Last frame of Anibrush wrong

[sierra]

Has anyone else encountered a problem with importing anibrushes and finding the very last cel (frame) is washed out almost as if you had "stamp" on? This has been going on awhile and I have been just stamping down the brush in my project, and importing the last frame as a single brush, then picking up the brush again. It's a lot of extra work to have to remake the brush becasue the last frame is faulty. It's lucky I save my anibrushes as single frames or I'd have to repaint the last cel of each one.

Do I have some kind of setting on inadvertently? Thanks.

Sierra

[sierra]

I notice 13 people looked at this but no comments. So I take it that no one else has this problem.

I've tried a lot o things with no luck.

I will contact NewTek support then, but thanks anyway.

Sierra

[paulfierlinger]

A work-around would be to duplicate the last frame before you pick up the animbrush, thus it becomes the throwaway one.
Paul F

[paulfierlinger]

Hmm - you might be on to something. I just tried it. I saved an animbrush (never had to do this before) and imported it: the last frame was wrong, but in a different way. My test was with a line drawing and the last frame was a line drawing on a pure white background. It also seems that you can't export an animbrush with an alpha channel.
Paul F.

[paulfierlinger]

I did some more experimenting -- of course I had forgotten to set my mode to Targa 32, so that was my problem with the alpha channel, but now the next to last frame is in bright color -- something strange is going on. Your best bet, sierra, is to just duplicate the last cel. I can set a hotkey to do that so it can be done very quickly.
Paul F.

[sierra]

Yes, yes, yes. Of course. What a simple work around. Thanks. I just never would have thought of making it so easy on myself.

[SBowie]

I usually save animbrushes as .dip files, but I tried Targa to see if I could match your results. I'm not able to. Every animbrush I've tried appears to be fine from one end to the other, and pastes itself down correctly.

I wonder why not. Are the animbrush sequences you are having trouble with particularly long? Could it be related to alpha channel settings? There must be some factor that is different between our systems or settings, since it seems to work the way I would expect here...

[sierra]

Yeah, Steve, it's probably some little setting I'm not finding. But I will soon have my new VT2 and it has an entirely separate Aura on it. So I will have 2 computers with Aura and be able to compare things first hand. I'll post if I discover whatever I did to cause this.

[SBowie]

Puzzling - I've tried both my standalone 2.5b and AuraVT2.5b and both seem OK. Yet you and Paul seem to be getting the same wrong result. Let us know if you get it figured out!

[paulfierlinger]

Good idea, Steve. I tried it on our second machine with the same results. Whether it's a two frame sequence or a many frame sequence, the last or next to last frame of an animbrush is always distorted in some way. The distortion doesn't show up when the frame icons are scanned in the browser or loader, only when they are pasted.
Paul F.

[SBowie]

Peculiar, isn't it Paul? It's only when you export and then re-import the animbrush, right? Not when you first pick it up?

And file format doesn't affect the problem? What import and export alpha modes are you set for? That shouldn't matter, but there must be something at the root of this.

[paulfierlinger]

I've tried all alpha formats and BMP (my format of choice); no difference. This should be reported on the beta bug forum but I don't know if any of the developers are paying attention to it at this time.
Paul F.

[SBowie]

I'll pass it along privately, but I wish I could repeat it on my system ... or, better yet, that it would 'go away' on yours :-)

[SBowie]

Paul, could you zip up and e-mail me a small example animbrush that displays this issue when stamped down on your system?

[paulfierlinger]

http://paulfierlinger.com/ARoomNearby/AnimBrushExportImportTest.aur

That's the link to an Aura test project.
The bottom layer is the original layer, using a tan color for BKG. I cut a smaller animbrush of these frames, exported and imported the animbrush and pasted onto the top layer. The last frame is on a completely white bkg, which is in error. (Will be out for the day)
Paul F.

[SBowie]

Paul, I loaded your project, and saved an animbrush from the original layer. I exported it, first as DEEP and also as TGA32, and re-imported it. I tried it in COLOR mode with the tan background, and in NONE mode. In both cases it worked perfectly. I'm attaching an image which shows your project loaded and with my (re-loaded) animbrush stamped down in the top layer.

This is baffling.

[SBowie]

Here's the image:

[paulfierlinger]

Steve, this is baffling indeed and reminiscent of the issue I brought up not that long ago with dhomas and Sebastien, which is that suddenly any animation I play back in a project window under 100% looks crappy. But this happens only on some people's computers -- not all of them. Both Sebastien and Herve could see this going on on *some* of their own computers. Their verdict is that it's a Window's issue, not an Aura issue. All of this, of course, is way over my head. BTW dhomas is very tied up these last days.

Paul F.

[SBowie]

I'll try that again using a "smaller than 100%" Project window to see if it makes any difference.

I remember that thread from the beta list, but have never seen the issue, whether running Win2k or XP. I seldom use 'smaller than 100%' windows, except when working with over-large brushes. I mostly preview to the Toaster, so haven't seen the issue you referrred to in that thread, so held my tongue.

My old workhorse/junker with the standalone 2.5b on it is running the home version of XP, while my current Toaster demo system is using XP Pro. Normally you might expect this kind of thing to be a factor of the graphics card and display drivers, but I can't see why that would affect exported files. And, there are drastically different display cards in my two units.

[paulfierlinger]

Sierra,
I had the developers of Aura (now TVPaint) check your complaint out and this is the response:

Thanks Paul ! I have the bug here too !
There is one solution for avoiding it currently, its to uncheck preload.

Seb.

[sierra]

Thanks Paul. It's good to know they are on to it and to know about unchecking preload. I've been using your workaround (making an extra frame on the animbrush and just not using it.).

Sierra