How to add animated figure in rotoPen VS2018?

[alanball]

HI. I have been able to add my own form of transport in rotoPen (still image), but would like to add a walking figure to use as an alternative to the lady in the swimming Costume.
Has anyone done this or has ideas of how to go about this?

Many thanks

[RobertOZ]

Adding new images is not a problem, however there is an issue when trying to add an animated .gif The gif. plays fine in the timeline, but when added to RotoPen it plays as a still image.
Will play around some more and will also try Route Generator which I normally use.
However, don't think that it would be possible, as RotoPen would only show the first frame, because the animated gif is not actually moving when traveling along the route

[RobertOZ]

Route Generator 1.10 CAN play animated .gifs, will now try same philosophy in RotoPen, nope still no movement

[alanball]

Thanks Robert for your reply. The animations do move in rotoPen, I have used them often. I have am in contact with someone at proDAD at the moment and about to send some details he has requested. I will get back to you if I have any luck.

[alanball]

Thanks Robert

I have just created a small video of animations moving. This is on my one drive but never too sure if the links work or not.

https://1drv.ms/v/s!Akf1CrdlxwoEkl-TFTi3J6_GREBY

[Ken Berry]

Neat animations, Alan. But it is not clear whether the running man is one which you are going to test, or which you have already tested and it works/doesn't work with Rotopen. (I don't use Rotopen for this so please excuse some egregious error on my part if the answer is obvious!)

[alanball]

Hi Ken, they are both included as standard in rotoPen, and just to show Robert they work ok.
I am still waiting to hear from proDAD, weekend of course over there in Germany. I must say they were very quick getting back to me last week, so hopefull.

[RobertOZ]

Alan, my difficulty is not with the animated effects included with RotoPen, they work as expected, my issue is adding new animated effects, for some reason, when added to RotoPen they lose the transparent background, so remain static

[alanball]

Sorry Robert, I misunderstood your comment. That is the same problem I am having. It will be interesting to see if proDAD come up with an answer.

[RobertOZ]

What I have managed to ascertain, is that RotoPen uses .tif files for animation, whereas Route Generator uses .gif files, In Route Generator, nearly all are animated and I have no problem adding my own animated .gif files.
So, need to convert some of my animated .gif files to .tif and see what happens

[alanball]

This is the reply I had from proDAD, talk about lost in translation.. Where the pen came from I have no idea.

Hello,

we understand your request as, she wants to use an animation as a pen.
Unfortunately, currently only a single image can be imported as a pen.
You could try the following:
You can replace the "running woman" included in RotoPen. Simply overwrite the TIF images with another motif.
However, it could happen that the thumb still shows the woman.

We note this as a wish for the next version.

with kind regards

Uwe Wenz
Customer Support Manager
proDAD GmbH

[Ken Berry]

Alan -- you might want to think about resending your message to them but using Google Translate to write it in German. I have tested Translate with several of the languages I speak pretty well (French, Portuguese, Spanish), and I would say Translate gets it right over 90% of the time...

I suspect in this case "pen" is Roto-"pen" speak for "cursor" with the animated characters taking the place of the computer cursor...

[alanball]

Thanks for suggestion Ken, I did as you suggested. I told proDAD I had done as suggested and replaced the tiffs with my own. But as Robert found, could not get the animation to work, without a background.

Robert
I will take a good look at the Route Generator that you use. It's just more convenient to have maps incorporated inside VS and rotoPen covers the majority of my requirements.

Thanks Ken and Robert for your help

[lata]

alanball

I think I must be having a bad day, just trying to locate the .tif files is proving a little difficult

So can you give the location of those Tif files.

I have located quite a lot under C:\Program Files\proDAD\ several folders, a search found over 2000 .tif images.

[asik1]

Prodad is using frames sequence , same goes for the adorage overlays.