Using the plastic tool for cut out animation - OpenToonz tutorial

[@DarrenTAnims]

*Thanks for watching.* Details and links are in the description Want to learn more about OpenToonz? Check out my Udemy course: A complete guide to OpenToonz for traditional 2D animation: bit.ly/OpenToonzCourse

[@DarrenTAnims]

For help setting up and using OpenToonz, chat with animators & developers and enter animation challenges, join my OpenToonz Discord: discord.gg/FYy4Mg7

[@chahdarts7319]

This is Simpsons

[@DarrenTAnims]

@@chahdarts7319 It's a similar style, yes.

[@AnimationParody]

for my animation, i do not know why the shoulder come behind the body, do you have any idea please ?

[@DarrenTAnims]

@@AnimationParody If they're in the same drawing, then you just need to set the S.O. for the joints of the shoulder (or body) to move the shoulder to the front.

[@Munkaa]

I'm thinking of actually finally getting with Opentoonz, just because of these amazing tools, thanks for the tutorial, keep them coming. Take Care!

[@DarrenTAnims]

That's great. Cheers. If you wanna join me on my new OpenToonz Discord server (discord.gg/FYy4Mg7), you'll find more help and plenty of enthusiastic OpenToonz users to chat with.

[@mOntymAysing]

Thanks i need to study everybit of Opentoonz to make me happy!

[@DarrenTAnims]

Well, I've plenty of videos for you to browse through. Enjoy :-)

[@tsentenari4353]

so helpful that you left your initial, sub optimal choice for where to connect the arm to in the video, commenting on it via caption right when it appeared, and then showed how to correct it later

[@DarrenTAnims]

Thank you. I was tempted to take this out and re-record. Most of my videos are tightly scripted, so you don't have to sit through me making mistakes, but I thought this was useful to see, so I left it in.

[@alessandracaldeiradealmeid6827]

Finally I understood how move the skeleton tool, thank you so much =D

[@DarrenTAnims]

Glad it helped. Happy animating 😀

[@bee2718]

i have just started following you.. and i must say you are one excellent teacher. keep going on 😀

[@DarrenTAnims]

Thank you my friend 😊

[@georgetherat3345]

Thanks for your hard work. These are really really helpful

[@DarrenTAnims]

Thanks for your support. I'm glad you're finding them helpful, George

[@chesterhackenbush]

... just as we think it cannot get any better!

[@DarrenTAnims]

🙂 Hehe. Wait till next week. I've learnt something new this week about the plastic tool that I'll be demonstrating.

[@thatmyfoxy]

Thanks for uploading. A very good way to reduce the number of columns and still move parts independently.

[@DarrenTAnims]

Absolutely. And it's so quick to set up. I'll certainly be using this technique more

[@him_animations]

Great, thank you for this tutorial, I'm still using toonbom 8.1, my computer got fried so now I'm going to change to opentoonz, i will be animating so much faster now!!!

[@DarrenTAnims]

Superb. Welcome to the OpenToonz family 😀

[@him_animations]

I just need to figure out how to maintain the same look. Feel free to visit me and see my work. Cheers

[@tsentenari4353]

What a great tip! Thank you so much for this ...

[@DarrenTAnims]

I'm glad you found it helpful :-)

[@YourBuddyJay]

Hey, I've been messing around with the mesh tool, doing the thing you said, and I was just wondering, how do you move the entire mesh? Thanks you!

[@DarrenTAnims]

You can move or resize the mesh (and the drawing) using the animate tool.

[@YourBuddyJay]

@@DarrenTAnims Ah, thank you so much!

[@blendedplanet]

Good stuff!

[@DarrenTAnims]

Cheers buddy

[@DarrenTAnims]

I'm looking forward to getting next week's video out - with plastic tool tips, inc introducing folds with the Plastic Tool.

[@blendedplanet]

@@DarrenTAnims can't wait to see it!

[@matthew0146]

Hi, when i apply the mesh to a vector drawing, and click animation option, it becomes raster (pixelated) why is that? Thx in advance.

[@DarrenTAnims]

That's just a "quick view" of your drawing, to use while animating it. When you render, it might look clearer. But it'll never look as clear when rendered as it does while editing in its vector form.

[@bokbok2263]

Hi Darren really enjoy your site was wondering when you drew the jacket without the arm at 3.13 you moved the frame to side and had the same image behind it like an onion skin but could not see how you did that?

[@DarrenTAnims]

Hi. If you watch carefully, I move the 1st column to be directly behind column 3 and show it. It's column 2 that you can see behind, which is the original image.

[@zenyfilmsrambo]

love you teacher darrent

[@DarrenTAnims]

Thank you 😊

[@agungwidi799]

What if we want to change the hand/fingers at some time?

[@DarrenTAnims]

To change the hands, you'd use a different drawing in the same column. However, you're need to make sure that the mesh covers the new hand shape.

[@rreiss60]

Does one use the tape tool to allow the fill on the arm without the black border going all the way around the arm?

[@DarrenTAnims]

The tape tool is just a way to join 2 vector lines. And you can choose if this creates a separate line or adds points into the line that you're joining to. You choose the colour for this new join. If you don't want it black, choose a different colour.

[@jbishop72]

Is there a way to animate with the plastic tool without tweening, so a hold from one keyframe to the next keyframe, so you get a less smooth, more stop motion style animation? Thanks

[@DarrenTAnims]

Yes. If you set the default interpolation in the Preferences to constant, there'll be no interpolation at all between keys. Or you can set the step to a higher number than 1 to have the interpolated positions hold for that number of frames. 2 or 3 will give you a more stop motion feel.

[@jbishop72]

@@DarrenTAnims Ah, that's awesome, thank you. the only way I could work out how to do it, was by copying and pasting the keyframes from the start and end of each movement. I will try your suggested method. Thank you so much

[@kalelbolas2773]

Can you please show us how you can make a video on how to save graphic pictures then pull them out on stage or if you can

[@DarrenTAnims]

I'm not quite sure what would help here. When you ask about saving graphic pictures. Do you mean from another app or from OT? and putting images into OpenToonz from outside of OpenToonz is just a matter of dragging them into the program once you've got a project/scene setup.

[@kalelbolas2773]

Thank you

[@regularvids]

Plastic tool is powerful. But until now I was using it only to move only whole body. Obviously it can supply cut out animation pretty good.

[@DarrenTAnims]

Me too! I had seen it used for cut out style, but this was the first time I've tried to use it this way and it was really useful for this. I'm certainly going to use it more this way. My next week's vid will be going another stage further with it 😉

[@Slightly_Sadistic]

I am a professional animator (some would say) and I am still learning things with OpenToonz. I have the art skills but still trying to figure the whole OpenToonz scheme out. I have a convoluted mess of a project on an old laptop and desperately need to carry it on on my new laptop with 16 gigs of RAM. There were multiple OpenToonz folders from the previous laptop. From different versions. I never consolidated. Then. Boom. Got a new laptop and tried an old-school approach at transferring files but only the rasters transfer. I am slowly going to try to figure it out but it is taking precious time away from me making great art. Your videos are top-tier. Is there a way to chat with you one-on-one?

[@DarrenTAnims]

This should help: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oGeqk3Z6atGsiac To chat, if you join the Discord, I'm often on there. But over there, you can post any questions you have and you'll get a quicker response, either from me or other users.

[@Slightly_Sadistic]

@@DarrenTAnims thanks!

[@jck1784]

Which level is good for animation or simple vector or raster

[@DarrenTAnims]

As with many things in animation and in OpenToonz, it depends. Personally, I have too many problems with the filling in colour on vector levels, so I use Toonz Raster levels 95% of the time. But I still use vector levels for the auto-inbetween feature and for the gradient fills. It's best to work with all 3 level types while getting to know the program, to figure out which work best for you, for which circumstances.

[@jck1784]

@@DarrenTAnims Thanks

[@maxmagnus777]

can I just import my Illustrator files and start rigging from there? Will I have any problems with it?

[@DarrenTAnims]

It depends what format they're in. Bitmaps images are best (.png, .jpeg), but some vector images can be imported. However, vector images don't all import perfectly, so it's best to test those before you get too far into your project. But once imported, you can use them in a rig.

[@maxmagnus777]

@@DarrenTAnims won't I have loss of quality if I import them as rasters? Now that I think about it, it might be best to import them as really large rasters to begin with.

[@DarrenTAnims]

@@maxmagnus777 You shouldn't have any loss of quality. At some point vectors have to be converted to raster anyway. As I always suggest with these kinds of questions, if you try it out before you get too far into a production, you'll see if the quality is good enough for you.

[@maxmagnus777]

@@DarrenTAnims It will take me a month to rig my characters and convert them. I already have them set up in After Effects. I am assessing if it is all worth the trouble. I do have a problem with slower previews in AE than what I would have in Blender or Maya. So before I get into months of animation I need to know at least some facts.

[@DarrenTAnims]

@@maxmagnus777 Once you get used to it, it doesn't take too long to rig. But this is why I say it's useful to figure out your workflow with smaller tests before you get too far into a full production.

[@awiggan1]

Why hello dazaroth. With the mouth and blinking animations, did you just have them as sub frames of the same Column? I am just trying to get my head around it. It’s kinda like sub frames of symbols in adobe animate cc?

[@DarrenTAnims]

Hi dude. Sorry I missed your message last week. I'm just catching up now. Yes, the eyes and mouth were just drawings in the same level. If you pause the video around 00:53, you'll see the drawing numbers scrolling past in Fry's column. They're basically how you'd usually animate in OpenToonz i you wasn't using the plastic tool. The plastic tool works on top of any hand drawn animation, in combination with it. To create them, I used the duplicate drawing context menu item, then erased part of the eye and redrew what I needed. Likewise, for the mouth, I erased then redrew the mouth in the new position on the the new drawing.

[@_majesticz_4447]

Did you have to draw fry in opentoonz or did u import him?

[@DarrenTAnims]

I drew him in OpenToonz. In fact, I traced him. My drawing ability isn't that good just yet. I showed this in my previous video.

[@zakiskursnogalinaja1832]

Sees Futurama in the video* *instant like*

[@DarrenTAnims]

You're in the right place, fellow 'rama lover :-)

[@Hudsonkem]

is it allowed to use plastic tool on different layers? I tried it but it only apply on the layer I set the bones. I also tried to collapse it and then create a mesh ontop, but it lagged and desappeared from screen. on the schematic I tried to make some hierachy but it does not worked.

[@DarrenTAnims]

You can use the plastic tool on any layer (column) and on any number of columns. When you mention bones, if you mean the joints to move the poetic to, then you apply the joints after the mesh. And yes, you can collapse multiple columns into a subxsheet and apply a plastic tool mesh to that. If you create a test scene and add a couple of columns, then apply the plastic tool mesh to one of them. It's worth looking at the stage schematic to understand what that means and how it's shown on there.

[@Hudsonkem]

@@DarrenTAnims oh thx, I will try it.

[@Hudsonkem]

​@@DarrenTAnims I have tried to collapse some colluns and then create a mesh, I change it to animation mode and everything desappeared, saw I clicked on the preview button, then it shows again. but if I try to make a new collun next to it. I cant draw anymore unless the preview button is checked. I noticed after some attempts that I need to hide the collapsed collun from the view port to make everything work as spected.

[@DarrenTAnims]

I'm not sure what's happened there. I'd need to see some screenshots or a video to understand. If you wanted to join me on my Discord, you can share them there.

[@Hudsonkem]

@@DarrenTAnims I had joined and send a video showing the problem on discord. thank you very much.

[@AmateurishAstronaut]

Hey, I just cant find the plastic tool anywhere... It's not on my interface. How can I find it?

[@DarrenTAnims]

Thanks for the question. There's an expander arrow at the bottom of the toolbar that will reveal it.

[@AmateurishAstronaut]

@@DarrenTAnims Hi, thanks for getting back to me. The expander arrow does not reveal the plastic tool on my program. I'm not sure why. I've tried everything.

[@Ranakade]

Heyo buddy, I just found out Opentoonz is having a new version coming out this year 2020. Could you do an insight video on the v1.4 release candidate?

[@DarrenTAnims]

I was going to wait till the final release of 1.4, so I could recommend people download it. That should be in about a week. But yes, I was planning on making a video about it 🙂

[@Ranakade]

@@DarrenTAnims The more days pass, the more I'm excited about it. eeeeek!

[@DarrenTAnims]

Me too. But I need to take some time out to work out what the new features are, so I can talk about them. I'll do that over the next couple of days. (in between working on my Doors5 entry)

[@imjerry3121]

This program is crashes so many time when I making a animation video any solution sir 🙏

[@DarrenTAnims]

Usually it's a graphics card issue. So make sure your graphics card is using the latest driver. Some cards don't get the latest driver through Windows though, so you might need to go to the card's website and use their inline checks. Then I'd make sure your copy of OpenToonz is set to user your card's high performance mode. And finally, use Window's high performance mode. I've details of all of these on my Discord server.

[@arsesssadeghi6139]

I really like opentoonz, it very easy to use for me! but unfortunately i don't use it anymore because i can't use render option!! it will crash! I don't know why!? for this problem i use another program :(((

[@DarrenTAnims]

I've seen some users with crash issues that have managed to overcome it. If you want to try again, pop over to my Discord and we can chat about it.

[@matthewdh123]

Im doing an animation where Jabba the hut is moving away from the camera. Trying to animate his tail moving left to right with this tool is turning into an ordeal lol.

[@DarrenTAnims]

It's easy to think that the plastic tool will make animating simple. Often it doesn't. But it's great for simple movements. Keep at it and see if you can work it out. Tip: Sometimes it's easier to start again instead of fixing a poor plastic tool animation. Good luck bud

[@matthewdh123]

@@DarrenTAnims Thanks man! Still messing with it. Making the tail movement more subtle. The initial movements were wayyyy too extreme. Also now, instead of drawing movements of his head and arm Im using the tool. It has a bit of a learning curve and isnt ideal for all situations but end the end it will save me a ALOT of time! Thanks again for making the video! Next learning point is trying to figure out if i need to add a mesh and try to match it for all three of my char layers. Body and colors, shadows and highlights, depth. Lawd lol

[@agnees1096]

Hello

[@DarrenTAnims]

Hi 🙂

[@passingthroughthisworld8369]

What is with you guys in these tutorials that make 25 moves in 4 seconds, and then say. There you go, easy as pie, now you do it. Doesn't seem like you want the beginner to really catch on so fast.

[@DarrenTAnims]

I can't answer for anyone else, but from the feedback I get, if I go too slow, these tutorials aren't any easier to follow and I lose viewers. Most viewers are quite happy to rewind and rewatch any parts that they're unsure of. Or to pause as they follow along. Bare in mind that some videos rely on you watching other videos for context. Not everything can be shown from scratch in each video.

[@meaww779]

too much fast, this is tutorial video man 🙂

[@DarrenTAnims]

Thanks for your feedback

[@garymankey920]

drop the annoying background music

[@DarrenTAnims]

I have :-)