according to the
tool settings. Options available are the following:
• Type has the options Normal, to close all the gaps detected in the drawing by clicking in it; Rectangular, to close
all the gaps detected in the box you define; Freehand, to close on all the gaps detected in the area you outline by
clicking and dragging; and Polyline, to close on all the gaps detected in the area you outline by defining a series
of lines.

I've tried different distance and range settings to no avail.    How do you use this in a Toonz Raster level?

Thanks in advance!

PS - Also, what does the Finger Tool do?  I can't even find that in the documentation.

[Rodney]

Thanks for the question.  I learned something new because you did!

At first I thought perhaps the new Over All, Under All, Palette Order feature might have broke the use of the Tape Tool when using Toonz raster levels but... no, it's still working.

Make sure you have the Opacity set high enough to be able to see the connection line otherwise it will appear invisible.

I will guess the reason it is set to no Opacity by default might be because the creators of OT think we may want to fill shapes and allow them to still appear as if they were open.

When I first tried to use the Tape Tool with Toonz raster levels it didn't appear to work but after adjusting settings it works fine.

As for the Finger Tool it has a very limited usage but the best way I know to demonstrate how it works is to have you draw a lot of thin lines... make sure to draw them very close together... perhaps in a variety of colors and then run the Finger Tool over those lines and note how the intersections get combined.  The smudge will change depending on the color swatch you select in the palette so that's why I suggest drawing the lines in several colors so you'll see that demonstrated.  Also, experiment with the other settings because if the Gap setting is too small the gap will not close.  The current color setting will be the color the new taped lines is assigned.

Let me know if any of that isn't clear and I'll try to be more specific.

[p nelson]

On the tape Tool,  I tried Opacity at 255 (its highest setting) and I've tried different distances.   I don't know what effect Angle has but I've tried different angle settings.     The Type is Normal but I've also tried Rectangular, which allows me to draw a little box encompassing the ends of the two adjacent lines, but it doesn't seem to find a gap and fill it in.

The Style Index says "current", but it acts like a text-input field - if I click on it I get a blinking cursor except that I can backspace out the word "current" but I can't type anything new in it (not even "current"), which seems like a bug.  Was it supposed to be a dropdown?    I'm wondering if this is related to the problem - like maybe the Tape Tool doesn't know what style (color) it's supposed to draw in.   This is Toonz 1.2.1.

BTW, does Google Groups compress uploaded images?   I attached an image to this posting but when I download the image back to my PC it's heavily compressed and less sharp.  Hopefully the settings can still be read in the forum.

[Rodney]

The only thing that stands out from you image is that you have 'Frame Range' selected and that will require you to select at least two frames in the Level Strip... one for the first set of lines to tape and another for the end of the range of frames.  So, make sure you either turn that off or select the appropriate start and end frame. 

[Rodney]

As for the current color setting...  try changing to another color swatch in your palette (or creating one and then changing to it).

The only way I know to change that current color is to change the selected color in the palette.

Added:  It's probably a good idea to have the gaps fill with a different color anyway so that it's easier to see and manipulate those lines later

[p nelson]

The only thing that stands out from you image is that you have 'Frame Range' selected and that will require you to select at least two frames in the Level Strip

That was a good idea but un-checking it didn't fix it - I still can't get Tape Tool to work in a Toonz Raster level.  It works fine in Toonz Vector.   

Clicking on another style filled in the little square on the right side of the Style Index with the associated color.   I didn't know there was supposed to be a color in there because my current color was black so I thought it was part of the text field.  So at least that mystery is cleared up.  

[Rodney]

It's hard to troubleshoot from a distance.

Initially when the Tape Tool didn't work with Raster Levels I thought you were crazy... (This guy thinks we can use the Tape Tool with Toonz raster!)... but I kept at it until suddenly it started working.

I'm not quite sure what I did to get it working.

I do recall that just before it started working I did a few things (that may or may not be related to why you can't get yours to work).

When drawing the lines I changed the mode from Under All to Palette Order.

I did this because I thought maybe the introduction of that new feature might have broke something.  Later however, I changed the setting back to Under All and Over All and the tool still works.

I do recommend using the Normal type for Tape Tool as with that all we have to do is click anywhere on the canvas and it activates and closes every eligible gap.

Using rectangle or Freehand we have to encircle the gaps and that can be hit or miss.

I would also increase your Distance setting to the maximum.

[Jane Eyre]

I thought this just worked for vector levels! I didn’t think it was working until I followed Rodney’s advice about the opacity. Now I can definitely see the completed line & if I keep opacity down at 1, the shapes do still end up fillable.

[Rodney]

@Jane Eyre

Glad to hear it worked for you.

Making sure the color swatch that will be used to tape the gaps is set to auto paint for lines is a handy thing too.  Then later when a shape is filled that tape line will assume the color of the fill.

[Rodney]

Once you've got this working so you can play with the various settings...

I found a good way to understand the Angle setting is to create a shape with a small gap and then with the Freehand type for the Tape Tool encircle the gap and examine the line created.

Undo (Control Z) and adjust the Angle setting and repeat closing the gap again noting how the closing of the gap changes.

Where the lines are aligned closely in orientation the Angle won't make much difference.

I do note that there are some cases where a specific angle setting won't produce any tape line which I presume is due to the angle being out of a reasonable orientation to close the gap.

The fact that the Tape Tool works in Toonz raster suggests that the very useful Snap feature from Vector might also work well in Toonz raster. 

In fact, I dare say it may already have that snap incorporated and that may be why I tend to have a preference for drawing in Toonz raster.

[Rodney]

Yet another thing I find useful with Tape Tool on Raster Levels is how we can clean up our work quickly when we use a specific line (say colored red) to Tape closed the gaps... Fill the shape with a desired color... and then delete that red color swatch entirely choosing to have both the color swatch and the lines disappear from the image.  Unlike vector drawings where deleting the line would remove the fill, in Toonz raster the fill will stay in place.

[p nelson]

Some more clues.    I started a whole new project, new scene, etc.    Raster Toonz Level   And I got a slightly better result.   I made a series of gapped lines with the Brush tool and this time Tape Tool DID fill in the gaps -  with a thin dotted line!    I hope it shows up in this image with the way Google Groups compresses uploaded files . . .

... does anyone here know about how Google Groups handles Inserted Images?   What I see here is a smallish thumbnail of my uploaded image; to see it better I have to right-click and download it to my computer to view it, although even then it's not nearly as good as the original .     Is there a way to get it to display at full-resolution in-line with the text?

[openanim]

Distance and angle are the means of detection of gaps in raster toonz.

To fill the gaps, distance will detect the gap between two ends of a gap according to the set distance and angle will fill the gap according to the set angle setting. So if you want small gaps only to be taken into account, you need a small value and vice versa.

If you only want gaps of a certain angle to be taken into account depending on your setting. You have to modify angle setting.

Opacity only affects the color. The higher the value, more the line is visible and vice versa.

you can enter the index of the style you want to use as join by using the numeric keypad (1,2,3 ...) from the index style.

The normal mode takes into account all the detectable gaps. And the others according to the zone defines.

Before closing the gaps I advise you to activate "gap check" in the view menu and then change the angle and distance setting to see which gaps will close more intuitively.

the finger tool is used to fill very small  pixels that can remain in a coloring process with toonz raster. It automatically detects the index of the color and allows drag that color.

[Rodney]

Regarding the Google Groups image thing... odd stuff there to be sure.

I go your post via email and when I click on the image thumbnail in the email it pops up full size.

Here in the Google Groups window... it doesn't do anything when clicked on.

That would appear to be a downside of Google Groups.

When I edit a post I've previously added an image to I can select the image in the post and there are several options to choose from with regard to size.

One should be 'original resolution' or something close to that.

Regarding the dashed lines... that's the essence of what we get via the Tape Tool when using Raster Levels.

It's not a full thickness line such as what we get when using the tool with vector levels.

I'm not sure why it's appearing as dashed although sometimes it's thin enough for me that it is somewhat dashed as well.

I will take a guess and say I think the dashes may relate to the angle setting combined with the resolution of the image.

[Shun Iwasawa]

I think the Tape tool would work with more thinner lines.

I developed the Finger tool in response to a request from ink&paint staffs in Studio Ghibli. 

It will apply max/min filter inside the small region of the brush tip.

The tool is supposed to be used for cleaning up the scanned & cleaned up drawing.

Since the animation drawings are drawn on papers with pencil, sometimes tiny holes appear inside of the faint lines, or sometimes small spiky artifacts appear around the lines. This tool is powerful for mending them.

[Rodney]

@Shun Iwasawa

Just a thought with regard to the Finger Tool as it was quite a mystery to me and I had almost forgot it was there until recently then experimented with it until discovering what it did...

My thought is that perhaps the Finger Tool should be called 'Finger Fill Tool' to give a hint as to it's usage.

The way you describe the tool makes me think I need to look a little closer at how we can use the Finger Tool to remove artifacts as I've mostly been using it to add artifacts to fill pixels.

I see that is mostly accomplished by checking the Invert option.

[p nelson]

Rodney and Shun,

The "dottedness" of the line created by the Tape Tool seems to be a function of how zoomed in I am.  If I zoom to 100%  it resolves to a 1-pixel thick line.  Maybe the reason I couldn't see anything before was because I was too zoomed out, since I was expecting it to produce a line as thick as my original fat lines.

The thickness of the lines Tape Tool makes always seems to be 1 pixel -   I've tried it with 2 pixel, 4 pixel and 8 pixel thick Brush lines.    So what is the intended use of this in a Toonz Raster level -  is it just for doing fills?   (it DOES seem to work for that)   I'm asking all these questions because I'm writing my own documentation for OT - once I reach some level of expertise I'll be happy to add my documentation to the official documentation but I have a long way to go.