I trust Pencil2D for all of my animation. It is the most similar to the software I used when I was younger (Flipnote Studio). And as an experienced animator, I have a few ideas that would help me more on my animation adventure!
I’ll list them:
Vector fill tool (So I can color vector images)
Sound delay fix
Camera rotation
Shape tool
Canvas limiting option (so I can’t draw off the edge)
Less animation playing lag
Default palette option
Sound plays when you advance frames
Eraser’s “Use Feather” option NOT ON BY DEFAULT (It annoys me)
Custom starting template (layers, palette, tools)
DRAW TEXT OPTION (Cannot stress enough)
Layer Tweening
No anti-aliasing when scaling drawings (or an option to)
Better Drawing stabilizer (for those who aren’t very good with drawing tablets)
[Ridiculous] - Simple 3D drawing editor*
Plugin feature (Adding things to the software)
Bug fix - Autosave makes extra accidental lines
There are likely more, but I can’t remember them now. I’ll keep posting in the future!
*The 3D editor thing is extreme, so it isn’t necessary. (I can easily trace from other software, such as sketchup)
@JoeyH Hey, thanks for taking the time to round up your feedback in such an orderly manner it’s appreciated!
I’ll answer each point to have a better overview of what’s happening and why:
Vector fill tool. This exists but it was “broken” a few years ago when trying to improve it ironically; the developer in charge of that left the project and the current devs have not gotten to fix it just yet, but they will.
Sound delay fix. AFAIK this will be improved in the upcoming release, and MP3’s will suck less (but we still recommend to use WAV’s) however I’m not sure up to which point this is going to be fixed, so let’s say it will be better than it is now.
Camera Rotation: You can already rotate your camera. When selecting the camera layer:
Press ALT + SPACEBAR + Click & Drag on the canvas
USe R & Z Keys
Go to View > Rotate Clockwise/Anticlockwise (should say counterclockwise, but eh )
Shapes tool: This has been requested a lot since I can remember, the problem is that developers work in what they can and want, sometimes we can convene about certain priorities, but this hasn’t been critical enough considering Pencil2D is meant to be for hand drawn animation. I’ll ask again what are our odds with this for a future release.
Canvas cutout: This is interesting, like flash’s pasteboard. I’ll bookmark this.
Playback lag: This really depends on various things, from the size of your project in frames, its resolution size, your computer specs (CPU speed + RAM mostly) and the animation frame cache setting.
First try to playback the animation several times, like let it run two or three times so the frames “wake up”.
The frame cache establishes how many frames can “wake up” at the same time and live in your computer memory, so in this case the more memory the better.
If you have lots of RAM & your animation is quite long access the frame cache preference setting and change it by going to:
Edit > Preferences > General > Scroll to the bottom > Advanced > Cached Frame Number > Increase it to something like 1024mbs
Note: with computers it’s important to work in powers of 2( e.g 256,512,1024, etc) Due to how images work, my own rule is to always have about 25% of the total file weight as cache. So for a 1GB file i’ll have about 256mbs of frame cache, which is not so different from what we currently have. That said, if you have some definite benchmarks of how slow your animation plays in comparison to other apps, please let us know so the devs can take a look.
Default palette option: Hmm I’m not positive if this is going to change with the next version but it should tie in with the templates request I’ll look into it and update accordingly.
Sound scrubbing: this will be coming in the next release
Eraser Default Feathering: Hmm that’s weird, actually if you enable it once it should stay like that afterwards. Will look into it and ask the devs.
Custom starting template: This will come in the next release, though i’m not sure if palette and tools will be saved with it (I know the tool options are already saved across files, but will look into it)
Text tool: This has been asked plenty, but we can’t force the devs to make it happen since we’re all volunteers, so I can only say it will happen when we least expect it :
Layer Tweening: we’ve added this to the roadmap a few years ago, but is probably something that will come only as “motion tweening” and only after version 1.0 or later. “shape tweening” via vectors however might not be implemented though. For this it’s better to try other software.
improved content scaling. This boils down to implementing better image processing algorithms, it’s not easy AFAIK, but it will probably come in a future release. We do have it in our roadmap and hopefully this would also help the export function that has a similar purpose (but was used mostly when vector layers were working)
Drawing stabilizer. This needs to be implemented from scratch. The current “option” is not really a stabilizer but a stroke “jitter” smoothing option (and we need to rename it like so)
We have joked about Pencil3D, but to be honest this is not likely to happen, sorry though if you want to draw in 3D be sure to try Blender’s grease pencil features.
Plugin feature: This is something I’ve personally asked to add to the roadmap a few years ago, and it has been discussed, but for now there’s no clear way of adding it without breaking a lot of stuff. We will probably have either a python or javascript scripting API for compatibility if things go well, but it will take time.
Autosave accidental lines. This has been discussed but it seems to be a difficult thing to fix appropriately, will probably be kept for some time as an inconvenient side-effect until the devs can find a way to fix it.
Please do keep posting in the future and thanks again for the feedback!
The starting template will have the palette you saved with it. My favourite template only has my pencil colors in the palette, and when it comes to layers it has a camera plus three bitmap layers: BG, rough and cleanup.
@JoeyH Ah I see, so you’d rather want it to be disabled. Well I’ll be honest, Pencil2D is slated to have the bitmap engine changed for a future version, and work is underway.
As such in the future you will deal with tool presets, and will probably be able to preserve those presets as a default as well.
That way you will be able to have the starter tools using all the specific properties you want.
Right now though, you only need to select the eraser tool, turn off “use feather” (turn off the anti-alias if it appears checked if you want it to be pixel-y) > Close the program > then restart it. That should do it.
You only need to do this only once because this setting as well as any other tool option setting, will be saved permanently on your computer registry, so it’s not like you will be required to turn it off everytime you start the program
However If you did try that and the eraser is still showing feathered, then it might be a bug, so can you let us know what OS and Pencil2D version you are using right now?
)
I’ll look into it and update accordingly.
:
though if you want to draw in 3D be sure to try Blender’s grease pencil features.