If there is anything you would like added to Animation Buddy, let me know here and I may add it.
Flip through a video frame-by-frame, and practice your animation skills through observation · By
Could there be a feature that can change the highlighted frames to a specified amount of frames? Like every 2nd, 4th, or 8th frame? And potentially some customizable colors for the frames too? A scroll bar for the frames would also be a nice addition because the swiping motion does get a little tedious.
I worry that making user customization for highlighting every amount of frames would complicate the user experience for little gain.
The high-customizability option would be allowing the user to configure an offset and pattern-length (probably by intuitively dragging the cursor on the timeline while holding a key down).
The low-customizability option would be making the default highlight pattern mark every 2nd/4th/8th frames. This may work because most animation is done on twos.
I fear the high-customizability option may be seldom used, confuse people, and distract from the study by adding a new thing to think about.
I want to try the low-customizability option, but let me know if that does not fit your use case or if it would be weird.
I'm generally not a fan of user-customizable UIs; I believe that if a user desires customizing their UI, then the UI may just be poorly designed and should be made better for everyone. But then again, maybe it's just a fun form of expression for the user. Why do you desire to customize the colors? I'm curious if this is for expression, to solve a design problem, or another reason.
I do see the value of a scrollbar. So Animation Buddy can keep its minimalism, I could probably have it off by default and toggled by a hotkey.
Just to double check: are you aware you can zoom out with a configurable hotkey (Or I think Ctrl+Scroll wheel)? This eases the amount of work accomplished by the swiping motion.
Your post made me unrelatedly think I could easily make clicking on a frame toggle highlighting that frame in particular, so it would be easy to mark frames. That would be useful for quickly visually distinguishing a starting frame for a study (previously I was solely using the frame number).
Thank you for the suggestions.
Let me know your thoughts on my responses.
Hello! The low-customizability option would be great! I wanted to follow along Toniko's suggestion of referencing every fourth frame when studying a scene. It would make it easier to visualize and keep track of every 2nd/4th/8th frames, so I think this would be a really useful feature.
For the UI, I desired customized colors just as a fun form of expression. I do also think it would be nice to have slightly brighter color options instead of just purple but it isn't necessary to have.
I'm aware that I can also zoom out when viewing the timeline but I didn't consider it for making the swiping motion easier. Although, I still believe the scroll bar function would be a valuable feature to have to move around freely and also visually keep track of an area of frames (besides the timestamp and frame numbers). I'm not sure if either a scroll bar for the frames or a seeking bar for the video (like on a YouTube video) would be a better implementation of this idea. I also don't mind having the scroll bar off by default for the minimalistic feel.
I really like your idea of frame highlighting. That would be amazing to be able to keep track of specific frames for studying. Maybe it could also work well with a seeking bar that could also mark the highlighted area on it.
Thank you for your response!
Here is what the the scrollbar, frame highlights, and new default frame pattern look like right now:
I'll consider adding user-customizable colors, test the update for bugs, and then it will be ready for release.
Looks great! Thank you for considering my suggestions. I appreciate your had work Code Flame.
Awesome :) The update is now released, with user themes included. Holding "Ctrl" and "Shift" and holding click on a visual element should allow you to change its color, and this will save changes to a file automatically.
You should be able to access the download page from your Itch.io library or from the "You already own this; go to the download page" banner on the store page.
