Corel Painter Help | Creating frame-by-frame animation

Creating frame-by-frame animation

In Corel Painter, you can build animations one frame at a time. Then, when you complete a series of frames, also known as a frame stack, you can preview them as a movie.

The first step in creating a new animation is to create a movie. You can specify options such as the number of frames and the frame size. You can also choose how many onion skin layers you want to display. Onion skinning allows you to see multiple frames at the same time. You can view up to five frames at a time: the current frame and four other frames adjacent to it. This will help you determine where the next frame of motion should be drawn. For more information, see Using onion skinning.

Once you create a movie file, a blank frame appears in the document window so you can begin adding content by using brushes and other tools. After you complete a frame, you can use the navigation tools in the Frame Stacks panel to display the next frame in the sequence, or whichever frame you want to work on next. You can play back the animation as you create it, to make sure that you have the correct flow of movement. The Frame Stacks panel must stay open when you create or edit movies. For more information, see Editing frame content.

In Corel Painter, movies are saved to the Painter Framestack file format (FRM), which stores a series of images equal in size and resolution.

To create a new movie

1 Choose Movie

New Movie.

2 Type a filename in the Movie Name text box.

3 In the Canvas Settings area, type values in the Width and Height boxes.

The standard digital video frame is 640 by 480 pixels, which is a 4:3 aspect ratio. Many people work at sizes consistent with this aspect ratio.

4 Type a value in the Resolution box.

5 In the Movie Settings area, type a value in the Number of Frames box.

You can also add or remove frames at a later time.

6 From the Layers of Onion Skin options, choose the number of onion skin layers that you want.

The number of onion skin layers determines the number of frames displayed in the Frame Stacks panel. For more information, see Using onion skinning.

7 From the Storage Type list box, choose one of the following options:

• 8-bit gray — displays 256 levels of gray

• 8-bit System Palette — displays the system palette for 256 colors

• 15-bit color with 1-bit alpha — displays 32,768 colors and a layer for a channel

• 24-bit color with 8-bit alpha — displays 16.7 million colors and a layer for an anti-aliased channel

8 In the Enter Movie Name dialog box, specify a location to save the file.

9 Click Save.

The movie file is saved to the Painter Framestack (FRM) format.

When the movie opens, the Frame Stacks panel appears, and the document window displays the first frame of the movie.

You can also
Choose a paper color	Click the Color chip, and choose a color from the color picker.
Choose a paper texture	Click the Paper chip, and choose a paper texture from the Papers Textures panel.

The storage type lets you specify the color depth for saving each frame. This applies to the saved frame stack, not to your work in the current frame. For example, choosing 256 colors as the storage type still allows you to work with a selection and 24-bit tools in the document window for the current frame. As soon as you change frames, however, the image is saved in the 256-color format, and the selection is lost. If you want to maintain selections in saved frames, you must choose the 15-bit or 24-bit storage type. These storage types allow you to take advantage of compositing options that require a selection layer.

To create frame-by-frame animation

1 With the Frame Stacks panel open in the document window, navigate to frame 1.

2 In the toolbox, click the Brush tool.

3 Click the Brush Selector on the Brush Selector bar.

4 Click a brush category, and click a brush variant.

5 Paint the animation frame in the document window.

6 In the Frame Stacks panel, click the Step Forward button

Changing frames automatically saves the frame. You cannot undo changes after the frame has been saved.

Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you complete all frames.

You can view previous and future frames while working in the current frame with the onion skin view. You can enable the onion skin view by clicking Movie Show Onion Skin Layers.

You can also step forward one frame by pressing Page Up or step back one frame by pressing Page Down. For more information about keyboard shortcuts for animation, see Animation.