Transition from ClipStudioPaint to Krita (Animation)

[Quartzleo]

Hi, in a comment from another post, I mentioned I’ve been a CSP only artist for about 6-7 years, and I’m looking into transitioning over to Krita in light on the new CSP licensing system, I currently know how to do use Photoshop and used to use Krita about 7 years ago, so I’m a little familiar with the software, but there are some major differences between the two have that I need to re learn, in another thread I was shared how differently Krita and CSP handle animation, and want to try and migrate an existing animation file I made CSP and migrate it over to Krita as a good way to understand these differences. its a 6 frame animation loop.
CSP the file looks like this Imgur

Krita it looks like this Imgur

In motion it should look like this Imgur

The way CSP handles this is animation folders, creating little timelines each one on top of each other, foreground> effects> line art> color> shading> background.

Krita from what I learned handles it this way every layer is its own animation folder which is better in some regards but from that it gives the impression id have to scrap my entire file and redraw every layer and frame manually but is there a way of taking doing it without redrawing.

In CSP it can be done by dragging a layer you drew outside of the folder into it and use “specify layer” to assign it to a specific frame of the animation Imgur
Any and all advice is appreciated.

[AhabGreybeard]

It looks like you have the individual animated frames of CSP as groups of static images in krita. Two groups of six images and a static background.
That will be easy to manipulate into a krita animation.

For a longer animation it would be better to render out each of the individual animated folders from CSP to a stored image sequence and then bring them into krita using File → Import Animation Frames to give an animated layer in krita.
You can do that with this one if you like, to avoid the tedium of manual conversion.

To do it manually, you have to realise that you can’t use the normal copy/paste techniques to move images between ‘static’ layers and ‘animated’ layers.
Within and between animated layers and their frames, you can do copy/cut/paste/drag and all sorts of things.
So, the question is, how do you get a static image into an animated layer?

[On your Timeline, you only have one layer displayed. That is probably the layer you’ve selected somewhere in the Layers docker.
In Settings → Configure Krita → General → Miscellaneous, there’s an option box for ‘Automatically pin new layers to timeline’. It would be a good idea to enable that so that you can see all the layers in the Timeline. You can pin individual layers to the Timeline in the Layers docker by right-click then ‘Pin to Timeline’.
When a layer is displayed in the Timeline, you can click on the small pin icon to pin/unpin it from the Timeline.]

Anyway … Make a new layer, intended to be an animated layer in krita for the purpose of receiving the individual static images from a particular group, then give it a meaningful name.
On the Timeline, for the static image layer of the first frame of the source group, right-click on frame-0 and click Create Duplicate Frame.
That will convert it into an animated layer with a single keyframe at frame-0. That is how you get a static image into ‘animation space’.
Then, on the Timeline, drag that keyframe onto frame-0 of the destination layer.
That will make the destination layer an animated layer with a keyframe at frame-0
You’ve just made frame-0 of the destination animated layer in krita.

Then, for second frame static image layer of the source group, right-click on its frame-0 on the Timeline and click Create Duplicate Frame to make it animated with a keyframe on frame-0.
Then drag that keyframe onto frame-1 of the destination layer.
You’ve just made frame-1 of the animated layer in krita.

When you’ve done all six frames like that, you’ll have a six frame animated layer in krita and you can delete the source layers and their group.

[Andreich_DMBL]

I agree with AhabGreybeard, the best solution would be to disassemble all frames into composite png images, sort them by their roles (line, shadow, background) and import each role as animated layers. Indeed, the idea of Krita is very simple - any layer can be a stream of frames while maintaining the overlay mode, transparency, and layer style. At the same time, the classical hierarchy of layers is completely preserved. The only inconvenience may be manipulating the movement of an “object” located on several layers, but this is solved by a group, or by selecting the necessary layers before moving. To move in several frames at once, Transformation Masks will be required.
Note that by default Krita does not have preset animation hotkeys, Be sure to set the most necessary hotkeys to create a blank frame, create a unique one from the current one (from holding), copy and paste the frame (it is different from copying a layer or selection). Note that the term “column” is used for a multi-layer frame, these actions will affect all active layers, for example: remove/add a hold column