20110124

Lost Doodle Tool

...v20121016_0136_b for Anime Studio Pro 9.x


2nd "Lost AS Tool"! Although the "Lost Doodle Tool" project began like a little series of "only for fun/curiosity" and personal experiments, as it has been getting bigger, I have been tempted with the possibility of include it into the family... Firstly conceived as "Lost Bitmap Tool", it was re-baptized to it's actual name to avoid confusion, but really (even with the inherent limitations) it brigs the possibility of taste the very simple bitmap drawing feeling inside, and only inside, Anime Studio Pro. I must confess that I'm a little embarrassed to have invested so much time on this probably more curious than useful thing leaving other more important issues aside, but OTOH, I think I have learned a lot of cool things on the way...

Well, if you think it could worth... please, keep reading (there's a video!) and of course (if possible) start getting your Graphic Tablet ready :)


OVERVIEW!




Some more introductory words... Although I have never shown as a great AS's "Frame by Frame" or complex "Bitmap Painting Capabilities" feature request fanboy, I always have wanted & missed a very basic/carelessly and focused way to facilitate planning and project sketching/animatic directly inside Anime Studio Pro, you know,  from the beginning of the idea to try to translate most of the inspirational part of the work into one of my favorites apps. And well , this is basically the seeds that led to this imperfect, but full of good intentions tool, hmmm... I hope you understand what I mean :P, now the main features:

Quality Settings & "Basemap" Menu

It indicates the level of quality (relative to project size) of the actual base bitmap resource (the only one necessary external resource) and, therefore, the pixel size of your pixelated drawings. Please, take in mind that the default level of quality is a very hard compromise between performance and "acceptable" results, so don't expect high levels of quality...

Doodling/Pencils Options

My favorite part :) ...From here, among other things, you'll be able to choose between different predefined Pencil Tips and (more coming) line effects. Again, I must insist about the limitations and ask for a reasonable use of the tool, taking into account that the use of more "complex" tips, often involves much more memory and CPU usage... so I will not tire of repeating the advice of use the single one (01) Pencil Tip for most of the cases, at least until you be a little more familiarized with the tool. Oh, and since we are at it... one more advice, the upper right buttons let you really clear ALL the dots and traces in the layer, that really liberates memory and is often much more convenient that a massive "Erase Mode" usage, which basically hides the existing dots but doesn't delete then at all.

Editing Helpers

Here you'll find some new ways to increase productivity on planning, animatic or storyborading tasks, the main targets for this tool. Direct from the "Lost Layer Tool", the Visibility and Switch controls let you to manage layer timing in a more effective and intuitive way and, the most important, while you are in Sequence timeline mode, so you have visual feedback of changes (when you drag a key with the "KeyDragger", i.e.) and a more global idea of your timing and composition. The well known audio controls has been added too, plus the "Audio Meter", that provides visual level & panning for audio quality assistance. Oh! And lastly... you can add  a renderable little Timecode to your project simply pressing that last button.

Tool Info...

You can have an approximated idea of how much your project file is increased in size at every trace, not the best indication way I must say, but the only one provided by the AS's Scripting Interface at the moment... Of course, it's NOT something you have to be totally obsessed, but I thought this "reminder" could be like a good idea to make people aware about the correct usage of the tool.


...Some Sample Files (Pending)

Well that was the main features, and I hope you find some of them useful, if not... I hope it serve, at least, to make you taste the flavor of how much promising and enjoyable such a feature could be.

And as a last words... Of course, and as usual, there would be still too much work to do to make it really functional or practice, but it seems that I well could be tweaking and adding new stuff indefinitely (or until a similar feature be officially implemented), and I really felt that liberate the tool at this state could help me to get my bearings, or... or I hope so 


SUMMARY...

Known (on Windows 7 at least) Issues:
  • First point! Please, take always in mind that every not totally necessary lines you trace, will increase your project size more than you'll (surely) expect for an ugly, black & so aliased line.
  • Initial stroke from new automatically created image layers based on current translated layer is offseted! (Ramon0's #20110111 BUG)
  • Strokes may appear "broken" used under certain image sizes. (Ramon0's #20101201 BUG)
  • The "Audio Meter" level display should be able (of course...) to deal with several selected audio layers.
  • Depending of scaling factor, rendered images may look too much antialiased to any taste. (AS's lack)
  • Lots of  things to polish up, but well, this is beta...
  • Pressing a button into a pop-up dialogue still seems to make (sometimes) an "onMouseDown" call. (AS's bug?)
  • Open a link "method" be means of AS should be revised and probably redefined (still waiting for feedbacks).
  • As always, lot of dense and redundant code here and there...
Upcoming? Features:
  • Some very basic filling functions that I have in mind and could work (in theory).
  • Some or all the grayed line option buttons that you already can see in the "Pencil Options Window".
  • More unattended ways to get the job (focused on Animatics & Storyboarding) done, I mean, layers management, creation, naming, etc... (I'd love suggestions here).
  • And... any other "Feature Request" that I like :)



NOTE: Download links might not be available from time to time during the beta stage. And since we are at it, well... this sounds like a cliché, but this is still a Beta version of the tool, so install and use it at your own risk. Of course, any feedback will be veeery welcomed :)


LINKS


6 comments:

  1. Ramon you're a champ, your lost layer tool is indispensable and this looks to be great for boarding ...awesome.

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  2. i am late, i just downlaod yr layer tool and it is powerful, and this Doodle Tool is awesome! hope u to reopen the download linkfor us...

    thanks...

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  3. This is great for quickly sketching out poses and I think I could do my boarding / animatics in this too. Great work!

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  4. The install instructions need to be updated for v9.x as i tried both the included instructions as well as my own attempts to install, trying to get it to work to no avail. I'm on XP Pro (32bit) and have v9.2 of ASP.

    Thanks for your efforts though!

    Tim

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  5. Yes, I'm late to the party as well. This tool looks like something i've craved for a long time. I would love to know if it can be updated to be used in 9.5. Thanks

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  6. Ramón, ¿has probado a hacerlo funcionar en la versión 10? No consigo ejecutarlo y es una lástima, parece una magnífica obra (además de ser justo lo que ando buscando)...

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