Advanced scanning

I’m new to Toon Boom Studio, and I’m still learning about the scanning capabilities.

So far, when I scan multiple images, they come in on consecutive frames, all on ones.

If I wanted to assign frames and layers to images as I scan them, would I have to do that with a different program like Solo or Opus?

Changing from ones to 2’s or 3’s or whatever is as easy as selecting the range of cells in the exposure sheet and using the set exposure to commands. It is super fast. As to layers you just need to create additional elements before you import and then import to the desired element. Or you can do this after you import your scans just by drag and drop between selected elements. I hope this gives you some ideas. -JK

I’ll look into the “set exposure to” command. That should help with certain shots.

What I’m talking about, though, is setting holds and various exposures at the scanning phase.

For instance, lets say I have 10 pics on 3’s, so I tell the scanning/exposure sheet interface to scan each one on 3x. Then I have a hold for 45, so I tell the scanner that. It scans and jumps ahead 45 frames, ready to scan the next picture. All without closing out of the scanner.

I had this sort of interface with the old AXA program. I’ve become used to not having it with Flash – I couldn’t even scan into Flash. I just hoped I’d be able to do something like it with Toon Boom.

I can appreciate your position, but it is counter to the direction that most computer aided animation software is moving. Originally animation software was oriented toward “ink and paint”. It just provided a part of the animation production process to facilitate coloring. Most modern animation packages are total production environments and moving farther away from the scan, ink and paint approach. TBS and Solo are both supportive of traditional approaches and at the same time progressive. There are frame capture software applications that you can get that are x-sheet oriented and can be used to manage the sort of process you desire. Many of us use them to do pencil tests. You can probable construct a “pipeline” where you scan in your drawings using one of these frame capture packages which will create the "hold"s per your instructions and then just import the files produced by that process into TBS including the “hold” scans. This is not as efficient as just scanning in your drawings and then using the organizational features built in to TBS but it can be effective coupled with TBS’s “power painting” feature to color common zones across multiple cells in an element. -JK