Skeletal Animation

[mrtripie]

Being able to animate using skeletons directly in the app the layers are created in would be very useful.

One problem with doing this in a painting app is that if you use a skeleton to transform the cels, it would make using the paint brush difficult, as the brush either won't paint where you expect it to, or the brush's transform somehow has to be made to match with the cels' transform. For example, in Krita, if you paint on a layer with a Transform Mask, it won't match where your brush is, unless you hide the mask. One solution to this would be something like Smart Objects #782 :

• The artist adds a Smart/Scope Layer to the project, double clicks on it to enter an isolated view of it (the scope), and adds layers inside this scope for the different body parts.
• Then they use a tool that will allow them to add bones to the layers.
• They exit the scope (or maybe there's the scope's view is on the side of the root scope, in the second canvas or a split tab)
• They can then see the full character on the scope layer, and if they use a pose tool, they can see the skeleton and move around the different bones on different cels to animate.

Another thing that would be nice would be to use key frames/cels with automatically interpolated frames/cels inbetween key frames. Perhaps how this would work would be on cel types that could support it (ie: not Pixel Cels), there could be a right click menu option for enabling/disabling "tween cels", with different interpolation types. There could also be an option for using a curves panel, or just using automatic curves.