Timeline Overhaul

Feature Requests
1

Currently the animation timeline feels very undercooked in comparision to the other features of the app. Not sure if there is an overhaul in the works for it at all, but either way, features that would be greatly appreciated are:

Animation FPS - more of a QoL request than anything but being so close to the edge of the application border, if you have it fullscreened you will find that your click-drag associated slider to the left border clamps very quickly due to the distance from the monitor edge. An infini-scroll would be preferable in this use case, rather than the slider range being defined by monitor size.

Inserting a new blank keyframe currently appends a keyframe to the end of the timeline, forcing you to have to manually drag-place the blank keyframe where you would like it to be in your timeline. The same goes for creating a new duplicate keyframe. Very inconvenient and sometimes frustrating!

Animation folders, for grouping. Colour keying for both standard layers + folders and animation layers + folders would be incredibly helpful for organising complex work. as seen in Photshop for example.

Step forward a frame/Step back a frame/go to end of animation/go to start of animation.
Step forward/back, rewind, step to end are quite essential when animating in order to jump through frames and check animation steps. I see that step forward/back are implemented which is awesome, however I’d still like to see a jump to end and rewind to start.

Loop Play toggle and loop play select - absolutely essential when creating looping animations of any kind, however the ability to toggle it is also very desirable, as is the ability to select a portion of the animation timeline to loop.

Timeline Zoom - being able to zoom in and out on the timeline when working on larger animations is really helpful to be able to see all of the anim frames, or focus in on one specific area.

Decoupling timeline layers from canvas layers - being able to delete a timeline layer should not require that the canvas layer be deleted first. It can very easily clutter up the timeline.

Hope these are worth considering! I really love the application and am a huge fan of the project, so I’d love to be able to use it more often for creating animation work!

2

Also! One other thought - when creating a new timeline layer, the canvas layer associated is used as the background if there are no keyframes, which feels rather unintuitive - as far as my experimenting has found, I cannot seem to paste the canvas layer into a timeline keyframe, and the logic seems that if I were to turn a canvas layer into a timeline layer, I’d likely want my canvas layer to be rendered in as a keyframe.

3

Hey, I’m flabbet, main PixiEditor developer. Thank you for your feedback. It’s really valuable.

A few remarks:

Animation FPS - more of a QoL request than anything but being so close to the edge of the application border …

Yeah, fair enough

Inserting a new blank keyframe currently appends a keyframe to the end of the timeline

Perhaps your workflow is more specific, I designed it on an idea that you don’t need to manually drag the active frame cursor to append new layer. So while making an animation you just go “new cel, draw, new cel” instead of “new cel, draw, move cursor to the next frame, new cel”

I’d love to hear your usecase, so I can maybe find a good middle-ground

Animation folders, for grouping. Colour keying for both standard layers + folder

Yeah, I can see how that’s useful, though is a bigger feature and will not go into initial 2.0 release.

I’d still like to see a jump to end and rewind to start.

That’s super easy to add, along with loop toggle. I might add it fairly soon

No Timeline Zoom

It is possible to zoom the timeline, simply use a scroll on the top part (with frame numbers and lines)

Decoupling timeline layers from canvas layers - being able to delete a timeline layer should not require that the canvas layer be deleted first. It can very easily clutter up the timeline.

Actually, it might be just an ux issue, but you can delete animation layer by simply deleting all the cels within it. No need to delete an actual layer.

when creating a new timeline layer, the canvas layer associated is used as the background if there are no keyframes

I believe that you might have concepts mixed up. I am not sure how Photoshop handles it, but our animation design is closer to Aseprite’s.Timeline layer and canvas layer is the same thing, there is no concept of timeline layer. What you see in the timeline is the “canvas” layer you are animating. So the most left part with layer name, is a preview of the original layer, while cels on the right are this layer images on given frame.

4

Thanks so much for responding! Much appreciate that you’re willing to hear my input.
in regards to my workflow - I typically work pose to pose, which involves creating keyframes and then creating the inbetween frames between the two. It gives me a lot of control over the timing. Thanks for pointing out the timeline zoom! I didn’t realise that one.

5

I see, I’ll do some testing and try improve the workflow regarding that

6

@exothermic0927

  • I typically work pose to pose, which involves creating keyframes and then creating the inbetween frames between the two

Could you provide me with an example how you would like timeline to behave when inserting a keyframe?

Do I understand correctly that you want to insert a cel in between neighboring cels? Let’s say you have a cel at frame 3 and frame 4, so they are right next to each other, no gaps.

And let’s say, you set the cursor at frame 3 and click new cel. You expect to insert a new cel at frame 4, shifting existing frames that start at 4 and later by one frame?