Future Pivot feature suggestions (e.g. bendy lines)

[peterbone]

No one has ever suggested this to me, but I had a think about what features I think Pivot would most benefit from and this was one of them. No doubt this will cause some controversy among those of you who think that Pivot is becoming too 'easy'.

Have a look at this demo. Hold Caps Lock (was Ctrl) to bend a line. Stretchy lines and scaling (Ctrl, Alt) are disabled in this version, but I intend this to work with that. I'm not sure what keyboard key I'll use yet. It's designed so that you can bend any figure, including those made in earlier versions.

http://pivotanimator.net/Bendy_demo.zip

Don't get too excited yet about Pivot 5 as it's still a long way off. Just seeing what you think of this idea. Also let me know if you find any bugs or anything you think could be improved.

[peterbone]

Are you planning to add a button or option to disable the snapping when stretching a limb? That would make using the feature so much easier.

No. The snapping works the same as stretching in Pivot 4. It will only snap if you start dragging when the line is bent. If you drag from a straight line it won't snap, so you can position it wherever you want.

[Juke]

It's annoying though if the line is already bent, and for the next frame you want to bend it another 4 pixels but instead it snaps all the way back to the straight line.
This feature looks pretty cool though I think I would use it!

[Daniël]

I think this tool actually has quite a lot of potential! Even though I definitely think you shouldn't use the Ctrl key for it, since the stretch tool seems a lot more useful still, I can definitely see this being used within animation, as it not only eliminates the hassle of having to draw curved lines (assuming you'll add the same system within the stick figure creator), it also allows animators to make use of the more animation techniques that could improve the quality of animation.
This could be use for animating rope, which I have discovered can be quite bothersome to do in Pivot, or other bendable objects in general (floppy dicks are a popular theme within our civilized DarkDemon community). Maybe this could even lead to the possibility of animating liquid on a whole new level.

I have to say, on first sight it seemed kind of useless, but the more thought I put into it, the more I started to like this concept and I definitely think it would be a great addition to the possible Pivot 5.

Also, if you need me to do the Dutch translation for this version too, just hit me up and I'd be more than happy to do it.

Edit: On the snapping issue, wouldn't it be a possibility that we would able to return a limb or stick of whatever to go back to it's original state by the use of something manual, like a right mouse-click or something?

[Coweetie]

I would love to see a polyfill tool (you have to click at least 3 joints, and it will make a fill then) instead of having to put thick lines everywhere to make something filled with black or another color.
is something like this possible?

also that bending is a nice idea though, even though you can simply add more joints to make it bendy :)

that snappping really is a bit annoying... could you not make an option to enable/disable it?

[Mitch]

Are you planning to add a button or option to disable the snapping when stretching a limb? That would make using the feature so much easier.

No. The snapping works the same as stretching in Pivot 4. It will only snap if you start dragging when the line is bent. If you drag from a straight line it won't snap, so you can position it wherever you want.

I think he was referring to the feature that already exists where by resizing segments close to their original size will snap them back into place, I think this should be optional or only happen when some form of hotkey is pressed as it gets reallllll annoying when you're trying to do some 1 pixel tier 3d stuff and it's snapping back to it's original length.

in regards to the bendy limbs that sounds really trill man.

[Suxsa]

You can put a layer system? Like these drawing programs (Paint Tool Sai, Photoshop, Sketchbook...). I think it would be better to animate.

[tuna]

This looks pretty cool (y)
I've downloaded it, it doesn't snap at all?

Also, I just discovered a bug with 4.1 by accident (bit late seeing as it's been released as stable several months ago) which you could fix before you release 4.2.
I'm not sure how nobody discovered this before but oh well.

Spoiler:

Load a background
Make 2 or more frames
Select all frames
Change to white background
Select yes when it asks you if you want to delete it from the list of backgrounds
Click one of the frames and you get an error.
One of two things happen, you click through a few errors and then the frame you first selected changes to white, but then you get a load of errors when you try to do other stuff (eg: play the animation)
Or all the backgrounds except the frame you first selected have no backgrounds at all (not even white)

Edit:

Spoiler:

Actually, this stems from something else.

Make a frame
Add a background
Make sure the frame in the timeline has updated
Delete the background
Select yes when it asks you if you want to delete it from the list of backgrounds
Click on the frame.
Error
No background at all.

[Ashero]

This is great 'n' all, but please, change bending to alt+click. Also, this will make it harder to make serious animations like fighting scenes.

edit: Nvm, this will make GREAT shockwave effects.

[kellawgs]

Hey, that's really neat!

[Elliott]

Wow - Pivot just wiped out pen-tool stick animation in Flash overnight!

Only suggestion would be making Crtl_Shift reset a line to 0 curvature.

[The Black Mamba]

Spoiler:

Get swole

Though that was mildly entertaining, I probably wouldn't find too much use for this. It's a good idea though, just don't use CTRL. I really want to see the stick segment limit removed or raised, good work so far.

[Raymond]

Well now I'm excited for pivot 5 THANKS PETER!

Lol really though this is cool. Also is there any chance that you'll incorporate an auto-save feature in Pivot 5? Like where you can set how often you want it to save for you (IE: every 5 mins or something)

That would have saved me a lot of work today.

[Juke]

Instead of an actual time frame, maybe a feature when we can choose autosave to save every certain amount of frames added since opening up the animation.

[kellawgs]

I like that this addition will make every single stickman have a 1 joint back, since manually curving the back with multiple joints will be rendered pointless. Good stuff.