Step by Step Tutorial on Saving your Scene and creating a New Project

[HulluMel]

A straightforward clear and easy to follow tutorial for OpenToonz. I talk about the importance of saving your scene correctly, walk though it step by step and then learn how to make a new project and configure your folders.

You can find the video in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxlBT8yQY0g

[Phil Ray Art]

Great Tutorial HulluMel! Really necessary stuff considering the tricky saving system in Opentoonz.

Love your tuts, and your animations! :)

-Phil

[exile]

Thanks HulluMe. I wonder if you could explain the problems I'm having with psd files in version 1.1.1 which has the newer feature "save all". OpenToonz loads the psd nicely, with the option of putting each level into a separate column, perfect for cut-out characters. After setting up a mixed skeleton and mesh rig, I could animate as wished. I hit "save all" several times, closed the program and was always able to load everything by choosing the recent scene. After rendering, however, when I closed and re-opened program, the scene was empty except for the meshes, which could be played back in a weird ghost animation without images. The source psd file, which I had put into drawings, was no longer there. Is this a bug, am I doing something wrong? It doesn't happen with other file types, whether imported png bitmaps or vector images made in OT. Thanks for your help. - Steve

[Rodney]

Steve,

There are still some issues with OpenToonz saving that (as near as I can tell) has a little to do with root directories but also with saving of scene files.  This should be resolved soon and as near as I can tell is working as expected in the most recent release of Motion Monster which incorporates a few cutting edge additions that haven't made their way into the official release of OpenToonz yet.

I won't get this quite right... because I can't account for all the variables.. BUT... before using Save All in OpenToonz I almost always save the scene first.  This process would appear to be what is going to happen when Save All is launched but that isn't always the case.  A key to success is to first create a Project... then a Scene... saving the Scene then keeps things in order.  It's that nebulus ares between Project and unsaved Scenes that occasionally results in missing resources.  The resource is usually there but the links don't point to their proper location.  

This issue isn't related to PSD files/format but occurs anytime a link doesn't point to a proper location.

Think of it in a similar what to webpages... where an html hyperlink points to another page (or image) but generates a broken link if the resource at that location has been moved to another location.   The two options we have is to put the resource back into it's proper location (where the link points to) or to edit the link to point to the new location.  

As I said, the most current release of Motion Monster addresses this issue in an interesting way.  Namely, it emphasizes that we should create a Project location first and then use Scenes located inside those Project locations.  

 

One thing that will help as well (even with the new popup that emphasizes Project and Scene) is that immediately after creating a new Scene we should save that Scene.  Saving the Scene ensures that the link between the Scene and Project location is established whereas if we don't save it we run the risk of the link... or the resource at the end of the link... going away.

[exile]

Thanks, Rodney. I thought I'd automatically get notice of any answers, so just saw this now. I'll try saving in the order you suggest. Is Motion Monster a special edition of Open Toonz, or just the name of an update?

[Rodney]

Motion Monster is one of the developers 'special editions' where he tests out features before they get incorporated into the official release of OpenToonz.

Because he can approve his own code the turn around time from concept to finished release can be faster... although....I'm sure it's a lot of work to maintain that second edition.

Turtletooth also is the developer for the portable release of OpenToonz that doesn't even need to be installed on our computers.

That's a handy thing as the program can be ran from just about anywhere including a USB drive.

The portable version does wait for official stable releases so we likely won't see an update of the portable until the next major release of OpenToonz.