So I just finished drawing a frame in the middle of my animation and when i went to the next frame I saw the picture I had just drawn. Same is true for EVERY OTHER FRAME AFTER IT. What’s worse is that if I try to erase it or draw over it, the original frame changes as well. I’m a new user and I don’t know if this is a bug or just something that you can do but I can’t figure out how to fix it. It’s fully up to date and I’m on the windows 10 32bit version.
If anyone’s got any ideas I would appreciate the help.
Welcome!
This [you speak of] is not a bug. To make a new frame drawing appear on a layer, you need to create another keyframe. If you want the last activated keyframe to deactivate, just create a new blank keyframe. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
@orangeoil Hi. First off sorry to hear you’re having a difficult experience. Let me explain how Pencil2D works along some of the understood terminology to have a crystal clear understanding of the workflow in case there’s a specific step that is causing you to have this issue.
I apologize in advance if you have any previous knowledge of animation, but I’m simply trying to be thorough in case you’re not acquainted with the technique.
Pencil2D Workflow: Drawing & Frame creation
For this example please imagine that I have a single drawing, on a single frame on a single layer.
Pencil2D has an automatic exposure system which shows a drawing across time from a specific frame (e.g frame #1) until a new blank frame or duplicate frame is created. In general every frame is treated as an empty frame until a new blank frame is created
If you draw on the blank frame (sometimes also called key frame) which is basically a drawing container on the timeline, such drawing will be repeated ad infinitum until a new one is created which will interrupt the exposure of the previous frame.
By default a drawing container / blank frame is created for you on frame #1 on any new file. Whatever you draw on the canvas at that point, regardless of the frame number you’re positioned over will mean you’re drawing on the current or previous key frame.
To create a new, different, drawing after the first one you NEED to:
Move the time cursor to the frame you want the new drawing to be
Create a new blank frame
Confirm that a square container is created on the timeline
Draw on the canvas
Now check you should have two different drawings one in frame #1 and another in frame# X, where X is the frame number you chose
Only then will you have two different drawings, on two separate “key frames”.
Note: In animation a single drawing can span multiple frames, which is what helps to emulate what people calls animating on 2’s, 3’s, 4’s etc that is 1 drawing every 2, 3 or 4 frames and so on.
About the Pencil2D version
It is rare to see 32 bit computers nowadays, so in case it’s a misunderstanding, If you have a Windows 10 version that supports 64bits, please use that instead.
However If you truly have a 32bit version of the OS, it’s possible that there’s an issue with RAM getting too full to work. It is widely known that 32bit apps can only use up to 4GB of RAM with Windows OS.
If you are unsure what is your bit architecture check step #1 in the following guide to help improve your experience under Windows for all third party apps, including Pencil2D.
If Pencil2D continues showing the same problem
Please record a screencast video (you can use Open Broadcast Software) or a GIF (you can use Licecap)
Videos can be uploaded to youtube, just paste the link here. GIF’s can be uploaded directly unless they’re too big (above 25mbs or so)
Please go to the top bar menu > Help > About > Press the Copy to Clipboard button and paste the info on your reply.
FYI No personal information will be displayed, only tech info about your computer that’s relevant to Pencil2D.
To the credit of the Pencil2D Team their software runs on a wide variety of hardware, from vintage 64 bit machines to the latest high speed multi core ones.
When using slower computers, sometimes there’s a lag between the user taking an action and the computer doing the action!
I’ve had a similar problem, I had a simple animation with four layers a background, two character layers and a foreground layer. I flipped the background layer on the X axis. This is a simple action, from a human perspective, but a complex one when implemented on computer hardware.
The realisation started to dawn because, when I attempted to play the animation for a second and third time. Each time it played more frames correctly.
Remember Pencil2D has to playback animation in editor mode at a reasonable speed. To acheive this it has to do some preprocessing and this takes time. When I realised my mistake, I was too impatient, I simply waited a few seconds and Pencil2D sorted out the problem.
All the time that the user is trying to correct the problem, they are adding to it, by requesting the computer to carry out extra tasks!
I realised what was happening because I have both extensive software and hardware knowledge.
Videos can be uploaded to youtube, just paste the link here. GIF’s can be uploaded directly unless they’re too big (above 25mbs or so)
