OpenToonz v1.2 released!

[herbert123]

How do you get the horizontal time line? I can't find it

At the left top of the Xsheet, click the "Xsheet" labelled button. It doesn't look like a button at first glance, but it is.

[uncle808us]

Thank you I find the UI in OT to be the Blender of 2D animation. CONFUSING.

[herbert123]

Thank you I find the UI in OT to be the Blender of 2D animation. CONFUSING.

I think it the initial confusion is caused more by the concepts and workflow in OT, rather than the GUI. New users have to wrap their heads around the concept of levels, columns, and how these are used in the nodal view and the various tools. The interface itself is no more difficult than Flash, Harmony, or TVPaint.

And nodes can be intimidating to newbies too.

[exile]

A tutorial on rigging in OT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVNlenF7LHk got me restarted on the eternal merry-go-round of trying out different animation software programs. This time my special interest was using a mesh to deform bitmaps. The Moho mesh has been difficult for me to use effectively.
My experiments with OT, using the techniques in the video (see link above), have been promising. Animating cut-out characters takes somewhat longer in OT if you are not working from a central skeleton, but the default mesh is usable "out of the box", each one can be given its own skeleton. I wonder who else has tried working with the same bitmap characters in Moho and OT and compared results - what was your experience?

[Lukas]

Wow, it's progressing really fast! It's already much more accessible than previous versions. The horizontal timeline is great and the brush-system is pretty good.

I'm really interested in learning it and hopefully adding it to our pipeline for frame-by-frame productions. Right now we use TVPaint and some ToonBoom, but TVPaint is a bit oldfashioned and ToonBoom's learning curve is too steep and I find it too expensive.

[exile]

Lots of luck. I spent countless hours trying to set up a usable rig in OT and finally gave up. Spoiled by Moho, I guess. Individual features of OT are very promising, but it has a long way to go, maybe I just tried to do too much with it. The reference project was a bitmap character used to compare the mesh features of both programs. Not conclusive, but rigging in OT was a disaster in spite of carefully following tutorials.

[InfoCentral]

Lots of luck. I spent countless hours trying to set up a usable rig in OT and finally gave up.

I have the same impression. Very complicated with poor documentation. Going to give it a few more years to mature before venturing into the waters.