How large is your computers Desktop?

[StopMotionVector (Stop Motion)]

When using Pencil2D how large is my computers desktop?

The width and depth of your computer desktop is in theory infinite, but there is a limit in practical terms. Your screen displays part of the desktop and provided that a small part of the window concerned, in this case the Timeline window, then you can have a timeline area larger then you might initially think that you can. The illustration below shows the configuration of the desktop when you launch Pencil2D.

The screen shot below the screen split into two independent windows, the top one contains all the Pencil2D windows, with the exception of the Timeline window.

The illustration below shows the timeline window expanded and overlaid over the other windows within Pencil2D. Moving the menu bar, at the bottom of the screen will hide the Timeline window under the main part of Pencil2D.

You are only limited, in the number of timeine layers that you can display by the height of your computers screen, unlike when you use the standard configuration of Pencil2D to half your screen height.

Why would you want to exploit this facility? The answer is if you have a project that has a larger number of layers, than can be displayed normally. If you have a large screen, in terms of pixels you’ll have less requirement to use this technique. If your producing a ‘stop frame animation’ using bitmapped images, you’ll require a layer for each image that you need to manipulate.

You can display the number of drawings and their timing relationships using this technique.

When you are using the drawing tools, you can minimise the Timeline window, as shown above.

The Pencil2D project file is Timeline.pclx (3.9 KB)

Below is an animation that explaines the process, that allows you to maximise the drawing space, whilst allowing the maxium number of layers to be displayed in the Timeline window.

NOTE this project uses Vector drawings, which may be unfamiliar to most Pencil2D users. They are often much smaller than the equivalent bitmapped ones. Also the individual shapes could be drawn on a single layer and independantly manipulated.

[JoeyH (Regular)]

Interesting… What exactly are you suggesting? This is labelled as an idea post.

[AnimatorElisa]

The above idea, is an idea that all Pencil2D users can use to improve their productivity.

Not all ideas, require or suggest modifications to the Pencil2D software.

Perhaps stop.frame should have illustrated her idea using an animation, now there’s a radical suggestion.

[StopMotionVector (Stop Motion)]

Hi Pencil2D Users

I’ve modified the post, because it was not obvious what was being suggested.

I hope that you can now understand what my suggestion was.

[StopMotionVector (Stop Motion)]

There’s another method of using the entire screen for editing the drawings and also being able to access the Timeline window. The initial illustration shows the Edit window without the Timeline window displayed. The Timeline window is unchecked on the Windows menu.

The second image shows the Timeline window tab, just before it has been clicked.

The final image shows the effect of clicking the Timeline window tab. After this action there is a tick after the Timeline in the Windows drop down menu.

This technique allows the Pencil2D user to maximise the use of the screen area. This is not so important if you have a extra large screen attached to your computer, but if your using say a small laptop it makes a significant difference.

When you don’t require the Timeline to be displayed you simply reverse the process, by clicking on the Timeline in the Windows drop down menu to revert to the display shown below.