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We need "delete blank keyframe" function!!


Michael Moon

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I'm new to Spriter and I'm quite disappointed about how many subtle bugs and discomforts it has.

At first, I wanted to accustomed to the Spriter as it is. But as I using it more and more, I found that those nuisances are wasting my times and energy a little bit much.

So I decided to post about the nuisances that I experiences one by one. I strongly believe the reason why those nuisances are not fixed until now is that users experience too many discomforts and they leave to another animating tool rather than try to report it.

There are many things, really.

  • Sometimes copying keyframes from multiple objects doesn't work, so I had to copy one by one from the obejcts.
  • Sometimes, I can't move bones. When that happens I use middle mouse button for panning screen, and after then I could move bones again.
  • And when I'm scaling bones, there was difference between the expectation about how it would scale the sprites and how it actually look like. For example, when I attach a bone to a vertically long rectangle(bone's root is on the floor of the rectangle and bone's head on ceiling of the rectangle) and scale the bone vertically, I expected this scaling would make the sprite scaled vertically but it scaled the sprite horizontally. It's not intuitional at all.
  • ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC

I think I chose wrong platform. Actually, I want to refund Spriter right now and transfer to Spine2d. I should have been here after this tool is fully matured.... But, I already purchased this and I feel bad about doing nothing about the discomforts that I experience.

 

Whatever, what I want to suggest today is one thing about editing keyframes.

Spriter adds a keyframe in the master timeline whenever users add a keyframe to a sprite or bone. This is useful when multiple keyrames exist in at a moment because users can edit multiple keyrames' speed graph easily. However, the downside is, when users edit multiple keyframes which are spreading through different moments, it generates multiple master keyrframes as many as the number of the moments that users want to edit. For example, when a user move 4 keyframes which is spreading at moment 1,2,3,4, it generate 4 master keyframes.

About this, you can't simply say use master keyframes for editing those subkeyframes when you don't want to generate another master keyframes because when user want to delicately calibrate animations it requires calibrating subkeyframes to another moments.

Since Spriter doesn't provide a function that can clear blank master keyrames (actually I'm not sure at this point, is there a function like this? At least I couldn't find it) users have to manage master keyframes when they just want to focus on editing subkeyframes. That is, it requires unnecessary attention that just wasting our energy.

 image.png.ba75882d157f4567d0e24ebd406e7e4c.png

It would be better if Spriter has a function that delete blank master keyframes at once.

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  • 2 months later...

Hi Michael,

We're sorry to hear you had bad experiences. Hopefully we can help with much of it, but before I try I'd like to thank you for your feedback, because users like who take the time to report issues and make suggestions improved Spriter Pro and continue to give us insights for making Spriter 2 all the better.

Now onto the specific issues:
"Sometimes copying keyframes from multiple objects doesn't work, so I had to copy one by one from the objects."
To my knowledge you're the first person to ever report such and issue. I'd love to find out more. What OS are you using Spriter Pro on? Maybe you might be  multi-selecting key frame nodes in the time-line to copy them. Amazingly I've never even tried that.  What I do to copy multiple objects key frames is just select them in the actual canvas while anywhere on the time line and press control+C, then go anywhere else on the timeline and press control+v. I don't remember any issues going back a great many update builds, but if the paste acts as though not everything was successfully pasted, then try just pressing control+V again.
Please watch these videos at the top of the search results: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brashmonkey+spriter+copy+and+paste


"Sometimes, I can't move bones. When that happens I use middle mouse button for panning screen, and after then I could move bones again."
This is another bug I've never seen reported before other than occasionally missing clicking the bones because they are quite thin, especially when working with very high res images. Again if we know your specific OS and maybe input device we might be able to figure out the cause of the issue.

"And when I'm scaling bones, there was difference between the expectation about how it would scale the sprites and how it actually look like. For example, when I attach a bone to a vertically long rectangle(bone's root is on the floor of the rectangle and bone's head on ceiling of the rectangle) and scale the bone vertically, I expected this scaling would make the sprite scaled vertically but it scaled the sprite horizontally. It's not intuitive at all."

This is not a bug or glitch, its because Spriter does not do mesh deforming of the sprites, it can only stretch or rotate them as rectangular images. If you watch the first several minutes starting at 2 minutes in, this video you'll understand how to work with this:

 
Regarding your suggestions for master key-frames qw completely agree, as do many other users. All of these concerns will be non-issues in Spriter 2, but that doesn't help you in the moment. To make matters worse for you, yes I think you're right and I think there's no automatic way to purge empty main key frames. The most useful information I can tell you is Spriter Pro's format was designed around the traditional cartoon animator's workflow of creating specific full body pose key-frames, with the bonus that it will or can tween between them if you want it to. It's really designed for animators to animate based on key-frame poses and not on individually controlling the tweening and separate timing of independent body parts. This is why the way Spriter works is frustrating and counter-productive for you in this regard,

As I mentioned, Spriter 2 will work much more like how you want, in regard to predicable scaling (and deforming), and also in regards to totally independent time-lines without forced main keyframes. If you own Spriter Pro you'll get Spriter 2 as a free upgrade, and already have access to test the latest alpha build as it developes to monitor progress and give us feedback if you choose, but this is by no means an immediate or fast resolution for your current frustrations.

Please feel free to email me directly at mike@brashmonkey.com if I've not sufficiently helped alleviate your frustrations with Spriter.

and sorry for the delayed reply.

-Mike at BrashMonkey

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