Making an exposure sheet

General Discussions
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Hi, there. Filmmaker here.

I am wondering about the concept of exposure sheets.

Suppose I were to make a new animation and I export the frames from Pencil 2D to import them into, say, Kdenlive. I want to put the frames in the correct order in the Kdenlive timeline in the exact same way as I sorted them in Pencil2D’s timeline.

The only thing I was trying to figure out is this: how can I make an exposure sheet, preferably as something like a text file, and read from there? I think having an exposure sheet can be super helpful in the sense that it keeps my drawn frames organized, making the animation process a lot easier.

For example, if I drew three animation layers/levels over a static background, I would write the level and frame number on the right bottom corner in each frame of the drawing, like 1-1 or 3-9. Also I would have to know about the spacing like shooting ones, twos, threes, or even fours. For example, if it’s fours, then the frame pattern would go thus: 2-1, 2-5, 2-9, 2-13, etc. Once satisfied, I would export the frames with their frame and level numbers for reference. And that’s when I import the frames into Kdenlive. That’s where I got stuck.

But as of now, I have devised a sensible solution: an exposure sheet in .txt format. Pretty ingenious, huh? The vertical bar symbols represent a held drawing. Other than that, it should be quite helpful. Keep this image as a template reference of sorts. Just type up a .txt file in Notepad like you see in the example image. You can make as many as 5 levels if you wish. You just have to insert more horizontal space with the tab key in order to add more levels and the drawn frames under them.

Thanks for reading and I hope you find the image example invaluable.

exposure sheet example
exposure sheet example457×512 55.5 KB

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@JacobZeier1992 Hello again! The x-sheet feature has been requested for a long time, and there’s actually an implementation provided by one of our excellent contributors. There’s still technical review pending for proper integration but it was meant to have a csv export as well which could be used as you intended.

Pencil2D has two possible ways of saving an image sequence in the export dialog:

  • One will export all the frames on a timeline, including the “exposures” that between keyframes across the timeline
  • And the other one will export only the keyframes.
  • If you used the File > Export > Image Sequence ... you’d get all the frames.
  • If you enable the [x] export keyframes only option, it will take each keyframe across the timeline and export a corresponding image numbered with the exact frame it was originally.

With this you can map them directly into Kdenlive or any video editor as long as you set the default image duration import to 1 frame.

In the case of kdenlive and other open source video editors we could consider having an MLT export file that would help to directly map the images of a drawing layer as a video track and an audio layer as an audio track, but this might take a while as well.

Thank you again for your input :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks for your reply. The reason why I use Kdenlive for animation compositing is because I can add certain video special effects as well as better video export quality.

I also prefer the export keyframes only option, which is very helpful. I prefer exporting the separate drawings because I would like to keep track of the quantity of drawings that I’ve done for a project for historical, research, scientific and educational purposes. Like telling people that I’ve used this many drawings in the making of the flick.

I’ll also be looking forward to the new future version that includes such advanced yet beneficial tools, not the next version that’s coming the soonest, obviously, but I mean down the line. Again, thanks for the reply.

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A built-in exposure sheet would be totally amazing. Being able to view numbered images vertically would really make this already neat software shine. I am glad that this community is active and that there is a free alternative to commercial software for beginning animators :)

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@AnimatorJiffy Apologies I forgot to comment back. Certainly. As I mentioned last year there was an implementation pending review, however it’s possible that there needs to be a heavy modification for it to be usable without lagging the software (which was the main problem back then IIRC)

Aside from this there are certainly other priorities as well. One could argue that a horizontal timeline is enough to get the animator by, so the xsheet is not critical in the priority list, unfortunately for us animators that grew up with traditional animation.

That is not to say that it won’t happen, it just won’t be as quick as you might surmise from the date of the previous replies. We honestly could use more help since we’re all volunteers here (we don’t even ask for donations; can’t handle them without a company or non-profit dedicated for that), but sadly most people either reinvent the wheel and make their own “easy to use” animation apps that become abandoned in mere weeks, or they go with larger projects only to get bored of the open source bureaucracy and lack of activity either way.

Pencil2D is slow, but it’s steady for sure. We are on a road to a mythical 1.0 version where we come it will be the program we all have wanted within realistic expectations and that it will be appealing enough for others to step in and contribute.

If you’re interested in keeping track of what is getting added you can visit the code repository here: Pull requests · pencil2d/pencil · GitHub

Out of the things that are being developed for up coming releases, these are the ones I know are active:

  1. Improved Status Bar (recently merged)
  2. New per keyframe / per layer opacity FX (non-destructive) + A simple fade in/out effect (already merged)
  3. action toolbars (for screen tablet users) This is pending review and to implement the ability to customize the options.
  4. New timeline actions. Copy / Cut / Remove multiple frames on the active layer (multi-layer is still not possible)
  5. New way to handle the camera + motion paths + easing presets (Camera Layer only, for now)
  6. Frame comments. Basically storyboarding slug info.
  7. Retiming feature. Add or reduce frames to match a specified framerate.
  8. Content repositioning tool. This would allow you to transform multiple drawings over time for simple corrections.
  9. New undo / redo implementation to improve undo and allow more options to be undoable + history panel (this is massive, was frozen for months and only recently it has been unlocked and split in parts to make it viable)
  10. New raster painting engine system with brushes (this one is a massive implementation, it has it’s own version for testing here MyPaint version pre-alpha preview - #209 by CandyFace)
  11. XSheet + Lipsync data import from papagayo files. This one is pending review and improving previous issues with severe lag but currently no one is assigned to it AFAIK.
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