Bug 417481

Summary:	Animated vs flat layers, and ways to merge them
Product:	[Applications] krita	Reporter:	Lina Whatevs <linadidtry>
Component:	Animation	Assignee:	Krita Bugs <krita-bugs-null>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	ahab.greybeard, emmetoneill.pdx, tamtamy.tymona
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	4.2.8
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Microsoft Windows
OS:	Microsoft Windows
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Lina Whatevs 2020-02-12 11:08:50 UTC

When working with a frame in an animated layer, I often want to create more layers, draw on them, and then merge them together into that one frame. Currently, this is really time-consuming, and difficult to get right. Here's an idea on how to make it easier:

Part 1: Distinguish "flat" layers and animated layers

There is already a difference here: animated layers have the onionskin-lightbulb icon, while flat layers do not. All that's needed is ways to convert between them:
* Creating a keyframe on a flat layer turns this into an animated layer already. This is good, but if you have drawn on the layer, and "Create Blank Frame" on frame 0, the art disappears. The art should stay.
* "Flatten Layer" works well for converting to flat layer.

Part 2: Merging rules

When merging (ctrl+e):
* Two flat layers: merge as usual
* Two animated layers: merge frame-by-frame, as usual
* One flat layer and one animated layer: merge only into the current frame on the animated layer.

This shouldn't break anything, as if you want the old merging behavior back, you can convert the flat layer to animated before you merge.

(Background: I've created a few animations in krita)

Comment 1 Ahab Greybeard 2020-02-12 15:06:27 UTC

Re. Part 1:
If you have artwork on a non-animated layer and you want to have it aminated, you select frame-0 on the timeline for the layer and do right-click -> Create Duplicate Frame. This makes the artwork into frame-0 of an animated layer.

If you do this on frame-n, you get the artwork on frame-n and also a copy of the artwork on frame-0 as a keyframe there too. You can Remove Frame and Pull on frame-0 to get rid of this with the consequence of moving the artwork back to frame-(n-1), so you can take account of that before you do the intial conversion to an animated layer. That is behaviour I'd like to see changed so that a single artwork keyframe is placed at frame-n in this operation.

Re. Part 2:
That would be good if it can be done.