I am creating some animated loops for a game (character walk, run and idle cycles). These animations need to loop seamlessly so that the last frame of the animation leads smoothly back into the first frame. I’m using onion skinning when I sketch each frame and to get onion skinning to work with looping, I’ve had to duplicate the first frame and add an extra copy of it onto the end. As far as I can tell this is the only way to do this in Krita.
It would be nice if there were a checkbox somewhere you could use to indicate that your animation is supposed to loop so that onion skinning will automatically look to the start of your animation for your next frame when you’re sketching the last frame(s) of your animation.
I think I’ve seen a similar request before …
The ability to clone frames, instead of copies of the frame, greatly simplifies such work with onion skin, but still requires using more frames on the timeline than is necessary for animation. (some compromise between the described situation and your wishes)
In general, the function you described can be useful not only for the loop itself, but also for a fragment of a longer animation, if the function is not bound to the entire document, but to the selected area.
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I don’t want to actually clone that frame. I want to avoid that by having the onion skinning behave as if it is there without actually copying it.
At the moment, you can clone a range of keyframes from the start of the animation to after the last keyframe, then use Insert Keyframe to add a new keyframe to the end.
Then, at the end, you’d see onion skins for those clones.
Can you try that to see if it works for you?
Yes, I can clone extra frames onto the end of the animation to get this effect. However, this requires extra work for each animation and changes the length and content of each animation that you then have to remember to delete when you’re done. And then if you decide to edit your animations, you have to redo and then delete the cloning all over again. You’re also going to need to do this for multiple frames if you take advantage of the onion skinnings ability to show multiple previous/next frames.
I just feel it would be a lot easier and more intuitive for users to add a ‘loop’ checkbox to the onion skinning rather than to have users add and delete frames from their animation every time they want to edit the last frames of a looping animation.
The function you requested is clear and logical, I do not dispute its necessity, on the contrary, I believe that its application can be broader than the original description.
Me and AhabGreybeard are just describing a compromise solution to the issue that works in the current version of Krita. If the export range is set (start/end), then there is no need to delete clones from the Krita source file. The onion skin will display the contents of the cloneframes out of range, while if configured correctly, the clones will not be exported. You can place clones both at the beginning and at the end of the cycle, and work quietly in the middle section. A serious inconvenience will be the numbering shift.
Example
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