I just got the studio… and I’m sure it’s fantastic… but doesn’t it come with a user manual for the 300 price? And wow… I haven’t gotten insync with it yet… so I’m feeling very lost…
Can someone tell me how to find out how to get a circle to say follow along a peg path? How to set up a back ground?
Please don’t hurt yourself banging your head on a table or whatever. -LOL- We are here to help you.
Here is the manual in PDF form just download it.
Here are free tutorials that will get you started just download them.
Also I’ll give you a great tip, use the [f1] help inside the TBS software itself. It is a full of information. Use the search feature to find specific stuff quickly. For example type in keyframe in search and WOW look at all the specific info right there. Or type in pegs or clones, WOW that search is great.
Also, just ask questions here at the forums, you don’t need to pick a catagory, just put it here in the general section, you will get lots of responses in a matter of hours. We try our best as a community to be very supportive. -JK
First open your exposure sheet and create a drawing element. Right click on the top of the column and rename the element “ball”. Click on the first cell in the “ball” element and draw a ball or just a circle as you choose. This cell will automatically be named ball-1.
OK, now go down about 30 or 40 frames in the “ball” column and right click on a cell and extend the exposure. That tells TBS to hold your ball-1 cell on the screen for however many frames you selected.
Now you can close the exposure sheet and look at the time line panel. Your “ball” element is there too. And its showing a track of 30 - 40 frames because you extended that exposure. (you can also extend a cells exposure in the time line too.)
Now you need to select the “ball” element in the time line at your left where you see its name displayed. With it selected you can go up to the top of the time line panel and click on the last icon which is the add parent peg icon. This will create a peg and attach your ball element to it. (there are other ways to attach an element to a peg but this is really an easy way.)
Now in the drawing window click the second icon on your upper right the one that looks like an old time movie camera. This puts that panel into camera view for scene planning.
If it isn’t already visible you need to open the sceneplanning tool bar. Those tools are very special as they are used to manipulate objects in the scene planning window and set the appropriate keyframes. We are going to do a motion using a peg as our guide. So first, go to the timeline to the peg you added called “ball-p” and click on the triangle shape near the peg’s track label. This is called collapsing the peg. There are many significant things that this does beside make the time line look neat. But for now just collapse the peg and we can talk about them later.
Now go to the last tool on the scene planning tool bar that’s the motion tool. When you click on it you will see a square with two triangles in the center of the camera view that’s your motion peg. With the timeline red frame slider on frame one, take your mouse and select the triangle on your motion peg that is pointing from your left to your right. You know you have the frame one triangle if the red peg circle stays with it when you drag it off to one side of the screen, other wise that’s frame 40’s end of the peg. Now look at the line between the two ends of the motion peg. It should have lots of ladder rung marks along its length. If not you need to select frame one of the pegs track in the time line and use Element>pegs>set non-constant segment. This turns on motion tweening between the two end keyframes of your ball-p peg. Those ladder rungs represent frames on your time line. If you use the A and the S keys you can watch the ball as it moves along the path. This is called scrubbing the time line. OK move back to frame 1. You hopefully are excited as your ball moved along the path. You can select each end and stretch them apart to make the distance covered greater. OK now go to the ball-p peg track and select frame 20. Right click and add a keyframe. Now go to the camera view window and drag that keyframe toward the top of the window an inch or two. You now have a nice arc in your path. Scrub the time line with A and S to see the difference in motion. You have the basics now. You can use the top and side camera panels two move the motion keyframe in 3D and get all sorts of paths. Add more keyframes at other frames on the ball-p peg and you can really have some fun with that ball. You’re on your way.
One last point of interest. As you reshape the peg’s curve notice that you can cause the spacing between the ladder rungs to change. That’s right, the closer they get the slower the motion and the farther apart they get the faster the motion. Try different combinations of peg spacing and you will begin to understand velocity as it pertains to pegs. -JK
I forgot to answer this one yesterday, sorry. Here are some simple tips on backgrounds.
You can change the order of elements to determine how they are layered for playback and rendering.
In the Exposure Sheet, elements to the left are layered on top of elements to the right.
In the Timeline, top layers are layered on top of the lower layers.
Also, TBS has a special TYPE designation that you can use for elements. You will find it on the properties panel on the drawing tab. Your options are normal, foreground and background.
Normal: follows the layout (composition) order of the Timeline or the front/back position in the Offset field.
Foreground: forces the element to appear in front, despite changes to the layering order or dynamic changes to elements in the Sceneplanning Views.
If you have more than one element set as Foreground, the composition of these elements will be based on their layering order in the Timeline.
Background: forces the element to appear in the back, despite changes to the layering order or dynamic changes to elements in Sceneplanning Views.
If you have more than one element set as Background, the composition of these elements will be based on their layering order in the Timeline.
In general the layering order in the Timeline is based on a top to bottom of the list approach where the top of the list is closer and the bottom of the list is farther away. -JK
You are my hero! Thank you so much. I have so read through the manual now, and I did get a little ball to move along a peg line, which I was able to deform… I still don’t understand exactly what all the deformations do… or just how I caused them.
But this morning I learned that while only one element plays on Drawing view… on camera view both elements show! That’s soooo cool! I might even be able to actually get this software! Thank you very much.
Will it be okay if I ask you other questions as I go along?
Nix
Absolutely, I’m just one of many vollenteers here at these forums and we also have two of the nicest guys from Toon Boom Technologies (Ugo and Mathieu) that are always great at responding to posts.
Yes, that is a fun discovery. It often takes awhile for new users to grasp the difference between the views. I like to explain them this way:
Think of drawing view as your drawing board where you draw your characters and props and such. It has a light underneath a glass surface so you can see though levels of drawings (onionskinning and autolight table features).
Then sceneplanning (camera view, top view and side view) are for staging and compositing your productions. You can place your characters and props and let them interact in sceneplanning in 3D space.
Thanks for the kind words and welcome. -JK