I am recently getting back into Pencil2D after 4 years since my last project. I just finished an animatic, and I intend to add my animation layers on top of that in the same PCLX file (using the animatic layers as a template). I am starting with the backgrounds. However, I am having an issue with resolutions. Let me explain.
The first frame of my animatic is drawn (in a Bitmap layer) to represent the Milky Way galaxy.
When I double-click on the Camera Layer, I can see that I have the resolution set to 480x270.
I have a photo of the Milky Way galaxy that I am going to add to my “Background Layer” for this frame. The resolution of the photo is 1440x911.
So, with that in mind, the photo should be larger than the camera’s view, right? Well, when I import the photo, this happens:
It is so small compared to the drawn frame, and I am trying to figure out what went wrong.
My questions for you are:
Did I misinterpret what the Camera Layer resolution is? Is the resolution of my frame actually much larger than 480x270? If so, what does that ratio represent?
Assuming I messed up and my Bitmap frames have a huge resolution, is there a way I can fix this and still use the animatic project as a reference for my animation? How about resizing the Bitmap frames to be smaller?
Sorry if this has already been brought up. I combed through a few threads about the Camera Layer but did not find a situation specific to mine.
You have understood what the camera layer resolution means correctly. What went wrong is likely a very easy mistake to make in v0.6.6 of Pencil2D: you probably have the camera layer zoomed out. When you have the camera layer selected, attempting to move the view or zoom in or out will instead modify the camera position and zoom level. If you do this accidentally, the best way to get it back to a 1:1 ratio is to go to View > Reset while the camera layer is selected.
Since you have already drawn your animatic, these drawings will become much larger than your camera if you reset the view now. While you can resize bitmap images with the select+move tools, there is no way to apply this to all frames. The simplest solution is to export your animatic as a png image sequence with transparency enabled at the current resolution and zoom. Then import those images into a fresh project with the same resolution and no zoom in or out on the camera layer. Then your drawings and any backgrounds you import to that project should both match with your expectations. The drawback of this approach is that it will flatten your current animation into a single layer, and anything outside the camera frame of your first project will be cropped. You can increase the camera resolution of the first project before exporting if there are drawings outside of the camera border that you would like to avoid being cropped.
Thank you, I think it worked! I need to familiarize myself with the Camera Layer better so that I do not make mistakes like this again. I am just glad you had a workaround in this case.
Also, this explains why my animatic project was so laggy. The drawings are massive!
@FatChip I know this was already solved, but I’d like to leave a final consideration so you can continue working without much issue:
Please keep separate backup files for your project, that is, don’t save over the same file more than thrice.
Since the drawings are so large version 0.6.6 might corrupt them at some point, so it’s good to have a backup.
Try the latest development builds where the camera system has been modified and works differently.
The way it works now is that zooming in or out with the scroll wheel or hand /zoom tool will ONLY affect the actual editing view, but not your drawing or camera output (the final exported look).
To physically move, rotate or scale (zoom) the camera you’ll need to use the move tool (black arrow icon)
I’m also advising to check these dev versions because recently Pencil2D got an improvement on the image buffer (where the computer stores the images being shown) and drawing is a lot faster when zooming out compared to the old versions.
Of course you can use both versions at your leisure since the dev version might have new bugs, but there’s a LOT more that has been fixed in the past 2 years.
