It’s been well over 1 year since our last release. Many things have happened for all of us and even though we are still performing post-release tasks and fixing unforeseen bugs, we have persevered to get this version with over 600+ individual tasks. Thus we are releasing Pencil2D v0.6.5 into the wild!
| Contents |
|---|
| Introduction |
| Pencil2D User Showcase Reel |
| Release Highlights |
| Windows & MacOS Permissions Issues |
| Release Notes v0.6.5 |
| Known Issues & Gotchas |
| How Can I Help? |
Many thanks to all the people who helped to make this release possible.
Pencil2D Release 0.6.5, 28 days later
…Well actually make that 49 gasp. Truth be told the new version has been out since July 31st 2020. While we were working on a new release strategy the release version became more and more ambitious, however most of our team had a reality check with both their personal and professional lives so we had to decide that it was time to release a new, albeit impefect, version to update your experience.
The lack of a timely announcement was a byproduct of our desire that all officially supported platforms, including those with external maintainers were ready before the announcement, however this wasn’t possible. We also wanted to provide a bit more explanation on how the new features are meant to be used, so we produced a few video overviews to help with this.
Right now we’re furiously addressing new bugs that have appeared due to the newest features, and finally putting to rest other problems that were chasing users for years. We kindly ask everyone to please follow closely the bug tracker, as we will be also looking to release a new bug fix version, 0.6.6 by the end of september / start of october to address some of the most critical Known issues you’ll find right off the bat.
Lastly, during this past year we’ve been also dealing with additional issues introduced by traditional operating systems after a new wave of security updates. Due to this the open-source community, as well as Pencil2D users, have been reporting various issues related to file permissions. If you’d like to know what we’ve done to ease this problem and what you can do, read on!
Before you dive into the current release notes or the new feature highligths we have a surprise for everyone!
Pencil2D User Showcase Reel 2020
Back in May we made a call for content in order to update our User Showcase for 2020. Suffice to say we are overjoyed with the work that was sent and we’re proud of this community. While we couldn’t accomodate everyone, we did our best so each contributing artist would be featured and we edited the video artistically to higlight their own work. We hope you enjoy it!
Release Highlights
We also took some time to provide quick video guides to each of the new major features that have landed in Pencil2D. While humble, these will certainly improve over time with your feedback and support. Enjoy!
| Movie Import | Sound Scrubbing | Project File Template Presets |
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| Pixel Tracker (Simple peg-bar alignment) | Pixel Re-coloring | Import Re-position |
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| Rotation Angle Constraint | Camera Overlay System | Light Table mode |
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| Pencil2D Project Layer Import |
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Windows & MacOS Permissions Issues
Begining 2019 we started to have many reports about crashes and corrupted files (something we had managed to minimize with previous patches), after many months of investigation and support tickets, we narrowed down the root cause of these problems. It was the Operating Systems themselves.
Windows 10 and macOS Mojave, and later Catalina have been on a crusade to enhance their security protocols. While this is not a bad thing to do, when most software vendors require thorough scrutiny of all files to even let the end user system work, this quickly becomes a breeding ground for chaos.
Attempting to spare you from the technical details, put quite simply, Pencil2D was forced into this security mayhem and to be honest we still haven’t found a suitable solution that can be bundled with the software.
With the recent Windows OS signed certification and macOS notarization buffs, we’ve found ourselves fighting for survival, so to speak.
To ease our affected users experience we have made and found a set of guides on how to deal with permissions & security lock-in for our software.
Windows
https://discuss.pencil2d.org/t/guide-how-to-train-your-pencil2d-windows/4106
macOS
- https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from-an-unidentified-developer-mh40616/mac
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491 (How to bypass signing and notarization)
Version 0.6.5 Release Notes
Features
- #1160 Reimplement enhanced relative layer visibility a.k.a Light Table mode (by CandyFace)
- #1205 Pegbar alignment (Base Feature) (by David Lamhauge)
- #1246 Change Pixel Color on Bitmap layer
- #1256 Add Project File Template Preset support (by Scribblemaniac)
- #1258 Movie import (by Scribblemaniac)
- #1261 Layer import into active project from external
.pclx - #1301 New Camera Overlay System: Center Registration, Safe Areas & Compositional Guides
- #1333 Sound scrubbing, using shortcuts or mouse (by David Lamhauge)
- #1304 New onion skin panel (by Jose Moreno)
Enhancements
- #1223 Refactor selection logic (by CandyFace)
- #1226 Constrained rotation (by Scribblemaniac)
- #1235 Improve numbered image import
- #1241 Make spinbox bigger (by Chris Ju)
- #1244 Fill non-alpha (opaque) pixels
- #1249 Autosave & Grid preference settings adjustment (by Jose D. Moreno)
- #1257 Always show timeline scrub while playing animation
- #1262 More consistent palette import behavior
- #1264 Swatches can be set to fit in widget using a slider
- #1267 Painting Behavior Improvements
- #1268 Flood Fill Optimization, Smudge Tool improvement, Selection Reset for file creation & loading.
- #1276 Save and Load shortcut list
- #1281 Fixing recent file menu issue (by Arkadiusz Żukiewicz)
- #1283 Drag & drop ot reorder palette swatches
- #1284 Remove brush toggle buttons for AA and feathering (by Nick Betsworth)
- #1285 Import drawings on wanted position
- #1290 Compiler warning fixes (by Nick Betsworth)
- #1297 Added possibilities for import positions
- #1311 Apply more saturated color scheme to layers and highlight more distinct
- #1317 Improve resizing of all panels
- #1324 Increase visibility of active layer keyframes
- #1328 Auto select the new layer after creation
- #1340 Sync fps changes to perferences
- #1347 Install support for other Unixes
- #1351 Open Pencil2D’s temporary directory from the menu
- #1354, #1359 More unit tests (by mc-csharpclass)
- #1364, #1368 vector eyedroppertool fix & improvements (by mc-csharpclass)
- #1395 New palette colors added last and renamed immediately
- #1399 Add Endonyms for the language list
- 939abcd Show endonym (the name of the language in its own language) in Preferences
Fixes
- #1269 Fix a critical partial file wipe issue after moving keyframes (by Scribblemaniac)
- #1186 Quick Sizing is enabled on Paint Bucket Tool, but does nothing on a bitmap layer
- #1240 Fix translation bugs. Fix a warning (by Chris Ju)
- #1251 Fix onion skin rendering and behavior i.e Onion skin works on backgrounds
- #1253 Fix all spin boxes maintaining focus after returning
- #1274 Feather range to 1-99
- #1313 Restore autosave settings
- #1315 Ignores empty path in save dialog
- #1318 Fix MinGW windows compiling issues
- #1326 Fix playback audio sync issues
- #1335 Fix suffix being added even though one exists
- #1339 Fix Onion Skin Prev/Next Button Behavior
- #1341 Fix #1033 Broken sound playback in AppImages
- #1345 Vertical scrollbar updates properly
- #1346 Updating UI correctly during transformation
- #1388 Fix more crashes if no previous frame in a layer
- f9e5e5a Various localisation issues
- b9ba20e Fix shortcut popup behind main window
- b1e6171 Selection rotatie behave naturally, fixes rotation adding up after clicking with Move tool
- e4f722a Fix Counterclockwise rotation shortcut
Known issues & Gotchas
Here is a non-exhaustive list of bugs that we are already aware of, but were unable to fix in this release. Rest assured, we will do our best to fix all of them eventually.
- #1417 Panels spilling their content or timeline getting pushed outside the scree when the vertical screen size is too narrow, usually on 1366x768 laptops (this was partially addressed by #1369 already)
- #1426 Onion skins, layers & documents show “ghosted” (buffered) images after creating a selection
- #1427 Crash when importing the same layer multiple times with the new Pencil2D project layer import feature
- #1428 Crash when creating new file after using peg-bar alignment
- #1429 Undoing a stroke made in an empty frame, relative to an existing keyframe will create a new keyframe instead and mess up the undo order.
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#1433 & #1435 Polyline tool drawing not updating properly while drawing on vector & bitmap layers respectively.
- Zooming out the camera layer to less than 25% will increase the chance of Crashing Pencil2D
- #748, #1004, #1098 Misc undo/redo issues. New Undo / Redo system under development will be reviewed for v0.7.0
- #1117 The CLI (Command-Line Interface) export operation consumes more memory than using the editor
- #1120 Undoing Selection Flip X / Y will delete the drawing instead. A possible fix will be available for the new undo system.
- #1133 Lag and buggy strokes with Huion tablets. Workaround: disabling the “linear optimizer” in your tablet driver may help if that option is available, see this post
- #1179 Currently there’s an audio delay of 1-2 frames for in-editor playback & exported files. However on some systems the opposite happens where the audio delay on playback might be longer by 12-16 or more frames, but on export it works ok.
- #1189 Zoom shortcut on drawing tools not working properly with the Middle Mouse Button (Win) and mouse input in general (All Operating Systems)
- #1193 The feather slider widget (Brush Tool) has a higher max value than the input value, and any value above 96 pixels will not allow you to paint.
- #1196 A unerasable stroke appears when drawing if you turn off the pressure sensitivity checkbox with drawing tools.
- #943 Color Palette (Bitmap): Some issues when replacing the first swatch remain. Only thumbnail changes color, but the actual color doesn’t. It is recommended you make a new item rather than changing it.
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#1055 Color Palette (Bitmap): Swatches will not update using the Replace command. It only works when having a vector layer active. (Note: Create your custom palettes with a vector layer selected or import them from GIMP or Krita using *.gpl files)
- Undo: Undoing moving a keyframe to a new frame will create a blank keyframe on the place where it used to be.
- Undo, Smudge Tool (Bitmap): You cannot UNDO the smudge tool at the moment.
- Blur Tool (Bitmap): Pressing ALT with smudge tool doesn’t work, do NOT use it. Use other drawing apps for smudge or blur effects for now.
- Fill Tool (Vector): Filling a stroke requires the stroke to be selected.
- Fill Tool (Vector): “Stroke thickness” option will reset pressure sensitive lines width.
- Vector Engine is a WIP and does not work as intended. Much more work will be required, please avoid using it for production.
How can I help?
In case you missed our announcement on social media, now you can upload your Pencil2D project here to help Pencil2D development.
With a project library, our dev team will be able to test new features and detect bugs more effectively. We are still looking for more projects from our users so please consider sharing them with us if you have any. The projects are invaluable to us even if you just share them privately.
To those who have already shared your work with us, we are very grateful for your help. Some of the fixes in this very release would not have been possible without you.
Pencil2D is developed by passionate volunteers in their spare time. You can become one too, there are many ways to help other than programming! Please visit Contribute Page for further information.