When we launched www.pencil2d.org, I wrote a bbPress plugin to allow users to vote up or down (like on Stackoverflow). Kind of basic but useful.
I see now that a lot of you have wishes to… list, and that it would be great to have a…“wishlist” page somewhere.
While thinking about it, I came up with the idea that we already have the tools for this : the wishlist could be a forum, but maybe tweaked.
Each topic should be a single “wish”, people could react about it, and most of all VOTE (up or down) on that idea.
Sorting those topics by score would allow us to have a clear view of what people would like to see happen in Pencil2D.
That’s why I started updating my Wordpress plugin. As you will see, there is now some more functions on the forums :
you can sort topics by votes on a forum page (that should perhaps be the default behaviour of the wishlist forum)
the score of each topic is now displayed in topic loops
the "reputation" score of a user is displayed under its avatar when reading a topic.
you can remove your vote by clicking the up/down vote link.
I will still need some time to setup that wishlist forum, but that is some improvements anyway.
Since I’ve been a bit busy I haven’t been able to do much in here, just answering some questions in the forums and I updated a bit the about/front page so people could find the downloads easily. I also updated the nightly builds download link (pointing to the 2015 nightly builds) and I did some minor spam cleaning that was stacking up since 2013.
I also began a FAQ page but it’s hidden meanwhile I finish it with all the questions I’ve been seeing repeated over and over again, and afterwards we can run a poll or something to see what other questions could be essential.
I wanted to actually ask you if there is a way to rearrange some of the dropdown menus and the forum /subforum structure since I wanted to help it to make more sense, but some stuff doesn’t seem to be accesible for me.
Also Ive seen some people (particularly young ones) that try to comment on the first place available on ANY page instead registering for the forums, so I wanted to see if maybe we can have a small banner-like image that points people to a forum registration guide or something. I’d do the banner if needed.
Hopefully I’ll be free next week crosses fingers So i’ll write down my proposals for the web in an organized manner for you to review as well as a written outline for potential events and ideas to help spread the word about pencil, like online cross-project dev meetups and stuff like that so other communities might become interested to help with development.
Thank you for allowing me to assist with this. User activity has become a bit more steadier during these past weeks, I’m glad Pencil2D is continuing it’s course
@gordie… that’s a great idea. There are alot of features that I really want to suggest for pencil but I’ll wait until it is stable. If developers were not an issue, I like Pencil to be a full 2d animation suite that competes with the leading animation software today like toonboom and tvpaint. I know that it deviates from the creator’s original vision but Pencil has a huge potential to be a powerhouse open source software like krita or blender in the future.
@morr, thanks for your help in updating the website. Are you guys doing a facelift on the whole website? If you don’t mind, I’d like to suggest to make the website a little more fun. Like this link http://www.zeptolab.com/
About other communities, we can try to ask in QT forum if anyone would might be interested to help pencil.
I can only agree what’s said by others. It’s a good initiative Gordie, it would only be good to come together under one list and do some brainstorming. Even if I think the developers already have their hands full getting Pencil to v.0.5.5 it wouldn’t hurt to discuss around the future. If we create more noise we hopefully attract more users and also I really really hope a few developers among them. One thing usually leads to another and who knows what ideas could come up there.
Regarding Pencil’s potential. I’m using Pencil a lot now for all kinds of drawing work, most of my sketching happens on Pencil because Krita doesn’t feel anyway near as good with the pen strokes. I just planned to use Krita for a project of mine but I quickly turned back to Pencil to do the linework. In Krita has you need to switch on some assisted drawing to get steadier pen strokes. I don’t know if it would have worked on a Cintiq, but I’m only using a traditional USB pen tablet. So yes Pencil already rocks if you ask me I’ll post the image here when it’s ready.
@manu Haha that’s why you’re one of our heroes here manu, and I’m not joking!
To me it’s quite the opposite regarding my digital drawing experience, after having tested about 15+ different drawing programs for illustration and animation over the years, I can confidently say that Krita is one of the best suited for drawing digitally. Not even the almighty Photoshop works for me when I require precise linework.
I too have a pen tablet, a Wacom Intuos 5, but I used to work with a Genius Pen Tablet for about 6 years and when I found Krita it’s drawing feel was remarkable. The only other commercial software that was better for a smooth drawing feel was the Japanese App “Easy Paint Tool Sai”, which is a great choice for inking as well and many pro artists use it to this day despite it’s own shortcomings and “Manga Studio” which in Japan it’s called Clip Studio Paint. There might be others that are new but I can’t talk much about them (Like Medibang Pro).
To me in comparison drawing in Pencil2D has still ways to go before becoming at least on par with Krita. Most of the time I feel that the lines I make are what the software can ( or wants to ) do and not what I want to do.
I sometimes try to quick sketch on Pencil2D and the lines will break horribly, which to be fair, i think it’s a problem with the Qt graphic modules, since Krita suffered a bit from that but got greatly improved later on.
The latest fixes have absolutely improved the Pencil brush engine but it still needs work. Hopefully time and hard work will bear it’s fruit sooner than expected.
Heh, this is really interesting. Because of course I’m not advocating Pencil just to be friendly here It’s actually true what I write, and its interesting that you have the exact opposite experience than me.
Sure I see why Krita is so good, and I would choose Kirta if I “painted” the picture but as my style for now is more cartoonish I need precise line work to get the outlines stand out. And that’s what I can’t get out of Krita, the lines gets so uneven See how strange, what could really be the key problem here. Is it my tablet (bamboo = cheap) that is more suitable for a certain application, I don’t know but I sure would like to find out.
One thing about how I draw. Depending on how lucky I am when drawing the lines I sometimes get them right right away and many times I undo the stroke to quickly make a new stroke. So my hand moves quite fast in the process this is something I have always done even when using pen & paper but maybe Pencil made me do it even more now, I don’t know
One thing I have learned though is that I find it very hard to draw really straight lines with the tablet and I don’t think the program matters here. Because I easily do it with pen&paper but digitally it’s so much harder to learn to do at least if I want them really really straight as when drawing a pipeline for example. I would love to test to do that on a Cintiq to see if the problem would go away there. I’ll see if I can adapt to the tablet with more practice doing just that or if that is the ultimate price I have to pay because I’m so cheap that I haven’t bought a Cintiq yet.
If I some day could get hold of a good enough screen recorder for Windows 10 to record a live session with both programs and I could try to compare the two so you can see the different behaviour.
@manu Actually I love the fact that you can actually feel better drawing in Pencil; it gives me hope for the software! I’ve considered purchasing a cintiq 13hd, they’re small and cheaper than a large Cintiq, but I think they’re enough to see if it’s worth the investment to begin animating fully “tradigital”.
As for a screen recorder, you should have said it earlier! I use and higly recommend Open Broadcast Software (OBS) which allows you to stream and record videos. And they say it works under windows 10 really well.
To get it to record, once you install it (or you can download the portable version) Open the program > go to settings button > on the left column, go to “broadcast settings” > Mode: File Output Only
When you’re ready press ok then “start recording” !
Its really easy and since the videos are encoded with h264 codec their size is relatively small and youtube friendly. Hope that helps you with the recording!
