Onion Skin Transparency?

[NealF]

I'm sure there must be a way to adjust the transparency of the onion skin.
But for the life of me I can't find it.

Anyone know where it's hiding?

[Greenlaw]

The transparency levels adjust automatically as you increase the number of Onion Skin frames, but I don't think it's possible to adjust the base level. The transparency of the base frame (the one nearest to the current frame) appears to be locked at 50%, and the other Onion Skin frames get more or less transparent as Onion Skin frames are added and removed.

Is the current base level not transparent enough for you? Funny, I don't think I ever gave this any thought, but it does seem like you should be able to adjust it, doesn't it?

Of course, making an Onion Skin frame more opaque than 50% might not work very well, but I can see how you might want to make the Onion Skin frames that are barely visible a little more opaque.

[NealF]

I assumed you could adjust them like in Clip Studio. But I guess not.
Maybe I just have to get used to working this way. Still a novice with animation.

But I find that it get pretty confusing have them so dark. Especially when you've got the before and after.

Oh, well. I'm sure I could learn to adjust.

[Greenlaw]

But I find that it get pretty confusing have them so dark. Especially when you've got the before and after.

You can make it a lighter color. For example, Onion Skin's default red can be adjusted to have more white to can give the appearance of being more transparent.



I know it's not the same thing as adjusting the transparency level for each Onion Skin frame, but maybe it's helpful?

I sometimes prefer to use the Outlines Only mode. In some cases, this mode can reduce overlap confusion. This mode is available only for vector drawings.

[synthsin75]

Using the draw behind option may help.

[Greenlaw]

Interesting tip: I'm playing with the Outlines Only mode, and when I reduce the saturation here, it really looks more transparent.

[sang820]

It would be great if the onion skin could only display the outline of the selected shape, because there may be many shapes in my layer, and displaying them all would be messy

[Greenlaw]

I checked this setting's usability for the full range of Onion Skin frames (one side only)...



This setting does get very faint eight drawings away, but I don't think I'd actually use it this way.

[Greenlaw]

...It would be great if the onion skin could only display the outline of the selected shape, because there may be many shapes in my layer, and displaying them all would be messy

I know what you mean...like a 'silhouette' mode, right?

Here are examples with 'too much' detail...





...and this is with only three primitive shapes. It could look much cleaner if we could see only the silhouette (i.e., alpha channel) for each Onion Skin frame.

[sang820]

...It would be great if the onion skin could only display the outline of the selected shape, because there may be many shapes in my layer, and displaying them all would be messy

I know what you mean...like a 'silhouette' mode, right?

Here are examples with 'too much' detail...





...and this is with only three primitive shapes. It could look much cleaner if we could see only the silhouette (i.e., alpha channel) for each Onion Skin frame.

For example, within the same layer, only the contours of the selected shape are displayed.（Of course, I used three layers in the diagram, only displaying the graphics of this layer.）

[Greenlaw]

Personally speaking, I rarely used Onion Skin in Moho for puppet animation. It's usually enough for me to set my key poses and then scrub to see how the motion looks. Animating a 2D puppet in Moho is not unlike animating a puppet in a 3D program, and I rarely need onion skinning there (when it's even available in the 3D program.)

But after Moho 14 came out, because of the Freehand Tool improvements, I started using FBF more in Moho and Onion Skin is definitely useful for drawing FBF.

So, yes, now I'd like to see some improvements for Onion Skin in a future release too!

[Greenlaw]

I did a quick mock-up of 'Sihouette' mode to see if this looked like anything useable...



It's less busy than the mess I generated using Color Fills and Outlines Only modes, but I don't know. Just wondering what you guys think.

[Greenlaw]

Here's another POC: Taking a cue from Sang's suggested look, maybe more like this?

[synthsin75]

I'm not sure silhouettes would be useful, but we could definitely use onionskin for selected shapes only just like we have for select layers. That would allow more isolation within a layer to cut down the clutter.

[JoelMayer]

Long Story short, it would be really good to an extent essential to be able to adjust the Onion Skin Transparency.