Storyboard Pro - Feature Requests

Since the Storyboard Pro side of our forums does not currently have a forum of its own to gather feature requests, I thought I’d pin a thread here so that everyone can submit their ideas and comment on the ideas of everyone else.

Please be as detailed as possible when submitting a feature request to this thread and include information such as:

  • The feature being requested
  • Why this feature is being requested
  • Who this feature is designed to help
  • How important you feel this feature is

By giving me as much information as you can, it makes it easier for me to escalate it to our team internally.

Thank you for the suggestion Seren!

Please make the snapping functionality with markers and the timeline playhead actually useful.

It would be incredibly useful to have the playhead stay put and be able to grab clips, move, trim and snap them them to the static playhead without it jumping around.
I don’t think the playhead should move at all, when the cursor is in the clip area. The playhead should only move in the upper ruler portion of the timeline. With both dragging and clicking to jump to a given area, but NOT when clicking in the clip area.
If anyone like the jumping playhead for some obscure reason, this behavior could be enabled with checkbox in preferences.

As to the markers, why would you want the playhead to snap to the markers. I would have thought it more important to be able to snap clips to the markers.

Hi Partoon,

This request seems perfectly clear to me! Added to my suggestion list and thank you for all of the detail you’ve added in on why this feature would be useful for you.

Ow man this happened to me so many times…There should be a floating license for single users.
So you could access the license in the cloud, select which computer it could connect to and that’s that…
Would be a great asset.

I have another request. This would make storyboard pro kick ass powerful.
It would be great if you could add panels on top of each other. Let’s say you have a scene and it’s a rainy day. You could make a loop of the rain and put it on top of your storyboard. The movie layer is great for reference but it’s a massive turnaround to do something as simple as that. It would also be a lot easier to use one background for a whole scene. The share drawing feature is great though but it would be even easier if you could just create another storyboard layer and put a panel in there with a background. Just like in after effects.
Please let me know if this request is not clear.
Patrick

1 Like

Thanks for creating a dedicated thread for feature requests.

I guess I’ll repost my suggestion from a previous thread:

What:
The addition of Save/Load, Export/Import Layer Structure. As well as a ‘Convert - Scene/Seq/Panel Layer Structure’ command would be really useful.

Why:
Project Layer structure is currently limited to one, saved hierarchy using the ‘Set Layer Layout as Default’ menu command.
The addition of the new commands will help those who work simultaneously on widely varying project formats.
For example - Working on a project with heavy use of 3D assets and multiple character/asset layers vs say, a flat-on pre-school show with only one clean-up layer.

Who:
I generally use the extra useful ‘Global Layer Navigation’ option in preferances.
I have every panel in my project use the same layer structure: Direction, Overlay, Clean, Clean_Matte, Rough, Thumbs, BG etc.
This way I don’t end up accidentally drawing on the wrong layers.
I also have my tools set up to select and draw on those named layers.
It massively speeds workflow!

Notes:
It would be useful to have each project ‘remember’ the layer structure it has been assigned by default. This would solve the issue of switching between projects and accidentally adding panels with layer structure left over from the previous project.

I would also suggest changing the terminology used in the ‘Set Layer Layout as Default’ command to ‘Set Layer Structure as Default’ thus avoiding confusions with the more common use of ‘Layout’.

Importance:
While I would consider this a big boost for me, it’s difficult to know how many users have asimilar workflow.

Thanks for the highly detailed answer! I’ll make sure to bring this up with our team.

Hi there,

I will also do a repost with some additions.

Some stuff that would be great if integrated in the new Storyboard pro update:

  • Edit movieclips! Or at least onion skin a movie layer so you can trace footage from a movie clip?
  • When you work on different projects it’s annoying that TB SPpro always remembers the last directory you exported your movie to instead of saving your your export destinations per project? For example when I work on project BEAST I like to export my project to the beast folder but when I work on project ANIMAL later on, I get folder BEAST as my export folder instead of folder Animal.
  • The perspective tool is great but when the drawing is a bit more complicated it takes hours for SB PRO to calculate and most of the time it even crashes. Also, a distort function would be really handy to get more control.
  • It would be great if there was a function to make a colored drawing turn black and white. I know you can import a drawing and turn it black and white with the import settings but sometimes you need to convert a drawing on a layer to black and white as well.
  • There is an error in SB PRO that has been around for the last few versions. Sometimes when you split a panel you get a blank frame and you need to restart. Would be great if it got sorted out
  • There is a very annoying bug when exporting bitmaps. SBPRO will add random zeros in the filenames. Things will go fine with the first few exports and then all of a sudden it’ll go south. Even though you specified to have 3 characters it will add a lot of zeros to your filenames. It’s extremely annoying.
  • Of course we’d all love to have a tiny photosh inside storyboard pro so if blending modes would be integrated I would even dump my PS!
  • Motion blur is a great addition but instead of typing in x and y axis parameters it would be even better to get a tiny preview of what your drawing will look like?
  • When exporting a quicktime with EDL, the export will crash on WINDOWS

Thanks for the suggestions Partoon!

No worries! Thanks for listening.
One other thing!
I was wondering if you guys could think of a REPAINT button like in Animate or a transparency lock tool like in photoshop so you can lock a shape so you can’t draw outside of it?
Maybe this can be introduced along side a MASK tool. How handy would that be :slight_smile:
I really hope a lot of this stuff can be integrated into the new SBPRO.

Thank you

I may be listing some feature request that other posts have mentioned, but there are some no-brainer features that storyboard pro needs badly.

I work in feature and most of my colleagues prefer Photoshop to SBP because of it’s drawing tools and layer tools. I prefer SBP because of it’s efficiencies (vector lines, panel shuffling, etc…) but wish it could do a few of the basic things that Photoshop can. These suggestion could be real game changers…

  1. It should be able to do simple adjustments to bitmap layers (hue, saturation, brightness, etc…) I often import photos to use as backgrounds in my boards, but have to first bring them into photoshop to turn them into grey scale and/or lighten them. These are simple features offered in every drawing app ever made. not sure why SBP doesn’t have them yet?

  2. The blur features are REALLY klunky. having to manually, enter coordinates and not having a preview image… makes it really tedious and frustrating. I never know what I’m getting until I render it. Again, take your cues from photoshop or Procreate. Plus, having to first convert to a bitmap layer adds unnecessary steps (efficiency is everything in boarding). I’d Iike to be able to directly select any layer to blur and have it prompt me to convert it to BMP, with a checkbox that can skip the question the next time. make sense?

  3. Some basic layer styles (ala photoshop and Procreate) … multiply, burn, dodge, etc… SBP should be able to preserve layer styles when importing/exporting to/from PS. I’m often asked to revise another artists psd files, but then have to change software to do so.

  4. A burn/dodge tool for bitmap layers.

  5. When I lower the opacity on a drawing layer, then merge it with another layer, the opacity setting is lost. It should preserve the chosen opacity. This should be fixed.

That’s it, that’s all. I hope someone at toon boom can hear my prayer.
Nick

Hi!
This is a small request, can you add ability to add shortcut to directional and radial blur?
Also adding shortcut to convert to vector layer is buggy right now and doesn’t work if the current bitmap layer is empty.
Thx!

And one more: why is the interface so slow on Mac? For example it takes at least a second after right click for the menu to show up. It just seems like everything involving interface update is slow and sluggish.

the feature: Can the brush size and eraser size be seperate things and not the same. Everytime the eraser size is changed it effects the brush size.

why: I really just want to be able to draw with a small brush and use a big eraser without changing the size everytime i switch between the two.

who: This is designed for anyone who uses two different sizes for brushes and erasers to speed up work flow

importance: really important because other drawing programs do it and its really efficent and as a storyboarder efficiency is key however the program is designed in a way that it slows your drawing

Thank you for the suggestion Emily!

I’d like to chime in with a request to add a way to remotely return your license so you can use it on another computer.

I use Storyboard Pro in my home office mainly in the evenings. But sometimes I use it on my laptop in the office in my day gig and if I forget to return the license at home before I leave Im completely screwed. I have to drive all the way home, return the license with the license utility then drive back to work so i can log in and use toon boom. It’s really ridiculous and a much needed feature. I’m not using them at the same time, but i cant travel with my home desktop computer. And I cant use my laptop exclusively because its not hooked up to my Cintiq at home. And I also cant travel with my cintiq.

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Ooh I’ll second these, they’d be really cool additions! Especially the distort function. I use that alot in Photoshop. And also Emily’s suggestion about having separate brush sizes for drawing and erasing would be sooooo helpful. I tend to draw with thin line but I like erasing with big broad strokes, definitely slows me down having to go back and forth.

Hi guys,

It just happened to me today (again) and I was so annoyed when I realized I had forgotten to return it just as I was about half way home.

As a freelancer living outside the big city I must admit this is killing me right now. I’m stuck having to go back to my client’s studio just for that. (or asking someone to do it for me from there? Uh, bad option!)

To constantly have to remember “returning” my twelve foot long license number from my home studio, or a client’s station, or a portable workstation because I’m on the go is just ridiculous.

Solution: Using the same login name and password from the Toon Boom account billed for the software should be enough. Just make sure only one ip can use it at once.

I’m no programmer or IT specialist but I’m pretty sure we could simplify this.

Anyway, it’s gotta be easy, practical, and efficient, which it isn’t entirely right now.

Thank you.
MG

Interesting read. I do agree with that last post about the timeline cursor that shouldn’t be jumping around when managing panels. I didn’t think of that, but that would be so much more comfy to work with large amounts of panels.

I came to point at some things relating to the timeline too.

First, I wish selected panels would be highlighted in a more contrasting way. The color change is too subtle, especially when color labelling are added to the panels, and it’s a real pain in the donkey to deal with when trying to select, say, 75 panels out of 600. This has been going on for years. I would suggest the panel preview to be stroked out with a bold pure red like the timeline cursor but thicker. If the view is set so large that there isn’t any preview, then the panel itself would be pure bold red.

Second, it would be useful to add a second line of coordinates on the timeline. The timecodes are fine, but change considerably when zooming in and out, leaving the user without stable, reliable coordinates. Having another line of coordinates with the panel count would be nice too, and that wouldn’t have to change as much when zooming. Imagine having a number every 100 panels, then a red dot every 10, for instance.

Finally, I would suggest adding an SBP-specific volume level controller, so you can set it to your liking, without modifying the volume for the whole computer.

That’s it for now. Thanks Toonboom.