Scale Multiples?

I’ve made two series of drawings that make up a head turn from face forward to profile.

The first half of the drawings are full screen. The second half were drawn considerably smaller and off to one side, as they need to be to sit on a particular body.

I’ve combined (head turn images only) the heads into one file. I’d like to scale up the smaller heads so I can use the head turn sequence on a variety of body positions. I’ve tried selecting all the smaller heads in the timeline, then using the scene planning scale tool, but that will only enlarge one head at the time.

Can I do them all at once?

Second question - Is there a way to take the head turn sequence and reverse all the cells at one time to make the head turn in the opposite direction?

Third question! (I promise, I’ll stop soon!

Are 30 drawings too many? I decided it was overkill and tried to delete some of them, but I never could get rid of the empty cells, which leaves a noticeable gap when the sequence is played, so I used the onion skin feature to draw them back in again.

Ha! I guess this makes Q4!

Surely there’s a way to not only delete the content of one cell, but the cell itself. How can I do that?

Thanks,

Paz

Howdy Paz,

Not sure I can answer all your questions but I think I can help with a couple :wink:



Are all the smaller heads on different cells in the same element? Or are they each single cells on different elements? If you put all the cells on the same element, then the sceneplanning select tool should scale all of them together. I just tried on a project with a bunch of drawings on the same element & scaling any frame w/the select tool affected the entire element. If you already have them on the same element then I’m not quite sure…



Assuming again that this is a series of drawings on the same element, then you can do this pretty easily. Let’s say you have “head turn” element which turns from forward to right profile. Create a new drawing element named “head turn 2” or whatever suits you, then highlight & copy all the cells in your original “head turn” element. select the first frame of “head turn 2” and paste. Then select the element itself, not any particular cell, and goto the Element Menu at the top of your screen. Select Element>Transform>Flip horizontal, and you should have a mirror of your first element. In this case it would turn from forwad to left profile. Hope that’s what you’re trying to do, if not let me know.



That’s entirely up to you based on the timing you want for the framerate you’re using etc. at 24 fps it will take 1.25 seconds for 30 frames to go by. Depending on the mood your char is in & the timing you want you might like it or may want it to move faster (less frames) or slower (more frames).



There sure is :slight_smile: If you delete a cell in the timeline, it will leave a blank cell. If you delete a cell in the X sheet it will remove it entirely & not leave a blank. Some people don’t like using the X sheet, so if you prefer sticking with the timeline, you can delete the cell normally, then use keyboard shortcut Shift+E to remove the blank cell.

Hope that helps, ask away if anything was unclear or if I misunderstood your questions.
Cheers



Right now all 30+ of them are different cells in the same element. The large ones make up the first 15 or so, the small ones are at the end. I tried turning on onion skinning to see the size of the last of the large ones, and then tried to select the entire smaller group of 15 or so and then scale them to the size of #15. I thought without the first 15 being selected, the later ones should be resized and the first 15 should not, so what you’re saying is what I expected to work. I’ll try again, and if I can’t get it to work, I’ll go back to the initial group of smaller heads and enlarge them together, guesstimating via grid size.


On everything else, YES, that’s what I meant. I understand what you’re saying and thank you so much.

Paz

The scene operations select tool operates on all cells in a common element not individual cells, so if you have mixed scale drawings in a common element, your best bet it to cut the drawing objects from the off sized cells in your element one cell at a time and paste them on to new cells in a different element. Then you can use the scene ops select tool to scale that element and you will still be able to have both sizes if you need them that way. If you don’t need them to be mixed sizes then use the drawing select tool to rescale the drawings that are out of scale again doing it one at a time.

You also can scale all cells in a common element permanently in a single step using the draw tools reposition all drawings tool but again if you have mixed scales in the same element this won’t help you. Good lesson to be learned is don’t mix scales in the same element.

To reverse an element or peg hierarchy in a scene you set a keyframe using the scene operations transform tool and using either the left or right middle grab handle, drag across the middle of the transform bounding box until the selected element or peg hierarchy is reversed in camera view. You can flip the direction of the element at will this way just by setting a new keyframe when you want to flip it the other direction.

To reverse the element or peg hierarchy for the entire scene you can use the scene operations select tool and drag the middle grab handle across the bounding box or either set the second scale value to -1 in properties for the parent peg or element.

Hope this helps. -JK






Fortunately, I created them in two different sequences and then put them together, saving the originals. I’ve just used the “Reposition All Drawings,” tool and it worked MUCH BETTER at upscaling the drawings than I was able to do frame by frame. I’m not sure yet that they will be at a good size to work with the other set of drawings, but I expect that altering them a few times will make for a (visibly) seamless integration. THANK YOU. JK!

As for the rest of what you’ve said - I expect it will begin to sink in by the 11th or 12th time I’ve read it. I feel really dumb sometimes, but reading and re-reading seems to be the best way for me to learn, and I seem to have trouble learning new software every time I try - but it also seems that the more capable the software is - the longer it takes to sink in, and ToonBoom seems to work differently from most of the other programs I’ve tried. For example, I read and searched and read and read again until I figured out how to ‘Save As’ in this program. It seems I’m spending more time on things like that than actually accomplishing anything, but I know I won’t every get where I want to go if I give up.

Thanks to both of you again, I do promise I’ll try to not ask stoopid questions without having tried everything I can think of on my own before asking.

Paz

Paz,

There are no stupid questions. TBS is great software but has a learning curve that can be fairly steep, particularly if a person doesn’t have some prior traditional animation experience as well as some prior software experience in Flash or some other software. I came to TBS with several years of using Flash plus I had been doing traditional animation for many years prior to that.

We have a good responsive users group and help is readily available here so why not take advantage of it…it’s free. So anytime you don’t understand something just ask. Of course personal trial and error is also a great way to learn, but a combination of the two is more productive.

There is rarely a post made here that doesn’t get one or more responses quickly and the occasional posts that do get “ignored” are usually just off the wall stuff and no one wants to deal with the poster based on many prior unsuccessful attempts to help them. Sad but true unfortunately.

Glad the reposition all drawings worked for you this time. Be sure to re-read the other approaches as well. Learning to flip orientations is extremely useful. And understanding the differences between the scene ops select tool and the scene ops transform tool is really important. I’ll keep trying to have lots of usage example in my Cartooning In Toon Boom blog tutorials and articles to help clarify these and other concepts. So stay at it and just remember that experience in TBS is cumulative and every time you do things you are getting further along the learning curve and gaining more control of the process. -JK