Aseprite features (Pro motion animation features)

[hapiel]

Hey all,

I've always used a combination of GraphicsGale and Grafx2 for my pixels. I don't like either of them, but they do most of their job quite fine. Drawing in Grafx2 and animating in GG.
Now I'd love to have some software that has it all in one. Which works in a way that I like.
This summer I was on Ubuntu so I bought Aseprite, which looks nice, but I still haven't figured out how to properly manage the palette. Linking frames is a nice feature, but too often I switch things around in the frame/layer window by accident, and when I want to do it on purpose it's hard.

I realized I also had a copy of ProMotion 6.5 which I bought in a bundle. I'm trying it out since today, and it looks like it can do most things I want it to do, except frame management is terrible! I've noticed in the new ProMotion NG displays frames better in the bottom scrollbar, but I can't test all it's features without buying it. For those experienced users:

Can you drag and drop frames in PM? Select multiple and copy & paste?
How do you enjoy animating in PM?

Perhaps I'll have to go back to GG again. I don't understand it's palette well and I dislike the single color single sized drawing tool, but it's the only software with proper frame control & preview.. right? :/

[32]

I can't give any advice on promotion, it confused me every time I've used it  Though I have heard animating in it is not ideal.

But for graphicsgale the pencil tool is totally customisable with patterns and brush shapes (can't do it on the fly like in promotion though) so depending on what you want to do there you can probably figure out how to do it. As for the palette I'm not sure what your issue is, seems pretty straight forward to me.

[surt]

I had a go at dragging frames with every modifier but couldn't find any way to move frames at all with out grabbing frame contents, creating new frame, placing brush and deleting old frame. But then I've never really used PMs animation function so I may be missing something.

[hapiel]

Mind you, I currently havn't used GG since at least half a year, but:

No brush control on the fly. Can't enlarge the single pixel brush with a shortkey, I'd have to prepare a file with custom brush sizes to begin with and I've always been too lazy to do that for brushes which remain uncomfortable to use.

Palette: Frustratingly large window, I don't need 256 colors just 32 max? Second color, is it's only function for quick swapping?
What is the greyscale bar for above the color sliders? The extra background color hidden in the object properties has often caught me offguard when trying to change backgrounds/export transparant/things, can't remember exactly what but for some reason you need to set that right.

TBH, I had some more questions, but realizing what they were specificly made me look them up in the help file, for the first time. Thanks for that


@Surt
Thanks for the info

[surt]

Palette: Frustratingly large window, I don't need 256 colors just 32 max?

Same problem with Pro Motion unfortunately.

What is the greyscale bar for above the color sliders?

That's for alpha value selection.

I haven't really used Aseprite's anim features yet as I hate animating with a vengeance, but I would have thought they'd be superior to GGale in every way now.

PM has stylus pressure support in beta now. GGale now claims to have stylus support but I can't for the life of me figure out what it does.

[hapiel]

I haven't really used Aseprite's anim features yet as I hate animating with a vengeance, but I would have thought they'd be superior to GGale in every way now.

I had hoped so. Their layer support in animations is much better, layers in GG aren't linked and it's a pain to add them later on.
However, frame management is not very intuitive or extended, previewing and naming frames & layers is not possible, and moving multiple frames at once seems to be not possible.
Also, I find GG's palette a bit confusing, but Aseprite's one even much more! I don't know if I can merge/copy colors, there is a color picker always on screen but if you want to adjust a color you actually have to open the palette editor. It's nice though that they have a lot of common palettes included for easy access.

Oh, I wish I could design my own Grafx2/Aseprite/Graphicsgale/Photoshop hybrid... 

[surt]

...naming frames & layers is not possible...

Name layers in layer properties. You can tag frame ranges (add a label above them) by selecting a range, right-clicking on the frame numbers and selecting New Tag (much nicer than individual frame naming).

...moving multiple frames at once seems to be not possible.

Select a range of frames, then drag the frame around them (that's the non-obvious bit), same with colours in the palette.

I don't know if I can merge/copy colors...

As above select and drag frame and hold control when releasing to copy colour. Don't know about merging.

[32]

There's new shortcuts in GG for scrolling through palette entries. You can also set a hotkey for switching to transparency which I find useful. Setting up brushes the first time is kind of annoying but you only ever have to do it once so it's worth it. Still no hotkey for scrolling through brushes as far as I know but you can do it using an external program like I outlined here.

Layers between frames are linked by the layer name so as long as you keep on top of those ~most~ functions are covered. Only annoying thing is adding a new layer to all frames, which I do with a new layer shortcut (or more accurately I use paste layer with a blank selection of my transparent colour) and a next frame shortcut and I just quickly alternate tapping them. Definitely not ideal but it's not too bad, generally just try to set up your layers beforehand. Layer properties can be modified across all frames in the layer dropdown menu. The hidden transparency colour is in file>properties. I have no idea what it's really for but so long as you know it's there. You also have layer and frame transparency where only frame transparency actually effects exported files.

If you need help with any other convoluted GG stuff just ask, I have a system for everything since I'm animating in it everyday It's a pain in the ass for some things but it does work if you put a bit of effort into setting it up right to begin with.

There may well be a better alternative, I've just stuck with it cause I know it haha. There have been a lot of updates lately to help with all this stuff so no doubt it will be better than last time you used it and will continue to improve.

Edit: Also for surt I imagine the pressure stuff relates to the "paint mode" tool that I've never touched, I think PPD must use it though.

[yaomon17]

Second color is also used for dither patterns as the other color.

[Kasumi]

Can you be more specific of what "properly manage a palette" means?

Essentially how a lot of things with regards to frames and palettes work in Aseprite. Click and drag to select, click and drag the yellow outline to move. Edit (Guess surt already said this, whoops)

previewing ... frames not possible

The above is beta only. The beta is quite stable, though. If you've got Aseprite on steam, do this: https://www.aseprite.org/beta/

If not, ask for a Steam key.

naming ... layers is not possible

You got me on naming frames. You can add user data to cels, but it's not helpful for what you probably use it for in GG.

moving multiple frames at once seems to be not possible.

It's possible if the frames are contiguous or non contiguous.

You can also link non contigous cels (but only on the same layer) which seems to slip under a lot of people's radar.

Essentially in a layer in "continuous" mode, control+click and drag creates a linked cel. In a "discontinuous" layer, that will copy.

I don't know if I can merge/copy colors

Control+click to copy.
I don't know quite what merge means. Give a specific use case? In the very worst case, you can quickly replace a color across all layers and frames. (If you wanted to make say... index 8  use index 0.)

Edit: Hmm... actually, it probably means merge duplicate colors. Like if you have two of the same red in the palette. If that's what you mean I can think of a way to do it, but a better way should exist. Confirm that's what you want and I'll open an issue on github.

if you want to adjust a color you actually have to open the palette editor.

You can freely add colors to the current Aseprite palette with one click. How does a program that handles "adjust a color" do it better, though? Because the Aseprite dev is pretty open to suggestions, you could probably get the behavior you want.

This may sound a bit snarky, but looking for a new program (Pro Motion), and then looking through the help of that new program without looking through the help of the first program (Aseprite) is puzzling to me. There are some things about Aseprite that aren't the most intuitive, but Pro Motion is really not the route to go for intuitive.

If you give more specific GG actions you want to do, I can probably tell you how to do them in Aseprite. Just... be specific, because I don't use much Gale. Know Aseprite is a lot more powerful than people seem to think!