Unable to move background

background is greyed out in keyframe and cannot move it; also all intervening frames are blank

@Jaymac Hi, sorry to hear you’re having issues. Unfortunately I’m having a hard time understanding exactly what your problem is.

If possible please post a series of screenshots, or even better a video, showcasing your specific issue and hopefully explaining it step by step so the developers can reproduce your issue and possibly fix it if it’s within their domain.

You mention the “background” is greyed out in a keyframe and you cannot move it. Also intervening frames are blank…

Did you separate your animation by layers? Do you have a “background” layer? or do you have the entire drawing in a single layer?

The only way to “move” something in Pencil2D is by using the select tool image + move tool imagefor the bitmap layers, or just the move tool for vector layers.

You could use the camera layer to create the illusion of movement but this is an advanced concept and it’d be hard to explain by text.

On the other hand you mentioned that the “intervening frames are blank” by default Pencil2D automatically exposes a drawing on the timeline up until a new drawing is placed on another frame after it. So you don’t need to fill the timeline with repeated frames for a single drawing. This is done for you.

Other than that Pencil2D does not currently have any kind of automatic interpolation or “tweening” for drawings.

Hi - thanks for your reply. I am a beginner, so I found it a bit difficult to describe the problem in my earlier email, but I have been systematically going through the Pencil 2D tutorials by TJ. I think I managed to resolve the ‘greyed out’ background problem, and the intervening frames, but I am still having a problem. The tutorial which is causing difficulty is ‘Move and zoom the camera layer’. I imported a .jpg image on the Bitmap layer as instructed in the video, clicked on frame 12, then added a key frame at that position. With key frame 12 still selected I tried the ‘hand’ tool to move the background relative to the canvas, but while still in the bitmap layer the background and the canvas move together. The select and move tools move the background image independently of the canvas, but frames 1 and 12 are identical, so there is no apparent panning of the background. It just remains in the same fixed position throughout the 12 frames. I hope this describes the problem. Thank you for offering to help out.

@Jaymac Hi. I’m sorry for the late reply. I didn’t get notified of your message so I just noticed until today by looking at the forum itself. Sigh.

To move the camera you need to select the camera layer and use the hand tool. Think of it as if the bitmap layer is the piece of paper and the camera layer is an actual camera you move independently.

The translation that occurs on the bitmap layers is a convenience to shift your point of view so you can draw wherever you want, but the translation that occurs directly on a camera layer will be seen in the final video or exported format.

I’m sorry if this information got late to you. Either way I wish you the best with your endeavours. Good luck.

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