In the User Manual page, under the “Let’s animate” topic,
there’s an explanation on how to create a simple moving circle,
via creating new Frames, and drawing the circle in each frame,
each time a little bit to the right.
I did it and it works.
I now want to try to create this animation in a different way, that does not require redrawing the obejct each time.
To do this I created a new project, and drew the circle on frame 1.
I then chose the Select tool and selected the Circle, and pressed Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard.
I then created another frame on position 10,
chose the Move tool and moved the selection (which currently appears empty) a bit to the right,
and then pressed Ctrl-V to paste the circle copied from frame 1.
Now what happened is that the circle on frame 10 indeed appears on the right,
but If I go back to frame 1, it also moved there to the right,
instead of staying in its left (original) position.
Can anyone please tell me what I am missing here?
My logic is that a change that I am doing on frame 10 using the Select and Move tools, should not change what’s in frame 1..
The same way that If I draw on frame 10, it should not draw on frame 1..
Your assumption is correct, if you’re moving the selection on frame 10 and there’s a keyframe there as well, then it should indeed only modify the position of that one.
However, by default this requires you to explicitly create a new keyframe. If you haven’t done that prior to pasting the selection, then it will just modify the same keyframe.
if you don’t want that behavior, then you should go to preferences and change the “When drawing on an empty frame” setting from “Keep drawing on the previous frame” to “Create a new (blank) key-frame”.
Indeed, I created a new frame at position 10, like I wrote.
I even veified it by doing the whole process twice before asking.
I now I tried for the third time, and found something interesting:
After I paste the circle in frame 10, I did not press [Enter], to get out of the selection.
If I do press [Enter] to leave the selection, then everything after that is fine:
frame 10 has the circle on the right,
and frame 1 has the circle in the original location - on the left.
However If I don’t press [Enter] to leave the selection,
and then try to switch to frame 1 (or press the Play button to play the animation),
then the circle is moved also on frame 1..
Ah, yes that’s a known issue We’re working on a new selection system which will fix that problem in the future but for now you should, as a workaround, apply the selection before scrubbing to a different keyframe.
BTW, If I may recommend,
in the meanwhile, until the next Selection system will be implemented,
there can be some small changes that can help here with the old one,
for example:
When switching to a different frame with a selection active, Pencil2D will automatically exit the selection mode.
This will spare users the time spent trying to understand why the original object in a previous frame is moving when moved in a later frame..
We’re working on a new selection system which will fix that problem in the future but for now you should, as a workaround, apply the selection before scrubbing to a different keyframe.