Animation and layers at the same time

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Grafx2 is getting more amazing every day. However, to make the animation 
feature useful it would be very very important for me to be able to have 
animation and layers enabled at the same time!

Very often one animation is an edit of the other, such as a character carrying 
an item. In this case layers are an absolute necessity for a good work flow!

Right now I am working on some top-down characters, I want to reuse the legs in 
every walking sprite but the top of the body will do something different in 
each sprite such as holding guns. For this project I sadly have to choose other 
software! :(

Original issue reported on code.google.com by DnlSg...@gmail.com on 19 Mar 2013 at 2:17

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I would also like this to be possible.

Original comment by fleu...@gmail.com on 25 Mar 2013 at 9:35

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On the animation bug report, I (on my 00ai99 account) proposed to make 
anim/layers an 'either/or' thing, for complexity reasons - a proposal that was 
eventually adopted. Complexity meaning : it's quite difficult to make a GUI 
that handles both animation and layers without being confusing and excessively 
complex.

This feature is one I can appreciate the need for myself; My overall point is 
that unlike some other features, this cannot be simply 'added': we need to work 
up a solid specification of how the UI will look and work, so we can avoid 
having a terrible UI by spotting and resolving major issues ahead of time.

Some issues involved:

* How do we differentiate between animation frames and layers? (I favor 
assigning letters to layers and leaving numbers for frames)

* How will we fit controls for moving through both animation frames and layers 
onto the toolbar? It must fit within a 320 pixel width (GrafX2's minimum).

* If you change this frame, switch to the next frame and then undo, should the 
change to the content of the previous frame be undone? Should the undo 
operation automatically switch you back to the frame that the undo effected? 
What about if you have also switched to a different layer? Do you as a user 
expect undo to apply within the current frame, within the current layer across 
all frames, or to everything no matter how unnoticable and potentially 
surprising?

* Should all frames contain the same amount of layers, or should it be possible 
to vary the number of layers between frames?

* When you raise/lower a layer, should this action automatically carry through 
to the equivalent layer in other frames, or not?  (this is an easy one -- 
'should not'.)

* Do we need a way to select a range of frames or layers? How would that be 
achieved in the GUI? (see the following question for an example of how this 
might be useful)

* Does the 'Adjust' tool need to provide a way to adjust multiple frames and/or 
layers at once?
(IMO yes, realigning multiple frames to propagate a single tweak is a pain 
otherwise)

* People should be able to ignore the animation support if they're just working 
on a static image. Is the animation UI design unobtrusive?

Original comment by fintic...@gmail.com on 23 Apr 2013 at 12:55

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* If you change this frame, switch to the next frame and then undo, should the 
change to the content of the previous frame be undone? 

Yes, I believe it should. If there would be the possibility of seeing the 
animation while working (which is not there yet...) then you would see your 
changes happening, and I make use of this when I quickly add some things to all 
frames and see if it works. 

* Should all frames contain the same amount of layers, or should it be possible 
to vary the number of layers between frames?
I would like to have the same amount of layers everywhere. This allows for 
another possibility: Switching layer visibility off or on for all frames at the 
same time.

I'd like to suggest another feature here: Multiple frame manipulation. That is, 
that if I turn multiple frame manipulation (or whatever it will get called) on, 
and I draw on layer 1 a line it will appear on all frames. Ideally I would also 
be able to select a part and move it a couple of pixels to the right and have 
this happen in all frames too, but since Grafx2 does not support selection I 
think this might be too much (though perhaps the whole layer could be moved at 
once instead of a selection...)

Original comment by DnlSg...@gmail.com on 23 Apr 2013 at 1:06