I’m no artist like some of the other Pencil2d users here, but I still appreciate what a great tool it is. I saw how the vector files are called per frame in the .pcl file, so I text edited the .pcl to call up 10 separate mouth positions for the cat. I used a free app Papagayo to determine the use of the 10 different mouth positions to fit the dialog.
I’m using Pencil2d Windows 0.5.4. The vector bucket tool always sets the fill color to red. I noticed that I could change the fill color to black by text editing the .vec file of a frame by changing area colourNumber=“1” to area colourNumber=“0”. Also, a few global text edits can be used to make a mirror image of a vector frame. I can give more details if anyone is interested.
@ronwhite This is actually creepy. Love it! Well done. I’m kind of a volunteer moderator around here, but what you’re saying rings a bell since I’ve been messing around the vec / pcl files for a while.
The “red-only fill” bug has been known to happen in MAC systems, and as far as I know it’s been fixed in the latest Nightly Builds which you can find here for your appropriate system (if it’s not a MAC):
The mirror image sounds like an interesting workaround, although I would prefer people to be able to do it “by the rules” a.k.a using a button within the program, but as you might infer we’re short on developers. So if you want to post here your approach maybe we can use it later on to make some adjustments on a new version, or maybe to create a hackable gui button to produce the same result.
Also props on using papagayo with Pencil2D, I’ve always been keen on trying to integrate Papagayo’s functionality with Pencil2D, but I lack the coding powers to do so, so I can only propose stuff and let “the colors of the wind” do the rest. Hah.
Anyway welcome to the community forum, and thank you for your interest in Pencil2D!
Thanks Jose for being the moderator. I agree that “by the rules” is best because it’s real easy to irreparable damage a project by monkeying with the files. I would recommend that anyone who wants to try this should work only on an experimental project that they don’t mind losing.
Basically I created the vector mirror image by changing the polarity of any variable labeled ending in X or x. (in .vec file) I’ve only experimented with making a vector mirror of drawing files that are not very complicated, so it might not work with features I haven’t used.
Here are the global text replacements that I used:
First, add a “-” to all x values, upper case and lower case separately:
Replace all X=" with X="-
Replace all x=" with x="-
All originally positive values will now be negative.
Values originally negative will now have “–”, so next
Replace all X="-- with X=“
Replace all x=”-- with x="
All originally negative values will now be positive.
I recommend to experiment by creating a small project with just a few vector frames. For example, make a simple drawing in frame 1, make a blank frame 2, and make an ending blank frame 3. Close the project.
Replace all of the text in the .vec frame 2 file with the text from frame 1. (you could save and reload at this point to confirm that the drawing was copied into the originally blank frame 2)
Since the vector variable full names (such as originX="-208", c1x="-159.566") contain some upper case X and some lower case x the text editor replacement must be set to Match case! The Xs and xs in the .vec file must not change case.
Do the global replacements listed above to frame 2 .vec file and save with original name. Reload the project in pencil2d and frame 2 should now be a mirror of frame 1.
This method may likely bomb if more than a simple drawing is used. I tried it on a drawing which had a fill, and there was a problem because some values were set as vertex=“6”, and the global replace added a “-” where there shouldn’t be one. I was able to replace all vertex="- with vertex=" to fix it, but it made me aware that editing may not work on all vector files. However, doing a vector mirror has still saved me some redrawing.
Thanks Sumit. I saw that you made a very good expressive face on your Head turn with Anticipation which looks nice and is a good animation lesson.
Part of the challenge of the papagayo experiment is that the pencil2d IDE frame rate runs slow for me on Win 8 or XP. If I make a project containing only a couple of frames in 10 seconds I can time it with a stopwatch to verify that it runs more than 11% slow. Fortunately the rate is correct when the project is exported, but it means that things don’t look synchronized while working on them. I plan to experiment with using a sound editor like Audacity to make a slowed version of sound to work with before export.