Cycle through keyframes with loop

[the-end-fi (The End Productions)]

I recently found an interesting method of creating effects animation in Toon Boom Harmony by creating empty frames creating a cycle of them in timeline. Then just draw straight ahead and keep adding stuff until you get a nice looping result.

This could easily be accomplished with Pencil 2D if you allow the loop playback button to loop frames when the user is flipping manually trough frames (alt/option+.)

This would be a nice little addition to Flip and Roll, which is very nice and something I haven’t seen in other packages.

[JoseMoreno]

@the-end-fi Hey, welcome to the forum. Well what you describe is interesting

Let me see … right now what you can do to get a similar result is:

1. Establish a range of frames on the timeline by enabling the “range” feature
   Once you turn it on you can input the start and end frame of the range
   
   When enabled you’ll get a blue line representation of the frame range
   
2. Within the range playback looping will work within the span
3. Afterwards enable the option to create a keyframe when drawing on an empty frame by going to Edit > Preferences > Timeline > Drawing > Create a new (blank) key-frame
   
   
4. With this option enabled you can draw while the playback is running as well to create straight ahead animation on a loop.

Flipping & Rolling are really meant to mimic the traditional way of rolling a (limited) stack of paper so it may not make sense to add it there, however looping the playback when using keyframe shortcuts was already planned at some point, but last time it couldn’t be implemented due to the contributor withdrawing theirsubmission and the code had to be basically remade from scratch IIRC, so for now we will only be getting improved exposure operations and keyframe manipulation (copy/paste multiple drawings between layers woo! )

Seeing that there is not a specific ticket for looping a frame range though, i’ll take note and request it later