1 Topic by Saf

  • Saf
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Hi guys,

What at great product.  Currently my students and fellow lecturers use it for animation purposes; breaking down poses, providing feedback and motion analysis.

So far so good, but I would I have a few suggestions if useful:

It would be great if there was a short cut tool to select the drawing tools via the keyboard.
The line tool becomes inactive if you move forward or backwards through a frame, would be useful to have it remained active.
Persistence over a single frame would be good. At the moment its lowest number is 2 frames (unless you do it manually for every line shape, for every frame)
Using a Wacom tablet can be infuriating at times, as Kineova is too sensitive at interpreting a single tap, as a double, opening the configure drawing window.  Is there a way we can reduce its sensitivity (using the Wacom setup tool does not affect Kineova).

Once again, a fantastic product guys, well done!

Saf

2 Reply by joan

  • joan
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Hi, thanks.
Some quick comments

Saf wrote:

The line tool becomes inactive if you move forward or backwards through a frame, would be useful to have it remained active.

Well… As you can see there are 3 possibilities here :
1 - instantly fall back to the "hand" tool after any use of the tool. (Angle tool, Text tool) This is because it seems more logical that the user will want to move the new drawing around or use another tool right away.
2 - keep the same tool while in the image, but fall back when changing frame. (Line tool)
It seemed to make more sense. The person is putting a bunch of lines on a specific image, possibly to highlight alignments, but when he moves out, he might aswell use another tool or move an existing drawing around. We really don't know so we fall back to the default behavior which is the "hand" tool.
3 - keep the same tool even when changing frame. This specific case is only for the cross marker (scenario: spotting a moving person or object over several frames) and the pencil (scenario: animation commenting)

This is not set in stone. It will be easy to make the change for the line tool to stay active when changing frames, but I'm not sure it is the right thing to do…

Saf wrote:

Persistence over a single frame would be good. At the moment its lowest number is 2 frames (unless you do it manually for every line shape, for every frame)

In Kinovea terms, persistence is staying on screen for more than one frame. To have the drawing visible only on the key image, you'd have to actually turn persistence off in the general preferences. (In this case the drawings won't be visible at all while playing, but they will be visible when manually browsing the frames.)
Does that match your expectations ?

Saf wrote:

Using a Wacom tablet can be infuriating at times, as Kineova is too sensitive at interpreting a single tap, as a double, opening the configure drawing window.  Is there a way we can reduce its sensitivity (using the Wacom setup tool does not affect Kineova).

Sorry about that ! It's been reported as m170 also. It should be fixed in the next version.

3 Reply by Saf (edited by Saf 2010-01-31 13:19:01)

  • Saf
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Hi Joan,

Thanks for you comments, I think they are all valid points, I soppose as an animator, I use the tool somewhat differently than maybe the average user.

For instance regarding the line, tool, this could just be an option tick box that could be set up in the preferences, so its doesn't disrupt what you would consider a normal users workflow.  For me, its important to quickly flip through frames and create a mark up of the bodies posture as quikly as possible. I may tap through 20 frames tracking and marking the same body point on the sequence.  Would be great if i didn't have to keep selecting the line tool for every frame, or even if there was a shortcut key to select it using the keyboard.

Regarding persistence, its great to have a drawing played back over a single frame, as it allows me to record what I consider a Key Pose in the movement.  For instance. When I play reference footage or an animated sequence back, I get a good sense of keytiming and poses. A tool such as Kinovea is a great way for a tutor or supervisor to communicate key points in an animation or a better motion path/pose for the animated character.  Additional to reviewing reference, I may draw over 2-7 frames of an animated sequence which would suggest a better acting of body mechanical choice.  If I can play that back and only see the drawing for a single frame, then I have an excellent way of testing and communicating my animation corrections.

Overall though, thisis an excellent tool, I'm wondering if your find it odd that industries you never considered have starting using it. 

:0)

Keep up the great work.