hello-
i’d love, love, love some Toon Boom keyboard shortcuts to allow advancing through “marked” keyframes, breakdowns, or otherwise selected drawings!
i come from a traditional paper animation background and then used TV Paint software for many years.
in both instances animators can flip thru marked/selected drawings with their non-drawing hand (by rolling the chosen drawings or via keyboard shortcuts, respectively), while their drawing hand can continue drawing on any of the drawings paused on, all the while skipping through the broader sequence to maintain more context.
presently in Toon Boom, it seems that the only flipping options are to:
A) use the present keyboard shortcuts to shuttle through every frame ("." and “,”), or every drawing (“G” and “F”), or every motion keyframe (";" and “’”), or:
B) to use the 'easy flipping too’l bar which requires the animator to stop drawing because the cursor is required to use the ‘easy flipping’ toolbar, then stop flipping to go back to working on one drawing at a time, is that correct?
“marked” drawing keyboard shortcuts possible? other methods?
also- can anyone explain this-
if drawings are in cells that are not touching on the timeline (e.g. 1 drawing/cell on frame 1, the next drawing/cell on frame 10) the F and G shortcuts don’t directly go to the next drawing (from 1, then to 10). instead they advance to the next empty frame, then need to be pressed again to go to the next drawing!
Good afternoon Charlie,
Thank you very much for your feedback and suggestion.
I passed it on to our Product Manager and RND team.
For the flipping through the drawings stopping on the empty frame, it is because when you animate, you will flip through your drawings with F and G and then press the G key to create your next drawing.
Thank you again for your feedback,
Marie-Eve
Hi Marie-Eve-
thanks for the quick response!
so the G key: i see; it’s doing 2 functions in succession.
the workflow i’m testing now is just to deselect prefs>exposure sheet>drawing creation: “extend exp of prev drawing”, so the drawings are held multiple exposures and butted together so F,G can shuttle thru them. then when i’m ready to insert a new breakdown i use the ’create empty drawing’ button. if i really need to only flip keys, breakdowns, or inbetweens i use the flipping tool bars in the drawing mode. but’d be awesome to keyboard thru marked drawings; thanks for passing it along!
Hi Charlie,
Thank you for the details of your workflow. It can be indeed a good option to skip the blank frame when working in pose to pose style.
It would have to be tested as it could also have other disadvantages, but have the two options would be good.
I also passed along the Flipping through marked drawings as shortcuts.
Marie-Eve
my apologies- it would appear i simply missed the existing toon boom methodology: mark the drawings (with the ‘mark drawings’ toolbar), use the ‘flip’ toolbar to choose whether to see keys, breakdowns, etc., then the F,G keys shuttle to the chosen frames. viola!
c
I’m a traditional guy and want to Flip and Roll my drawings as I draw too. The onion skin, like a light table, is only good for line between line inbetweens, not animation. I’m right handed, is there a way to set up two keys so that I can toggle back and forth as I draw?
