PAP Animators Community

[Jakob Frandsen]

Quick tutorial for New features in Plastic Animation Paper 4.0 beta

Zoom/rotate/pan feature

Start PAP:Pro. Press and hold down the 'Z' key. Under your pen/mouse, you will see this:



The hand in the middle is the pan area. Tap and drag the pen/mouse to reposition the sheet. The circle around the hand is the rotate area. Drag the green ball around to rotate sheet. Note that along the outer edge, the ball can snap into 0, 90, 180, and 270 degree angles. Pressing "0 degrees" above the circle is a quick way to bring the rotation back to normal. The circle in the upper right corner is the "reset" function. It resets the sheet to x1 zoom, 0 degree angle, and goes to the middle of the sheet. The small circles to the lower left are zooming presets. x1/2, x1, x2, x4, and x8 speak for themselves, and the star means "zoom out far enough for me to see the whole sheet with the current window size". The "arrow-shaped" + and - functions are for changing the zoom factor by dragging them left/right.

Release the Z key when you're done.


The New Size function

Use the function icon that looks like this to set a new sheet size:



You will then see the following popup. If you're running PAP:Free or PAP:Home, some options will be greyed out and are thus not accessible. Only PAP:Pro can use resolutions higher than PAL (720 x 576).



Using this popup, you can resize a current animation or just start over with a new sheet size.


New Keying System

In PAP:Pro, there's a new keyframe system. Press 'k' to toggle key on/off on the current frame. Press Shift-k to toggle key stepping mode. In key stepping mode, arrows keys will step only between keyframes - no matter if they are clones or not.

When you set a key, a small "key" symbol is shown on the frame in the X-strip.


Lots more...

There's lots more, for instance:

- The GUI and buttons have gotten a revamp for a better overall user experience.
- Lasso tool for easier cutouts.
- Freely resizable window.
- Possible to set negative sound offset.
- etc..
_________________
--
Jakob Frandsen