Pencil2d project ideas

Edit the shortcuts

All these shortcuts are editable, so you can customize it your needs.

Here are the shortcuts for the tools:

If you want to change the shortcut for the Select tool, which is ‘V’, you can do it directly, by selecting the ToolSelect in the shortcuts window and then placing the cursor in the shortcut text box, and enter the new shortcut, or you can delete it first by pressing ‘Clear’ and then enter the new shortcut in the text box.

Here we have cleared the shortcut for ToolSelect, and want to enter the new shortcut. We place the cursor in the textbox and press ‘E’. Unfortunately, the ‘E’ is taken by the Eraser tool, so you are given the choice of overwrite the shortcut or cancelling.

Backup and Recovery

Difficulty: Intermediate

Project Core Objective: Protect our users’ work from being lost or corrupted with new backup and recovery mechanisms.

Description:

Older versions of Pencil2D were notorious for corrupting project files. We have
put a lot of work into fixing this and have almost completely eliminated this
very frustrating problem for our users. However we still get the rare report of
being unable to open a file, and changes that we make in the future could
reintroduce this issue unintentionally. We do not want users to have to worry
about ever losing their work, which is why it is important that we implement
effective backup and recovery mechanisms.

The exact mechanisms that we should use are still up for debate, but may
include some combination of the following solutions:

• An option to automatically rename the old project file to a backup when
  saving.
• Test saves immediately after saving for file integrity.
• Check for project folders in temporary storage on startup and provide the user
  the option to recover or remove any of those project which likely are there due
  to a crash.
• Write files to the disk (in temporary storage) more often in the background
  so more work can be recovered with the previous method.
• Autosave in the background. We currently have an autosave feature, but due
  to it’s intrusive popups most people have it disabled. Running it in the
  background would likely lead to greater user adoption.

See the backup proposal for some more details.

• Proposal Tag:
• Skills required: C++, Qt (for recovery dialog)
• Mentor: Connor Deptuck (scribblemaniac)
• Backup Mentor: Matt Chang (chchwy)

Using shortcuts

A stencil contains many properties. When the shape is draged in
canvas, each property have a default value. Sometimes the stencil
may want to be used with other different properties default value,
so Pencil supports creating shortcuts from an original stencil by
changing the properties default value. This is very useful when you
want to create multiple stencils that share a common behaviors. The
way to do it is to define a generic stencil and then providing
different shortcuts to it, each with a different set of default
values to its properties.

<Shape id="label" displayName="Label" icon="Icons/plain-text.png">
  <Properties>
    <PropertyGroup name="Text">
      <Property name="label" displayName="Label" type="PlainText">Hello World</Property>
      <Property name="textColor" displayName="Color" type="Color">#808080ff</Property>
      <Property name="shadowColor" displayName="Shadow Color" type="Color">#008000ff</Property>
      <Property name="textFont" displayName="Font" type="Font">Arial,sans-serif|normal|normal|13px</Property>
      <Property name="shadow" displayName="Width Shadow" type="Bool">false</Property>
    </PropertyGroup>
  </Properties>
  <Behaviors>
    <For ref="text">
      <TextContent>$label</TextContent>
      <Fill>$textColor</Fill>
      <Font>$textFont</Font>
      <BoxFit>
        <Arg>new Bound(0, 0, 100, 12)</Arg>
        <Arg>new Alignment(0, 1)</Arg>
      </BoxFit>
    </For>
    <For ref="shadow">
      <Visibility>$shadow</Visibility>
      <TextContent>$label</TextContent>
      <Fill>$shadowColor</Fill>
      <Font>$textFont</Font>
      <BoxFit>
        <Arg>new Bound(1, 1, 100, 12)</Arg>
        <Arg>new Alignment(0, 1)</Arg>
      </BoxFit>
    </For>
  </Behaviors>
  <p:Content xmlns:p="http://www.evolus.vn/Namespace/Pencil" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
    <text id="shadow" />
    <text id="text" />
  </p:Content>
</Shape>

<Shortcut displayName="Label with shadow" icon="Icons/label-shadow.png" to="label">
  <PropertyValue name="shadow">true</PropertyValue>
</Shortcut>

From a normal text stencil, by changing the
property default value, a new stencil is created: the text with
shadow. All properties can be changed using this method. The
attribute refers to the target shape id.

A shortcut may refer to a stencil from another collection.
In case, the property needs to be in the form of
.

<Shortcut displayName="name" icon="" to="collectionId:shapeId">
...
</Shortcut>

Please note that there is a limitation in Pencil is that the
referenced collection need to be loaded first otherwise, the
shortcut will not work.

Known Issues

• Color Palette (Bitmap): First Swatch is unchangeable. Can’t use replace command. Use the other swatches to create your own colors or change it by editing the palette in a vector layer or via XML.
• Color Palette (Bitmap): Swatches will only update using the Replace command when having a vector layer active. (Note: Create your custom palettes with a vector layer selected)
• Selection Tool: Pressing / / , or changing application focus in your OS while having a selection active will ERASE the selection contents and in some rare instances will crash Pencil2D.
• Selection Tool (Rotation): Using the SELECT ALL command () and rotating a selection, will store the rotation transformation, if you press again and click with the MOVE TOOL on the selection, it will apply the stored value and rotate the selection again. Despite possible use cases this is a bug.
• Undo: Undoing a drawing modification made on an empty frame creates a keyframe on that frame.
• Undo: Undoing moving a keyframe to a new frame will create a blank keyframe on the place where it used to be.
• Undo, Smudge Tool (Bitmap): You cannot UNDO the smudge tool at the moment.
• Blur Tool (Bitmap): Pressing with smudge tool doesn’t work, do not use it. Use other drawing apps for smudge effects.
• Fill Tool (Vector): Filling a stroke requires the stroke to be selected.
• Fill Tool (Vector): “stroke thickness” option will reset pressure sensitive lines width.

Known Issues

This released focused on fixing as many issues a possible, however as a small team, there are only so many things we can fix at a time. Here is a non-exhaustive list of bugs that we are already aware of, but were unable to fix in this release. Rest assured, we will do our best to fix all of them eventually.

• #748, #1004, #1098 Miscellaneous undo/redo issues. Possible fixes will be reviewed for v0.6.5.
• #1033 Sound import and playback does not work with the Linux AppImage. Workaround: use flatpak or your distro package manager (if it offers the latest version).
• #1117 The CLI (Command-Line Interface) export operation consumes more memory than exporting from within the editor itself.
• #1019 The program may crash or erase selection content when using the shortcut.
• #1120 Undoing Selection Flip X / Y will delete the drawing instead. A possible fix will be reviewed for v0.6.5.
• #1133 Lag and buggy strokes with Huion tablets. Workaround: disabling the “linear optimizer” in your tablet driver may help if that option is available, see this post.
• #1174 Inconsistent palette import behavior: Depending on which palette file format is used, the new palette may append or overwrite the existing palette.
• #1177 Imported image position is modified by the canvas view center
• #1179 Currently there’s an audio delay of 1-2 frames for in-editor playback & exported files. However on some systems the opposite happens where the audio delay on playback might be longer by 12-16 or more frames, but on export it works ok.
• #1186 Quick Sizing is enabled on Paint Bucket Tool, but does nothing on a bitmap layer.
• #1189 Zoom shortcut on drawing tools not working properly with the Middle Mouse Button (Win) and mouse input in general (macOS)
• #1193 The feather slider widget (Brush Tool) has a higher max value than the input value, and any value above 96 pixels will not allow you to paint.
• #1196 A unerasable stroke appears when drawing if you turn off the pressure sensitivity checkbox with drawing tools.
• Playing back audio from any frame other than the first will slightly off-sync the audio in the editor. For now we recommend playing back sounds from the beginning and gauging the sound particularly for lipsync or musicalized action. Afterwards check your output with a dedicated video editor to avoid sync issues.
• Color Palette (Bitmap): Some issues when replacing the first swatch remain. It is recommended you make a new item rather than changing it.
• Color Palette (Bitmap): Swatches will only update using the Replace command when having a vector layer active. (Note: Create your custom palettes with a vector layer selected)
• Selection Tool (Rotation): Using the SELECT ALL command (CTRL + A) and rotating a selection, will store the rotation transformation, if you create a selection and click on the drawing with the MOVE TOOL, it will rotate the selection again. Despite possible use cases this is a bug.
• Undo: Undoing a drawing modification made on an empty frame creates a keyframe on that frame.
• Undo: Undoing moving a keyframe to a new frame will create a blank keyframe on the place where it used to be.
• Undo, Smudge Tool (Bitmap): You cannot UNDO the smudge tool at the moment.
• Blur Tool (Bitmap): Pressing ALT with smudge tool doesn’t work, do not use it. Use other drawing apps for smudge effects.
• Fill Tool (Vector): Filling a stroke requires the stroke to be selected.
• Fill Tool (Vector): “stroke thickness” option will reset pressure sensitive lines width.
• In general the Vector Engine is a WIP or not working as intended. Much more work will be required, please don’t use it.

I like Pencil2D but… it is a bit ‘buggy’, what can i do?

We feel you, but every great piece of software you might know began in a humble way. Right now Pencil2D is in need of developers experienced or willing to learn Qt framework and C++ as well as proactive users that want to help however they can.

Pencil2D won’t get hot just by looking at it, in fact there’s more chances that you’ll hate it the more you look at it. We need YOU for miracles to happen! Consider donating your time to report bugs, create art or just hang out with us at the forum while we wait for the next release.

For more information on how to contribute to Pencil2D please visit the Contribute Page.

What’s New in v0.6.2

New Color Inspector

A completely overhauled color inspector. We changed the spinboxes for interactive sliders and a more stylish way to change between HSV / RGB color spaces. This improvement will let you preview colors and alpha values much more easily than before.

New Color Palette Workflow (WIP)

Previously you could change a selected swatch color through the color inspector, but this caused unpredictable alterations to already used colors on both bitmap and vector layers. We are working to improve how swatch colors are handled to preserve custom palettes while drawing.

To improve the creation of custom palettes we implemented Add, Replace and Remove commands through a contextual menu, plus you can now select and delete multiple colors at the same time in both list and grid display mode. We have also added the ability to import from and export to the GIMP palette format (.gpl) to make it easier to share palettes with drawing applications.

Since this workflow tweak is a work in progress please see our known issues section to learn some of the caveats we are currently fixing.

Auto Keyframe Insertion

Pencil2D now comes equipped with three drawing modes for empty frames. You can switch between them in your preferences under timeline. When drawing at a position without a keyframe, you can chose for the program to do one of the following:

• Add a new (blank) keyframe
• Duplicate the previous keyframe
• Keep drawing on the previous keyframe

A huge thank you to Martin Van Zijl for implementing this feature!

Import/Export a GIF

This is probably one of the most asked questions: Can I export my animation as a gif? Yes, you sure can. GIF Import/Export has been working since v0.6, but many people had difficulties finding it so we have made this option more visible in both Import/Export menus.

Project Corruption — Saving & Loading Files

We received a series of bug reports (especially for the Windows platform) where users encountered errors while saving (and sometimes loading) a file that prohibited them from opening it again. We paid great attention on this issue and worked hard to make sure you can save and load your work without further inconvenience. We have extensively tested this issue and consider it has been fixed for most foreseeable scenarios. However, we urge all our users to review and follow the Pencil2D file corruption prevention / recovery guide to avoid losing work in the off chance that you still encounter an error.

Note: Most corrupted projects are by definition not recoverable, but there are ways to partially recover certain parts. Read the guide for more info.

Lasso Tool

Difficulty: Intermediate

Project Core Objective: Add a lasso selection tool to Pencil2D

Description:

A lasso selection tool is a common tool in image editing applications, and you
can look to any of them (ex. GIMP, Photoshop, Krita) for an idea of how it
should work, although it may be under a different name such as a “Free Selection”
tool. The basic idea is to allow the user to draw a selection using a
combination of hand-drawn and/or arbitrary straight lines to create a selection.
As mentioned, this is a common tool for image editing, so we need to add it to
support typical digital workflows and to provide the features that digital
artists expect.

The current code for selection is a bit messy and may need some refactoring to
properly implement this new feature. Additionally it will take some
consideration to assure that the selection transformation tools work well with
these irregular selections. Finally, during the selection process, you will need
to save the current selection line and render it live on the canvas. You should
be able to find some useful code for this in our existing polyline tool.

As an extension of this project if you are feeling very ambitious, many of the
higher-end editors have some form of a “smart lasso tool”, or “magnetic
selection tool” which will have similar user interactivity to the lasso tool,
but will automatically fit the selection to the contours of the image/layer. To
determine how this is done, you will need to do some research into
implementations of this feature in other open source project, or find relevant
research papers.

• Proposal Tag:
• Skills required: C++, computer vision experience (extension only)
• Mentor: Matt Chang (chchwy)
• Backup Mentor: Connor Deptuck (scribblemaniac)

ImageData

Data structure that store a binary bitmap image.

Construction:

new ImageData(w, h, dataUrl);

XML syntax:

<Property name="image" displayName="Image"
          type="ImageData"><!]></Property>

Example:

var image = new ImageData(10, 15, "data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KQmCC...");

var i = ImageData.fromString("57,57, data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KQmCC");

How to increase the timeline frame length? I can only see 240 frames.

Pencil2D can currently display up to 10,000 thousand frames.

But don’t worry the timeline will auto extend when you place a keyframe towards the end of timeline panel display space.

To enable more frames manually please go to:
EDIT > PREFERENCES > TIMELINE > Timeline size in Frames

However we advice that you DON’T force Pencil2D to work with more than 1500+ frames per file, unless you are prepared for possible issues during work in the editor and during export that can arise from high memory use. We understand this might seem like a rather strict limitation, but it’s a safe boundary limit before things can start to go out of control.

We will be working to optimize and improve the amount of frames you can work with and export at any given time, but we ask you to work smart. Remember the more frames and layers you have, the more memory Pencil2D WILL use, and the chance of crashing WILL increase particularly on low-end computers.

FlipBook — Fun and Well Designed 2D Animation Software

Price: $19.99 for FlipBook Lite, $49.99 for FlipBook Studio, $149.99 for FlipBook Pro, $199.99 for FlipBook ProHD

Compatibility: Windows and OSX

Pro: From drawing, scanning to sound, this 2D animation software can make you powerful video.

Con: You can’t use it to make subtle changes as bone rigging is not available.

FlipBook is easy to use for beginners and pros who want to improve the editing experience. It is a powerful video editor that you can make 2D animation with various functions like syncing sound with animation, scanning cells, and more.

If you like to make a cartoon video like a pro, this 2D animation maker is best for you. It is free to download.

Features:

• Changes will be made while you change the animation, so FlipBook is fast to use
• You can use the shift key to make speed painting once you select one color
• Ten layers in animation for adding extra touches
• You can use a scanner to import images

Merchandise

Front cover of Battle for Dream Island: Official Character Guide

Scholastic Book Clubs listing

Add a photo to this gallery

Font

Data structure for manipulating font info.

Construction:

var font = new Font();

XML syntaxt:

<Property name="textFont" displayName="Text Font"
          type="Font">{families}|{weight}|{style}|{size}</Property>

var f = Font.fromString("Arial|bold|italic|12px");

var f = Font.fromString("Arial|bold|italic|12px");

var height = f.getPixelHeight(); // 12

var f = Font.fromString("Arial|bold|italic|12px");

var css = f.toCSSFontString();
// "Arial bold italic 12px"

Editor supports:

Property page:

Properties of type can be edited in the
property dialog.

property with the special name
is editable with the Font style toolbar.

3.1 Why this project?

As I once wrote on the Pencil website, I have always liked drawing and the art of creating motion from a series of drawings. As a child, I used to make animation by drawing pictures on each page of a notebook. It was fun and simple, but not so convenient and quite limited (compared to a real animation film featuring colours, sound, etc).

Displaying pictures and playing sound is an ability that computers quickly acquired. As a result, a lot of animation software naturally emerged over time. However the usual input systems (keyboard and mouse) used by computers, along with conventional software design, have kept those programmes remote from the original drawing experience of traditional animation. Fortunately, pen tablets and later tablet PC appeared and made it possible to get an experience much closer to actual drawing. Still I found that existing animation programmes were either

• not taking advantage of the tablet
• not recreating the drawing experience of traditional animation, or not completely satisfactory in their design
• oriented towards other goals than traditional animation
• not available / affordable to the general class of users

So I decided to develop an application which would be simple, available to anyone, and designed to recreate the drawing experience of traditional animation, along with some other benefits coming from using a computer. In a sense, it is an attempt at conciling the traditional pencil approach advocated by people such as Hayao Miyazaki: drawn to perfection and the advantages offered by today’s computers, in particular pen tablets. This is the guiding line of the project.

New Features

• #1068 Added support for TIFF format (by Andrey Nevdokimof).
• #1074, #1121 Added a slider for changing frame size at timeline (by David Lamhauge).
• #1109 Import images as new layers on specific frames based on filename and numbering postfix e.g., Joe0001.png’, ‘Joe0002.png’, etc (by David Lamhauge).
• #1115 Added support for transparency in exporting WebM and APNG.
• #1126 Check for Pencil2D updates. (+ Added forum/discord links in Help menu.)
• #1136 Added an option to export key frames only when exporting image sequence.
• #1145 Added zoom shortcuts from 25% up to 400% as 1, 2, 3, 4 and Shift+2, 3, 4. (by David Lamhauge)

Fixes

• FPS spinbox didn’t work on Ubuntu 14.04. By Martin van Zijl
• Not able to type correct values into HSV and RGB boxes.
• Save dialog showed twice on OSX when quitting from dock.
• “Cancel” button of save dialog was ignored.
• Duplicate key wasn’t working in some cases.
• App crashed when duplicating a sound key.
• Can’t save multiple times after importing sound layers.
• The framerate wasn’t accurate when playing animation.
• The app stalled when using dotted cursor and zooming-in very much.
• Vector outlines are not drawn when Horizontal Flip and Show Outlines Only are activated. By Martin van Zijl
• Some shortcuts are broken, file extensions are case-sensitive in image sequence import By Nick

Pencil 2D — Cross-Platform Software with Intuitive Interface

Price: Free

Compatibility: Windows, Linux, and OSX

Pro: It offers English, Spanish, and Portuguese language tutorials to use.

Con: It doesn’t support the shapes tool. If you like to make shapes and draw something, you’d be disappointed.

Want an open-source and free 2D animation design software to help you create videos? Pencil2D animation is the type of program that can help beginners.

You can get to grips with how 2D animation works, and you can create some very fun and interesting videos along the way.

Features:

• Minimalist design to let you make animation easily
• Raster and vector workflow switching
• Cross-platform compatibility to free download

Can’t export videos.

Please make sure you are using the latest version (0.6.4 or later) to export videos. We use FFMPEG for this process.

For users with spanish language localization (and perhaps other languages)

There’s a bug in version predating 0.6.5 which impedes users to export videos when having the interface To fix this you have to explicitly add the filetype to the video name when browsing for an output folder after using the “browse” button.

If you see your file named only as please rename it to (e.g FileType -> MP4, AVI, WebM, etc) and make sure the filetype extension is visible in the file address bar before exporting, otherwise Pencil2D will export an empty file and not a video, as it can convert the animation. This has been fixed in version 0.6.5+

Pencil Crashed and my files are unusable / corrupted!

A proper crash recovery has already been put in our development plans, we won’t let you wait too long!

Please follow the Pencil2D Project File Corruption Prevention / Partial Recovery Guide to avoid losing work.

We are looking for ways to optimize Pencil2D, but improving your computer is paramount for any graphics creation software. Meanwhile please read the following advice to prevent losing work when experiencing similar issues:

1. If you’re planning to work semi-professionally with Pencil2D (youtube content creator, freelance animator, etc) we recommend that you comply with the following minimum requirements:
   • 64 Bits Operating System
   • ICore-5 (3rd Generation or Above) or comparable CPU architecture
   • 4GB of RAM
2. When working we recommend that you work with Individual Files for your CUTS / SHOTS / SCENES, instead of doing a full length video on a single file.
3. Professional digital artists and animators in studio environments use a numbered nomenclature to name their files. Usually each saved file name is suffixed by a double, triple or even quad digit number. e.g
   • You should attempt to make habit of saving your progress with the next number in sequence at major milestones (i.e keyframes, breakdowns, inbetweens, ink n’ paint, etc). This way you can prevent to lose your work in the rare case that Pencil2D crashes and corrupts your save.
   • In the future we will attempt to automate this process as well, since it’s good practice to save it that way regardless of stability issues of any given software.

Synfig — Open Source 2D Animation Software for Beginners

Price: Free

Compatibility: Windows, Linux, and OSX

Pro: It offers more than 50 layers to make simple or advanced animation, so you don’t need to worry about its limitation though it is free to use.

Con: Few tutorials are available in the market to start making an animation for beginners.

Synfig Studio is an open-source, free 2D animation software that is the perfect place for beginners to learn about 2D animation. There are two versions available for free download — stable and testing.

The testing version has some experimental features if users want to try those ahead of their introduction into the stable release.

Features:

• Supports multiple layers of content
• The bone system allows for the creation of cutout animations from bitmap images
• Has sound support to allow for the addition and syncing of narration and/or music to the video

Выводы

Правильно выбранный планшет, художественный или непрофессиональный, обеспечит возможность быстрого переноса изображения на компьютер. Выбирать при этом стоит, ориентируясь не только на топ графических планшетов, но и на соотношение цена к качеству, и на производителя.

Эксперты рекомендуют выбирать подходящий планшет для графического дизайна среди продукции марок Wacom (для профессионалов) или Genius (для начинающих). Хотя при отсутствии определённых требований можно сделать выбор и в пользу любого гаджета менее известных брендов, выбирая его по размеру рабочей поверхности планшета, разрешению или другим характеристикам.

Для редактирования или создания качественных изображений рекомендуется предпочесть подходящий планшет для обработки фотографий типа Wacom Intuos Pro L Large. Для художников и дизайнеров подойдёт планшет для графики Wacom Intuos Art.

При желании получить оптимальное соотношение качества и цены стоит обратить внимание на модели для начинающих марки Huion. А детям можно приобрести самый недорогой планшет, на котором можно рисовать стилусом из модельного ряда X-Pen

В комплекте с планшетом должно идти хорошее перо. Лучше всего, если к нему будет прилагаться набор сменных стержней – это позволит увеличить срок службы детали. Кроме того, хороший графический планшет может иметь ещё и камеру в качестве дополнительного инструмента для ввода изображений.