IDEA 1: View Gaps
Would be great to be able to see gaps when u are coloring to take the guess work out of closing hard to see open areas. Maybe a view gaps mode, similar to view strokes but different. In Edit/View Gaps You can make it so all open gaps are displayed as red. Would help coloring be a lot less stressful when we know where the open gaps are when trying to fill areas with paint.
IDEA 2: Paint Inside
Would be great to have a paint inside feature in the paintbrush similar to flash that only paints inside the colored area you stroked in. Like a modified repaint brush. Good for doing shadows
(EDIT) The repaint feature in the brush is different. It paints everything inside of the character’s alpha. The flash paint inside brush, only paints inside a colored region you stroke in. So if I start trying to shade the face of a character, the brush wont effect the shirt for example. The repaint brush at its current state cant do this. I hope that clears it up a little.
Agree with idea 1. It drives me nuts sometimes trying to fill something with the bucket and nothing happens.
As for idea 2 the Repaint Brush tool will do exactly that
can’t you just paint with the close gaps button enabled?
If you can’t see the gap then you don’t need to bother closing it if the paint tool will do it for you.
one issue that i have with the paint tool is that it won’t fill in slivers if the close gap button is enabled.
for example, if i’m working with a cresent moon that has no gaps, then the paint tool will fill in the whole area. if there’s a gap and i enable the close gap, then it’ll only fill in part of the crescent.
is there a way to work around that other than closing the gap by hand?
i find that too sometimes, but zooming right in to the area seems to fix the issue for me.
Raider well there are times when close large gaps option in paintbucket, or zooming in just isnt enough. Thats why they give you the close gaps tool. I have been stumped at times when i literally zoom in to 3000% and still dont see a gap, but the area wont fill with color EVEN WHEN I USE THE CLOSE GAP TOOL! lol, it’s like a game, “find that gap”. They are difficult to spot sometimes and often slow me down when I have 20 more drawings to color.
View Gaps mode would make it a lot easier to find those gaps, so we can color our work without the frustration.
I sometimes resort to using the contour editor to find lines may not be intersecting completely with others. Then I pull the point until it does. Probably not the best solution but it gets me by. I agree fully that this can and should be mproved
You will be able to see the gaps in your artwork if you enable Show Strokes from the View > Show menu. Its shortcut is set to K by default. Turn on show strokes and you should be able to see the gaps quite easily. If a pencil line is closed, the intersection has a blue dot. If it’s open (unconnected ot anything) it has a yellow dot. For the brush strokes, the outline of the brush is a blue line, and you can look to see whether the blue line intersects another blue line.
~Lilly
Toon Boom Support
Thanks Lilly, you always give great feedback! I was wondering what those dots meant. Actually it would seem nearly all my lines are disconnected and showing yellow points even when they appear to be closed. The dots can get alittle hard to see though especially when they are close together but they are better than nothing! (And my drawings are cleaned up pencil lines too so im alittle confused why the paint bucket doesnt always fill with color when it seems to be closed and in paint large gaps mode.)
But now that I know about this method I am happy to know this, but I wish they were a bit more artistically friendlier + easier to spot without having to zoom in ways to see the open gaps. Maybe an alternative way, by View/Show Gaps … and showing them as red lines without all the dots all over the place, just red lines for the gaps.
;DHere take this as an example, If you go to Drawing/CleanUp/CloseGaps and move the slider all the way to the right , you see how it shows all the open gaps as ? It would be great to have something similar to this in View/Show Gaps. It gives u a nice indication if u have a gap, where as with show strokes u sorta have to scan the little dots and zoom in closer to really get a good look, and its not as productive in my opinion. But the show strokes method does help a bit, and I’m very grateful for the help ;D
But yeah when your moving fast and dont want to stop to search the dots, I think View Gaps mode utilizing red lines like in Drawing/Cleanup/Close Gaps it would give u a quicker/instant feedback so you can keep moving fast and painting your work having a clear indication where the gaps are. But it’s not something im pushing and no one else may feel this way now, its just something to think about I suppose.
I will definitely give your feedback to our R&D team.
One thing that might help you in your drawing process is when you’re working with the line tool, keep the “Snap to contour” option enabled. With this on, when you draw one line it will connect it to the closest line and prevent you from getting a gap there. Also, when you’re drawing with the pencil tool, enable the auto-close gap on that tool.
Hopefully with both these settings on it might help to create less gaps in the first place.
~Lilly
Toon Boom Support
yeah im glad they made the auto close gaps tool now. Wish they had in Animate 1, cuz I already inked all my lines to color lol Anyway for future projects im sure it will be great, and thanks for the feedback as usual. Just considering the ideas I have and telling them at R & D is good enough for me : D