Krita is a tool with visions. And one of these visions is not to copy/have everything because other tools have it. I believe you have to learn a lot about Krita and the philosophy behind Krita!
Michelist
Krita is a tool with visions. And one of these visions is not to copy/have everything because other tools have it. I believe you have to learn a lot about Krita and the philosophy behind Krita!
Michelist
AAh, but I want do everything in krita
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Krita was never meant to do what toon boom or blender could do. There has to be a line in the sand somewhere and the krita team decided that traditional animation was what krita was meant to be. Now, little enhancements here and there is perfectly welcome, but radical departures from what krita was meant to be is simply never going to happen. Never too late to learn how walt disney and the rest of the masters did it.
If this idea is not already in development, i would like to request adding a rigging system. Basically, similar to Adobe Aftereffects, and the pivot point feature. Rigging is where you add âbonesâ and âjointsâ, then move those bones/joints however you please, to animate. It could be part of the animation toolbar things, since this will mainly be needed for animation, or it can be a seperate thing- maybe a simplified IK system for 2D animation. An example of this being used is for arms. Arms have around 3 joints in a simple animation, and tweening them with simply pivot points is a bit difficult. So i believe that adding this would be beneficial to MANY animators; because tweening is a common practice for many who use this app. Any feedback on this feature is allowed! ![]()
Hi @Gracedasnek
I moved your request into the existing feature request for rigging tools. Feel free to add your vote to this. A high number of votes wonât guarantee that the developers will work on this but it does serve as a measure of user interest. Since 2020 this one has garnered 6 votes.
PS There is a lot of interesting info on this feature in comments above.
Yes, this tool would be useful for many animators who draw and move characters. Although transform masks are available, each body part requires many layers.
I suggest the Krita developers create a rigging system based on transform masks, but with only one group layer (bone layer) for all drawings. This system would allow drawing while smoothly moving layers bound to bones. Such a system doesnât exist in Moho (which uses vector graphics, a completely different system), or even in OpenToonz (which doesnât allow drawing while bones are moving). This would be cool and powerful, especially considering how well you can draw in Krita.
Iâd also like to be able to create an area of ââinfluence for bones if multiple bones are bound to a single drawing layer. Imagine how cool and easy it would be to animate the effect of the wind on a girlâs skirt, like the opening sequence from tiger x0xâs animation (nyattabox). They spent six months on that animation! It would be possible to create raster animations, mixing frame-by-frame with tweening. Moho has a similar bone function, but itâs extremely inconvenient to combine several programs.
The Problem: Kritaâs Limitations in Modern Animation Workflows
Currently, Krita is exceptional for traditional, frame-by-frame raster animation. Its brush engine is highly regarded, but when it comes to long-format projects or modern 2D production pipelines, Krita lacks non-destructive, structural animation tools. Animating in Krita requires drawing every frame manually. We cannot reuse parts, manipulate characters via skeletons, or manage assets efficiently across the timeline.
Proposed Workflow Improvements and Missing Features
To make Krita a viable alternative to industry-standard software like Adobe Animate, Toon Boom Harmony, Toon Squid, and Calipeg, I propose the development team consider implementing the following features:
1. Bone Tools and Skeleton Rigging
Current state: Krita has no bone tools. Animators can sort of fake a rig using nested Group Layers and Transform Masks, but this is incredibly tedious and transform mask animation is not fully optimized.
The Request: Implement a 2D skeletal rigging system (Inverse Kinematics / IK). Similar to Moho, Toon Boom Harmony, or Spine 2D, this would allow animators to build a âbone layer,â attach raster drawings to those bones, and animate the joints rather than redrawing the character for every frame.
2. Mesh Deformation Tools
Current state: Krita allows for basic layer transformations, but lacks advanced localized warping over time.
The Request: Introduce mesh rigging tools. By generating a mesh grid over a raster layer, animators could pin specific points and deform the artwork smoothly across the timeline. This is a standard feature in Toon Boom Harmony and Adobe Animate for organic movements, like a characterâs breathing or hair physics, without frame-by-frame redrawing.
3. Asset Management System (Symbols/Drawing Substitutions)
Current state: Redrawing or manually duplicating layers is the only way to manage recurring assets (like lip-sync mouths or specific hand gestures).
The Request: Implement an asset library system similar to âSymbolsâ in Adobe Animate or âDrawing Substitutionsâ in Toon Boom Harmony. Animators should be able to store a master library of drawings per layer and cycle through them using a slider or hotkeys on the timeline. Updating the master âSymbolâ should automatically update all instances of it on the timeline.
4. Timeline Folders and Peg Hierarchies
Current state: While Krita has layers, complex animation hierarchies easily clutter the timeline.
The Request: Add proper âPegâ structures or advanced timeline folders. Pegs (as seen in Harmony) act as master nodes where transformations (scale, rotate, translate) can be applied. This master node then drives all the child layers beneath it, keeping the actual artwork layers clean and untransformed.
5. Real-Time Audio Scrubbing & Intuitive Cell Pasting
Current state: Krita does not currently support audio playback. Managing cell placement can also be rigid.
The Request: Bring in real-time audio scrubbing so animators can locate specific phonetic sounds by dragging the playhead, a crucial feature for dialogue animation. Additionally, look to iPad apps like Toon Squid and Calipeg for intuitive, gesture-based ways to copy, paste, and extend cell durations effortlessly.
Conclusion:
Adding structural rigging, bone tools, and an asset management system wouldnât just improve Krita; it would fundamentally elevate it from a traditional light-table app to a complete 2D animation powerhouse capable of supporting professional studio pipelines.
(In reply to the post above this one, not this topic in general.)
Looks like yet another AI chatbot dump. This is not useful, itâs over five hundred words of fluff with no substance. The AI does not improve what you wrote, it just makes it longer and wastes the time of everyone who has to read it.
If you want to create a useful feature request, create one thread per feature. It doesnât make sense to have five huge topics in a single thread. Write the explanation yourself (using a translator is fine if you donât speak English well) and provide examples of how it works in other programs if possible.
Also, some of these already have been requested, so use the forum search and cast your vote there, they have a âVoteâ button at the top-left. You donât need to make âme tooâ comments in them, but examples from other programs are almost always useful if you have them.
Hi @Rahul_Shaw -
There was already an existing feature request for rigging tools in Krita, so I closed your feature request and merged your comment into this thread.
Is it just me or are you really good at recognising AI texts? ![]()
The texts are almost all structured according to the same pattern and differ only slightly across the various AIs.
Michelist
Well, I skip the fluff and look for the actual information in the text, which for AI texts generated from a very short prompt is simply nonexistent. It almost never happens that human-written text has such a ludicrously low information density, you only really ever see it in marketing texts otherwise.
Which also goes for the title in this case (before it was merged into this thread) âBridging the Gap: Bringing Industry-Standard Rigging and Asset Management to Kritaâ is marketing speak. Iâd already opened up the word counter before I opened the thread.
What is the difference between 1 and 2? In 2., you say (or rather your AI says) that Krita has only basic layer transformation and doesnât have proper warp transformations, thatâs untrue. Itâs not skeleton rigging, but skeleton rigging was mentioned in 1., so Iâd expect a different feature here, and regardless, the statement is still untrue.
3. Is also untrue, there are clone layers and clone frames. There is even a Symbol Library, itâs just only vector.
4. Also seems like can be done with transform masks for a group.
5. Thatâs a nothing-burger. Way too vague to be useful for a developer.
And donât use AI to write things for you. Use your own words and translation service like Google Translate or DeepL. AI just makes it look low-effort and makes everything sound insulting. And the text just looks like whoever wrote it doesnât actually know Krita.
@BeARToys there was at least one nearly identical post to this one. There are some characteristic AI phrasings like âitâs not just, itâs Yâ (where Y is just X but grander), here seen in the last sentence. AI also usually doesnât understand what itâs saying and doesnât understand the situation, which is shown in my comments above. One more feature I recognize AI texts by is also feeling gaslighty: here itâs already visible, but there are cases, usually when a person is trying to argue something and they actually use AI just to rephrase things instead of write a whole thing of nothing like here, where the information density @drawpile talks about is on par with human writing, but that gaslighty feeling is just spilling out of the comment. Canât really give you an example, but Iâve seen it on reddit recently multiple times. You know how in shows or movies there is sometimes a very smiley and very unhelpful customer service person, very often done for comedic effect? Imagine that in real life, and youâre the person getting frustrated.
Just to stay at the topic, is that even feasible for Krita to have a rigging system? I mean there are already open source software for that. And Krita is a drawing software so frame by frame animation is understandable, but rigging is something different. ![]()
It is possible to implement. But⌠we donât have plans for it just yet. There are still higher priority features that fit our goals more, like more comic tools (the comic template is already kind of good but limited to black lines to work in that âsmartâ way, and I have higher ambitions, plus there are no page settings with bleeds etc., and Comic Manager is not available on Android).
Donât wanna derail the thread too much but the black outline limitation was a gripe I had too!! Very frequently you want to have different color panel lines for artistic purposes. So instead Iâve been using destination in for panel vector + clone layer with color to alpha, which gives me full color option and I donât need to alpha inherit everythingâanything inside clips correctly automatically, including other panels.
Could you please provide an empty file and maybe a tutorial on how to use it? (not here, in the Tutorials section as a new thread) I think it would be pretty useful for others.
Though another thing that I think would be good to have is to have a nice brush strokes as the panel edges. Currently you can âstroke the vector shapesâ but itâs of course destructive.
Haha I already made a post on it, along with a scripter code that can generate the panel set-up. Better way to make comic panels
And yeah that indeed would be nice, and that would be one step closer to having a âRibbon Brushâ in Krita (which I know is highly voted too) if images can be mapped along vector strokes. Would that require a big update to the vector engine though?
I know its ai and stuff but its kinda there. The only i dont know is 4 since i never went into harmony to know what peg is there.
Ainmation is on the controllers not the same which depends on the rig to deform. So skeleton\armature is not the same as deforms.
And the symbol thing is to make something like mouth swaping and reuaing them to make a lip sync instead of using copy paste non stop.
But harmony is vector if i am not mistaken, vector allows so much more in animation, but we would need a brush engine before (like blender has with greese pencil ) or you would probably need to import things in.
But with pixel deformations i would checking the live2d rigging on pixels and they work strangely enough. Like drawing a frame and with a cage move it around for a couple of frame would ease a lot frame interpolation work.
I dont think full on puppets would possible in krita without a big new thing added but tranaform masks already exist it just needs the controler to make it usable on top like skelwton to hold it in place like an articulation of some sort. It would fake it. Live2D is the best example of this or in alternative like the poor pin tool in After Effects without riggs on top.
But if transform cages affected vector layers points then puppets would be unlocked with it. Because pixel transforms kinda are bad to pixels.
But yeah i also agree there would be better stuff to do first.