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Tools

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These tools are designed with a specific animation process in mind. However, you should feel free to experiment and use them to achieve your desired results. We would love to hear any ideas you have for new tools or for improving any existing tools.

While it is not necessary, it is recommended that you use a pressure sensitive drawing device when working with TweenMaker.

Pencil

The pencil tool lets you rough out a drawing for later clean up with the ink tool. The pencil will only draw on a ruff layer. The harder you press on the tablet, the darker and wider the pencil line will be. The width of the pencil line can be controled via the pencil style window.

Eraser

Used to erase pencil lines.

Ink

Used to draw smooth lines that can be inbetweened between key frames. If you have a pressure sensative tablet, the harder you press, the wider the line will be. The width and style of the line can be controlled via the ink style window.

Edit

The edit tool allows you to modify existing lines in TweenMaker. When you move the tool across the screen you will see either a plus , a line , or an angle next to the arrow. The edit tool may also be used on the background level to adjust the positioning, scale and rotation of images.

• When you see a plus , you may left click and drag a box around a group of lines to select them. If you hold SHIFT while doing this, you will add the boxed lines to the selection, if you hold CTRL, you will remove the boxed lines from the selection. Right clicking on the screen will give you the option of deleting the selected lines. You may also copy and paste selected lines by using CTRL-C to copy and CTRL-V to paste them (or the correspondig commands from the edit menu). If you paste lines into a frame different from the one they were copied from, they will replace any existing matching lines that are in that frame.


• When you see a line next to the arrow, this means you can left click and drag to adjust the shape of the line. Holding the CTRL key while dragging will change the width of that part of the line. If you just click on a line without dragging, it will toggle the selection of the line. Right clicking on a line will bring up a menu that allows you to flip a line's direction, delete the line, or toggle it's visibility. Invisible lines will still be shown faded out in the editor but will not show up when exporting the animation. They are useful for defining shapes of color for which you do not want a solid line.


• When you see an angle next to the arrow, this means you can modify the end points of a line in the same way as when a curve is showing next to the arrow.

Selected lines are displayed with a box around them. They can be manipulated as follows:

• They can be removed by right click and select delete or press the DEL key.


• They can be scaled, moved, or rotated by clicking and dragging the little control boxes embedded in the selection box. Holding shift while doing this will allow you to snap to specific angles while rotating or maintain the aspect ratio while scaling with a corner control box.

Paint

Painting is done by selecting lines in sequence that define the boundary of color you wish to paint. You paint a shape by selecting all the lines in order that make up the shape. As you do, a preview of what the shape will look like shows up faded on the screen. Clicking on this faded shape will make it solid and complete the painting process. If you make a mistake while selecting lines that form your shape, you can click somewhere else on the screen (where there is no line) to abort making your shape. If you left click on an existing shape, that shape will take on the current paint color. If you click on overlapping colored shapes, a menu will appear that gives you the option of coloring all the shapes under the arrow that color or picking a specific shape to color. Every shape and line has a name that can be changed. See the layers window section to learn how to do this.

Motion

Since colored shapes are made up of lines, they will also move along with the bone motion.

When you click on the motion tool, two other tools will appear that can be used to add better motion to your animation: Add Bones and Edit.

Motion: Add Bones

Left click and drag to add bones to which lines may be attached. If you click and drag from an existing point, a bone will be added that shares that joint. The cursor arrow will look like this to let you know your cursor is over a joint.

Motion: Edit

This tool is similar in function and complexity to the line editing tool described above. As you move the tool across the screen, you will see either a plus , a circle , or a bone next to the arrow.

• When you see a plus, you may select multiple joints by dragging a box around them and using the CTRL and SHIFT keys as described with the line editing tool . When a joint is selected, the path it travels along between key frames will be displayed. You may left click on these paths and drag them to adjust them. You also have the option of right clicking and selection to delete the selected joints. If a joint is deleted, all the bones connected to it will also be deleted.


• When you see a bone next to the cursor, this means you may select that bone. Only one bone may be selected at a time. Once a bone is selected, all the lines attached to the bone will show up as selected as well. To attach or remove lines from a bone, click and drag a box around them using the SHIFT and CTRL keys as described in other box selection. That is, use SHIFT to add lines to a selection and use CTRL to remove lines from a selection. All the selected lines are automatically assigned to the selected bone. Once you have finished assigning the appropriate lines to the bone, click once without dragging to deselect the bone. Lines may be assigned to any number of bones, but will only be influenced by the bones nearest to them along the line.


• The circle next to the cursor means that you can click and drag to change the position of the joint under your cursor.

Tool Options

Size and Style

Selecting this will allow you to adjust the size of your current tool. It brings up the style window described in the windows section.

Color

Selecting this will let you change the color of your current tool.

Zoom

Sets your current tool to be a zoom tool. Click or drag a box to zoom in. Hold SHIFT and click to zoom out.

Layers

Brings up the layers window described in the windows section.

Onion Skin

Toggles showing onion skinning for lines on the ink layer. For more information on onion skinning, see the time line section.

Camera View

Toggles looking through the specified camera at the scene. See camera in the time line section.