Cosmigo Pro Motion tips?

[dock]

I just bit the bullet and bought Cosmigo Pro Motion.

I found the video tutorials, some of which are using Pro Motion. Are there any other good resources or tips for the software? Even some personal usage pointers would be handy.

[dock]

In order to make this thread embarrassing, maybe I should post up my own observations. I just got my unlock code, so it's time for me to take this seriously. Obviously the manual is useful, but it's handy sometimes to have a little focus. It's not as though I use all of Photoshop, for example.

Random observations:

- 1+2 to cycle through animations is of course very handy.
- The tooltips are excellent in this program.
- H and Shift H are handy for resizing your current brush. I use this all the time in photoshop with the square brackets, so it's handy to find an equivalent.
- '.' for single pixel is also a godsend
- Pressing the G in the AFGS buttons (top left-ish) locks the palette to be universal for all animation frames.
- It seems to require a little hand holding. It doesn't like transparent PNGs (or rather treats the BG as white), and it often messes up the colours when I try to reduce the colours on a 2 colour animation. I've found myself using 8-bit PNG to stop it from choking when importing files from Photoshop.

So far I'm a little overwhelmed by it, but firing up a couple of my animations I can see how it can improve my workflow and ultimately improve my work whilst saving me time.

A few questions:

- Is there any temporary shortcut for panning the canvas?
I know I can switch with Alt+N, but in Photoshop I use the space-to-pan thing pretty often, and it's notable by its absence here.

- Is there a shortcut for toggling foreground and background colour?
This is especially relevant when I'm trying to pipette a new background colour with Ctrl.

[Helm]

- Is there any temporary shortcut for panning the canvas?

I've used promo for years and years and I'd like to know this one as well.

[setz]

In order to make this thread embarrassing, maybe I should post up my own observations. I just got my unlock code, so it's time for me to take this seriously. Obviously the manual is useful, but it's handy sometimes to have a little focus. It's not as though I use all of Photoshop, for example.

Random observations:

- 1+2 to cycle through animations is of course very handy.
- The tooltips are excellent in this program.
- H and Shift H are handy for resizing your current brush. I use this all the time in photoshop with the square brackets, so it's handy to find an equivalent.
- '.' for single pixel is also a godsend
- Pressing the G in the AFGS buttons (top left-ish) locks the palette to be universal for all animation frames.
- It seems to require a little hand holding. It doesn't like transparent PNGs (or rather treats the BG as white), and it often messes up the colours when I try to reduce the colours on a 2 colour animation. I've found myself using 8-bit PNG to stop it from choking when importing files from Photoshop.

So far I'm a little overwhelmed by it, but firing up a couple of my animations I can see how it can improve my workflow and ultimately improve my work whilst saving me time.

A few questions:

- Is there any temporary shortcut for panning the canvas?
I know I can switch with Alt+N, but in Photoshop I use the space-to-pan thing pretty often, and it's notable by its absence here.

- Is there a shortcut for toggling foreground and background colour?
This is especially relevant when I'm trying to pipette a new background colour with Ctrl.

go to File-> Preferences -> Shortcuts
You can change up a lot of shortcut keys there, including swapping FG/BG color in your brush. (Colors->Swap FG<>BG Colors Brush- You'll have to add one). It doesn't swap the colors selected, only the colors on the brush, so its a bit weird, but works.

I'm not familiar with photoshop, but maybe nudge? (press/hold the N key to scroll around)

[dock]

Aha - Panning is done with Shift + Alt held simultaneously. N for nudge sorta works, but is very weird.

The swap FG/BG thing doesn't really cut it for me, especially as it doesn't give me the ability to change the background colour. Ah well, it'll have to do. Thanks for the tip.

At least I just figured out that I can Ctrl+Right Click to pick up the background colour.  I really don't like drawing with the right mouse button with a graphics tablet.
(I often use a mouse when pixelling, but not always!)

[AnnIshman]

I've been using alt+n to pan (esc to exit) which was awkward. Shift+alt is way better.

I wrote myself a little cheat sheet of commands from watching the videos and reading the help or whatever else I've picked up of some of the useful stuff that I don't use enough for it to stick in my head. It'd be nice to put something a little less scrawled on note paper, and a little more clean, neat and easy to read. Maybe I'll throw something together at some point unless some such thing already exists? Somewhere?

[ptoing]

All you people can send me some money, that shift+alt pan is in there because I bitched about the hand being a tool and not an instant thing like colourpick. \o/

I guess I could write tutorials about PM, but atm I have better things to do. Also it comes with quite a nice help file. F1 and all that.

[Helm]

I've been using alt+n to pan (esc to exit) which was awkward. Shift+alt is way better.

I wrote myself a little cheat sheet of commands from watching the videos and reading the help or whatever else I've picked up of some of the useful stuff that I don't use enough for it to stick in my head. It'd be nice to put something a little less scrawled on note paper, and a little more clean, neat and easy to read. Maybe I'll throw something together at some point unless some such thing already exists? Somewhere?

Do it, I say.

[dock]

Ptoing, as ever the world has much to thank for your existence. Must get you to the UK again at some point!

AnnIrishman - Please do! Share the love!

In general I find myself incredibly clumsy with Promotion, so I need to use it for a small project just to get over the difficulties. I'm finding the palette editor hard to use for example, so I guess I just need to follow the docs more closely.

I do find myself wishing I could isolate sections of an animation, so I can keep them all together in one project but work on walk cycles and jump animations independently. Is there anything in Promotion to support this, or do I need to chop up my animations into different parts and then join them up again when I'm ready to export?

[dock]

I'm trying out the tilemap system, and it does seem pretty awesome. I have a couple of questions relating to it:

- Can I specify that I wish to create a new version of the tile I'm drawing onto? For example, if I have three identical blocks in a row and I want to adjust one of them (creating a unique tile) right now I have to copy and paste it into a 0-tile area with the Duplicate setting enabled, mess with it, then paste it back. Can I do this more directly?
- Is there any way to zoom the tile palette? I'm using 8x8 tiles and it's super duper small.
- Is there any way to lock the tile palette layout to a certain width? I realise I can resize the window, which is what I'm relying on right now.