Now, I’m aware some of these may already be on the Pencil2D bucket list or have been mentioned by other users, and that the program is being developed voluntarily, rather than a streamlined process. Also, some of these may already be features, but I’m just not aware of them, so, sorry for any annoyance my messy and possibly ignorant list may cause. This might be a bit of a long post, too.
Firstly, I would just like to say I’ve animated in a WIDE variety of programs (from animating in single layer programs and using something to edit it together all the way to Adobe Animate), so I have quite a few opinions on certain features they have.
Also, I’ve used Pencil2D in the past (Don’t remember the version, but it was late 2015. It’s improved a lot :0), and have only recently started using it again because my Adobe CC subscription ran out and I’m unsure if I want to continue it.
Anyway, onto the list!
Sound scrubbing
It seems this one is already in development or planned to be, but I’m gonna add it anyway. Sound scrubbing is a super useful feature. I’ve been spending tons of time trying to sync lip-sync in my recent animations…
More conveniently located onionskin options.
Sometimes I only want one frame forward and backward showing, sometimes I need more. It’s a real pain to have to go all the way to preferences to change it.
The ability to change vector line art color
This suggestion is related to a certain problem I had concerning drawing vector lines over my sketch. Two possible solutions are layer opacity and this. It would be nice if I could draw the vector line art in red and replace it with black later.
Previewing your animation (through the camera layer)
Every time I’ve been wanting to preview my animation with the camera layer movements I have been exporting videos. You can see through the eyes of the camera if you click on the layer, but for me, it’s awkwardly zoomed-in/unproportioned (which also makes MAKING the camera movements difficult). Though, for previewing an animation, I’m pretty sure the program would just be creating a quick video file anyway…
“Combining the sound and images”
What I mean by this is that the animation and audio are very separate. Sometimes the animation lags, but the audio keeps on smooth-sailing and everything is unsynced.
That’s actually all I have right now, tbh. Thanks for reading! I might make a post in the “bugs/glitches” section of the forum later. However, I’m going to figure out the more specific errors and conditions of which they occur, first.
@SketchLikeSilver, as you may know, all of this is on our (long) list of suggestions.
Sound scrubbing is on its way.
It has been discussed to gather the onion skin settings. I don’t know when it will be implemented.
Vector layer is broken, and we want to fix it, but it could be a while.
Preview and camera movement is in my opinion very important, but also this is in a waiting position.
Sync between audio and video is a problem in some cases. For myself it is mostly a Windows issue. It is on our radar.
Thanks for taking time to write these suggestions. We’re always interested in hearing from our users. If only we could overcome more, but reality is different.
@SketchLikeSilver David has pretty much summed up each reply but I just want to touch a bit further on points 3 and 4
You’ve always been able to do this, just change the color swatch on the palette when having the vector layer selected. It will replace all the applications of that swatch color on the canvas.
You can also select the stroke and use the fill tool to change the color to other swatch color along it’s stroke width… But indeed the problem is that the fill tool for Vector Layers is broken, so filling a shape also changes the lineart color and viceversa, which is not ideal and also there’s a bug where the swatch color thumbnail is not automatically updated (both of these are already known and reported)
This is more of a workaround that let’s you see how the camera moves meanwhile this proposal is considered but it’s not a definite solution, so take it with a pinch of salt.
In Pencil2D You can create multiple cameras, however currently only one camera can be “active” and you always need at least one for render. However If you animate the Camera1 normally, you can use a second Camera and zoom that camera away, this will allow you to see Camera1 and your animation layer from afar, and once you want to export you just have to select camera 1 in the options dialog and the video will render just fine.
In this sense if this behavior is pursued further Cameras could get to even work like “pegs” in Toonboom Harmony, so I’ve drafted a request proposal so individual cameras can effect individual or multiple layers as well to create complex motion. We’ll see what happens eventually.
@JoseMoreno@davidlamhauge
Thank you so much for responding and for the advice, workarounds, and info on the development of these features! I also later realized the more specific reason why the “camera was oddly zoomed it”. It was actually perfectly aligned, but the windows/toolboxes were actually covering it up, and it wasn’t scaling to the visible canvas. Again, thank you! Your replies were very helpful and informative!
i would like to ask u if u could just add the shape brush and polyline isnt enough for some animator and can u also add smoothness of the pen/pencil option
I really like your idea for #5 ! That’d help out a lot with the synchronization, I think. Every time I try to animate something that requires specific timing, I have to open a video editor and create key points for myself in that instead of pencil2d haha. Great list !
