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

[kellawgs]

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but is it possible to make it so that you could move the 'camera'? It would be far more convenient to animate something involving camera movement if you could have the option to have all the .stks in the animation in place and just have the camera move instead of having the camera in place and move all the .stks around it.

You do realize you can just add camera movements afterwards by pressing Ctrl+A and just moving all figures at once?

It would make movements easier during heavy camera movements

I disagree with their being a moveable camera, but another reason it may be a helpful tool is because you could assign a level of parallax to your backgrounds so that it doesn't all completely move together.

[peterbone]

To answer your first question, here are some examples:
As you might be able to tell, the figures themselves aren't quite as representative as the figure names (which would have been more obvious if you were able to see the full figure name) as I kind of categorize them really well. For each scene I just create the figures I need there and it'd be much easier to find the figures I need if I was able to search them by name.

For you second question, here's a background I made.
I gave every figure one origin and removed all things beyond that. This way it's much easier for me to move parts of the background around and send them to the center easily. It also helps me know where the place the figures without having to check their places again after it has left the figure builder.
The bad part however is that I'm never able to see what figure I've selected, meaning I have to either move every figure until I stumble upon the right one or check the color for each figure. Which takes a lot of time.

Hope this clears things up.

Why are you not able to select the right figure? Do you forget which handles belongs to which figure? I may add the ability to select a figure by clicking anywhere on it at some point as I can see it would make things a bit easier. However, it won't be simple and so not for the next version. I need to write code to check if the mouse coordinate is inside a figure segment. That's fairly easy for lines and circles, but not so simple for sprites.

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but is it possible to make it so that you could move the 'camera'? It would be far more convenient to animate something involving camera movement if you could have the option to have all the .stks in the animation in place and just have the camera move instead of having the camera in place and move all the .stks around it.

Pivot is a 2D animator. There's no difference between selecting all figures and moving them and moving a camera. If you want to create the effect of 3D then you have to do it manually. To create parallax effects due to camera movement you would have to assign 3D coordinate to each figure joint and you end up with a 3D animator, which would be a completely different program.

[tuna]

The bad part however is that I'm never able to see what figure I've selected, meaning I have to either move every figure until I stumble upon the right one or check the color for each figure. Which takes a lot of time.

Why are you not able to select the right figure? Do you forget which handles belongs to which figure?

if the origin is off the screen, you could normally select it by clicking a red node, but if there's no nodes and the origin is off the screen, that becomes very difficult to select

[peterbone]

The bad part however is that I'm never able to see what figure I've selected, meaning I have to either move every figure until I stumble upon the right one or check the color for each figure. Which takes a lot of time.

Why are you not able to select the right figure? Do you forget which handles belongs to which figure?

if the origin is off the screen, you could normally select it by clicking a red node, but if there's no nodes and the origin is off the screen, that becomes very difficult to select

OK, I've now done it. So in v4.2 you'll be able to click anywhere on a figure to select it. Thanks.

[tuna]

nice one

[Lord]

I've noticed when I use my vehicle sprites in animations it causes it to lag, why is this? Are they too large of files or something?

[peterbone]

I've noticed when I use my vehicle sprites in animations it causes it to lag, why is this? Are they too large of files or something?

Yeah, anything involving large sprites will cause some degree of lag depending on the specs of your computer. This is the same for any software doing a similar thing. When a sprite is drawn on the screen it has to firstly scale and rotate the image if needed and then draw it to the screen. Drawing lines and circles is much faster. If it's too slow then try reducing the size of the sprite before loading it into Pivot.

[peterbone]

Is there any way to make it so Pivot doesn't do the transparency for you? It really limits what you can do when making complex backgrounds.

Please be more specific. What transparency are you talking about? Do you mean making image based backgrounds or figure based backgrounds?

[SIFTER]

Don't you find this odd, Peter? (a bunch of transparent white circles on top of a sprite.)

[Anton]

^I don't see what's your doing in this gif.

More explanation maybe ?
what are these figures ?
Are you touching the transparency bar ?

[peterbone]

Yeah, I don't understand either Sifter. What am I looking at and what's the problem? It seems like you're doing something we can't see. Are you saying that the circles are fully transparent or semi transparent? Do you have onion skins enabled in the options? Remember that when you select a single figure, it's onion skins will become visible. For transparent figures that will make them appear darker. Maybe that has something to do with whatever you're talking about.

[SIFTER]

You're looking at me showing a glitch where when you place semi-transparent white circles on a sprite with a white background. The onion skins are enable, but i'm not sure if that has something to do with my issue. I'll pm you the .piv to test on it.

[Daniël]

It definitely has, because of the transparency being turned down you can see all the onion skin below. It's darker in the middle, because there are more figures there.

[SIFTER]

There are no black figures in that very specific location what so ever.

[Chris]

Hmmm... Sifter i can't really understand what glitch you mean. If you have a high figure count in one frame along with some sticks that are supposed to be transparent then pivot will change the opacity of other sticks without the animator's consent.