Synfig Project Forum

Hi,

working on a mouth I've had an idea that could be usefull for designing an hidden object...
The ghosting function.

e.g.:
I need to change the thoots in a mouth and I need to see the lips and at same time work on thoots.

For do that I need to change the amount of lips eg to 0.3 and change the z order up down 'cause I need to view one up other alternatively.

There's a function that do this and that I don't know or ...

What you think about?

See the image for a best comprehension.

bye

Yes, sometimes it is needed to work with stuff that is currently behind other stuff that you don't want to disable or hide. One alternative to that (decrease the amount of the layers) is to clone one of them to see it separatedly:
Say you can put all the teeth stuff inside a Paste Canvas, export the canvas parameter and you can create another working copy of the teeth with an offset from the mouth. You can delete the clone once the job is finished. Drawback: we don't know how to unexport a canvas
-G

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mmm, I'm lost.

what you propose, if I correctly understood what you explained, is a faster method to manage a number of objects free from costrains of the around scene... that's right?
If so, I normally copy the Inline Canvas with it's objects and paste them in a new working file...

But, what I mean is like a partial transparency of lips up tooths and the possibility to work with the Inline Canvas of tooths that are visually "under" the lips but fully manageable.

I imagine like a semi-transparent ghost image of the lips up the tooths that has no effects on the objects under, it's only like a slide on my glasses...

PS.: I can't put no objects under a Paste Canvas , I don't know how it works... maybe...
Tooths remain at the same level of the PC

E-

I think what would be far more helpful in this case would be able to display layers as outlines, the way you can in Flash.

In Flash, you can either show a layer on the canvas normally, hide the layer, or show it as an outline - in which case it is just shown as a hairline (always 1px regardless of magnification). This helps you to line up things like arms which are underneath a body.

In Flash you can also specify a colour for each outline shown in outline mode. This helps to stop you becoming confused!

Outline mode has the additional benefit of speeding rendering time when you are working on a crowded canvas.

Outlines are never exported to renders or previews. They are just there to help work on the canvas. You can still manipulate ducks on a layer displayed as an outline.

However, unlike in Flash, it would be great to be able to set the outline colour of multiple layers at once.

Having an outline mode would allow Synfig Studio to mirror the traditional animators' work-flow, concentrating on the drawing and movement before moving to "trace and paint".

I realise this would take a lot of work to implement, so I'm not expecting to see it any time soon, but I thought I'd explain what I would like if I could have anything!

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just brainstorming a bit on this:

it could be done with a "solo" mode as used in multitrack sound software:

In the layers, select some layers to "solo" (need an extra check-box per layer in the layer browser)

Soloed layers work as normal, but all other layers then become less opaque (global setting for how much) and NOT selectable.

The "solo" mode or "ghosting" mode doesn't sound very helpful to me - I think cases where transparency does help are already covered by the onion skin feature.

If you are animating a black bear with black arms and black legs loads of transparent black doesn't help you animate much. Outlines - of definable colours - would be far more useful to me. I would also expect outline layers to be selectable as normal.

When animating, the outlines are what are important - that's why they are got right first in traditional animation before the animators move to "trace and paint". You just want to see where the joints are, how the limbs are arcing and so on.

If you watch an ex-Disney/Bluth person like Dermot O'Connor work in Flash you'll see why outlines are so helpful.

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Thanx to all,

Very interesting the link, I must study it...

I need to learn about onion skin...
...but now I'm working on a static image with no frames and I need to ghos a/many layers not frames
(os works with frames only, that's true?).
Can I do it with onion skins? And how?

E-

Onion skin only work if there are two or more keyframes and the content in each keyframe has some difference.
-G

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Developers, packagers, bug testers, translators, artists, web developers, wiki writers... you can contribute!