PROCREATE 5- Animation Assist Feature

So now that Procreate 5 is finally out, I've decided to make the final video on the Animation Assist feature that just came out on the public version of Procreate 5. And that is because we've reviewed Procreate 5 when it was on private beta, as well as on open beta, and in all of these versions there were like a little bit of changes that happened to the Animation Assist tool. So because there's like slight changes that happened from all of these versions, I've decided to finally make the version, the final video for the public version, and that's what we're going to cover in this video. My name is Leo and you're watching Ghost Paper, so now let's get started. All right, now that we're here on Procreate 5, let me show you how does it all works. For that I've actually prepared a few animation files that I want to take you step by step, so not only you understand how does the animation feature actually works in Procreate 5, but how to actually properly animate. So the very first file, the most simple file, starting with file 1, is this file here that has three layers with the letters A, B, and C, each letter on a separate layer. So first things first, how do we actually access the Animation Assist tool? On previous versions of Procreate 5, so the private beta and the open beta, the Animation Assist was actually in the Actions menu, but in the Preferences tab, it has now moved into the Canvas action. So now when we go into Canvas, there's the Animation Assist, which then turns on the toolbar, the play bar that we see here at the bottom, the timeline, and you have settings, you can add frame, and you can also play the animation. The animation at the moment has only three frames, and that is because Procreate understands that each layer equals one frame. So each layer is one frame. So if we hit play here on this animation, we see it playing, just playing each frame, each layer as a frame. We see the A, B, and C flipping around, all with different colors. And now if I go into settings, I can change the frames per second, I can make it faster, I can go all the way up to 60 frames per second, and I can lower to one frame per second. This is the slowest frame rate that Procreate can play, and also the fastest is 60 frames per second. So I'm just going to leave it for now at six frames per second. Next, we have the Onion Skin feature, which I'll go more into this feature on a separate file here, on a separate lesson file, but I just want to show you that at the moment, if I pause this animation, you see all of the letters kind of merged on top of another, and that is because we do have Onion Skin actually turned on with the max amount of frames at the moment, so I can lower that to just one frame or even none. So if I just put, for example, one, we're only seeing the previous frame since we are in the last frame of this animation, but if I was in the middle frame, I would see one frame before and one frame after the current frame that we're sitting right here on the timeline. And that continues, so if I do two frames, I'm seeing two frames before the current frame and two frames after the current frame. Lastly, I have the Onion Skin Opacity, which I can then lower or increase the opacity so I have a little bit more of a blend between the frames. Next, I have the option to blend the primary frame, which is an option that allows me to actually have the current frame that we're on at the very moment in the animation to have some opacity as we're actually using the Onion Skin feature. And this option right here, Color Secondary Frames, we're going to actually take a look at that on a separate lesson file. Finally, there are three modes of playing animation, but I'm also going to cover that as we move forward. So in this very basic example here of animation, we have each layer equals one frame. But let's just say, what happens if I create a layer here? So let's just say that in the middle of this animation, I actually want to have... I'm just going to pick any color here and make sure that I'm using a Studio Pen. Let's just say that I actually want to have a circle and I want the circle to be part of the B frame. So we just drew that circle just one frame after B, but what happens if I play this animation? So when I'm playing this animation, it's actually playing it wrong because I actually wanted that circle to be on the same frame as the letter B. So you may actually think because of what I just said that Procreate understands that every layer is a frame, that I actually need to merge these two layers. In fact, now that I've merged, I've lost the capability to edit that letter B because now has turned into pixels. So now if I play the animation, yes, it is doing exactly what I want, but not necessarily in the best way because what we're doing here is called the destructive way of working on Procreate. So how do we actually achieve this best? So I'm just going to undo so I don't lose my letter, meaning it's still possible for me to make changes, and we're just going to hop onto our second file. So now onto our second animation file, you will see that now we have groups. We have the same kind of categories. We have the A, B, and C, but now these letters are merged into groups or collected into groups. So what does actually happens when we play the animation? The animation actually plays correctly, and that is now telling us that Procreate understands that each layer is a frame as well as that each group is also a frame. So the thing that I was just trying to do there on the previous file, which is to add circles, add elements, I can do it as long as I put these elements inside groups. So now moving on to the next example, this is where we've started to actually really animate things here on Procreate. So I'm just going to zoom out here a little bit, and this is an example of a bouncing ball animation that I did. For now, this example is only using the outlines. So let's just say this is a little bit more refined than just the sketching or the rough section of this animation. So what I want to show you here is that once again, I am using groups to have it as frames, but when I go into settings, let me just close the layers panel here, when I go into settings, I can still tweak the frames per second. I have the onion skin frames, which I'm going to set to about six now, but now if I turn the opacity, you now see that I have about six frames before the current frame, just as what we were just seeing previously, and I also have six frames after the current frame. But one thing that I really want to show you guys that I think it's actually really, really cool is by choosing this option here, which is to color secondary frames, Procreate now works in a way that all of the frames before the current frame are going to be colored as red, and all of the frames that come after the current frame are going to be colored as green. So I'm actually going to lower the brightness of my iPad, and I hope this becomes a little bit more visible. As you can see here, all of the frames, once again, before the current frame are colored red, all of the frames that are after the current frame are colored green. So if I keep moving here throughout my animation, you see that that ratio of red versus green changes, because Procreate is showing us the current frame plus the previous and next frames, as we've selected in the onion skin feature. So finally, the last thing here to cover is that this is the animation once is concluded. I'm just going to zoom out a little bit so you guys can see everything. So here's our bouncing ball. We have a little bit of a floor background, but we also have a foreground element and a background element as well. So how does it used to work on previous versions of Procreate? So to show you guys, I'm just going to pause one second. Basically, those foreground elements, as well as the background elements, they would have to be inside each group or each frame as Procreate understands. And they would have to be, for example, this top, this element right here would have to be the topmost layer so that it would be the foreground element. The problem with that is that since we have an animation, for example, here, let's just say there's about 20 frames here, these layers will be duplicated on each one of these groups. So the amount of layers would increase exponentially because all of a sudden we just wanted to have a foreground element and a background element. So how did Procreate actually solve this, let's just say, challenge? So now, again, in the beta version and the open beta version, we had, at least in the private beta for sure, we had the option to click on a layer and select animation foreground and animation background. So that has now moved to just working here on the timeline. So now when I click on my topmost layer, which it is the last frame, I can set that as my foreground right here. So again, I'm going to actually, maybe I'll just play the animation without the foreground. As you can see, it's playing the foreground element for just one frame because Procreate doesn't understand that that element we actually want as an animation foreground. So here I'm turning it on and the same goes for the very first frame, which we actually want as an animation background. So that is turned on as well. So this is just to say that Procreate has summarized some of these options and things just to the play bar, has given more importance to the play bar rather than us actually accessing the layers manual. Because I think what they're trying to say is that if you actually are going to animate, you can add frames right here on this button. You can select your onion skin preferences, frames per second, colorizing frames, all of that over here, and you can play your animation. So when you're in this animation mode, you should be focusing more about this bottom bar right here, rather than just going back into layers as we would do with an illustration. And finally, guys, just going into settings here, we can choose three kinds of playing methods for the animation. We can do a looping method, which is the one that you see. We can play as a ping pong animation. So it's just playing back and forth. And finally, a one shot. So it's only going to play once and stop on the last frame. Whatever way, whatever type of playing animation that we have here at the bottom, it's going to be the way that it's going to be exported once you go into share and export into any of the settings right here, the animated GIF, the animated PNG, or the animated MP4. So just make sure that you select here in the settings, the actual way that you want to play this animation. Sometimes you do want to play them as ping pong, but if you want to play them as a looping animation, make sure that is set here before you go and export your animation. So that's it for this video, guys. I hope you guys enjoyed. And if you did, a like would be super appreciated, as well as make sure to hit the subscribe button down below, as well as the bell notification icon for more tips and tricks, reviews, speed paint videos, and so that you don't miss anything as long as there is a new upload on this channel. Also, if you want to continue learning a little bit more about Procreate 5, I highly recommend you to watch this video right here. And it talks about the Brush Studio and how to actually make some really cool brushes with the new techniques that are available on Procreate 5. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you on the next one. Ciao.