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 displays in the document window so you can begin adding content by using brushes, and other tools. Once 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 over and over as you create it, to be sure you have the correct flow of movement. The Frame stack panel must stay open when creating or editing 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, each equal in size and resolution.

To create a new movie

1	Choose Movie New Movie.

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’ll need to 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

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

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.

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