I have couple things to ask- 1) I drew like 7 frames with few messy brush strokes on them (on the solid layer), gone back and forth few times to add few more strokes. But what bothers me, for those 7 frames, I saw a whopping 171 SPF files pile up in designated storage folder, 72 MB!! Why is it so memory-intensive, and why so many SPF files per frame, as if it stores every separate brush stroke instead of frame. Am I doing something wrong? I saw on your tutorial, it shows one frame = one SPF file. Using After Effect CC2015, version 13.5.0.
2) - tried using expression to loop frame sequence- but it seems like Paint & Stick does not support expressions. How can I loop 7 frame sequence few times?
3)- is it possible for you guys to make Paint & Stick store frames as PNG files instead of those SPF's that cannot be read by anything else?
I have couple things to ask- 1) I drew like 7 frames with few messy brush strokes on them (on the solid layer), gone back and forth few times to add few more strokes. But what bothers me, for those 7 frames, I saw a whopping 171 SPF files pile up in designated storage folder, 72 MB!! Why is it so memory-intensive, and why so many SPF files per frame, as if it stores every separate brush stroke instead of frame. Am I doing something wrong? I saw on your tutorial, it shows one frame = one SPF file. Using After Effect CC2015, version 13.5.0.
2) - tried using expression to loop frame sequence- but it seems like Paint & Stick does not support expressions. How can I loop 7 frame sequence few times?
3)- is it possible for you guys to make Paint & Stick store frames as PNG files instead of those SPF's that cannot be read by anything else?
Thanks!
1) So actually Maksim, you are right. We DO save a separate SPF for each stroke, however that is merely a temporary process. Early in our development we saved each stroke to RAM for each of the 99 undos in After Effects, however we found that using so much RAM hurt performance on tablets, laptops, and portable drawing devices. We decided to save SPFs to disk, because they're so fast to read, write, and compress/uncompress, that there was virtually no noticeable performance hit using a disk cache. Don't worry, those excess undo frames are all deleted when you save and close After Effects, so you should be left with only 7 total SPFs, one for each of your 7 drawings! We figure that most After Effects users use about 20-60gb disk caches, so using an extra 1gb ourselves would be less damaging than say, using 1gb of RAM on an older Cintiq Companion with 8gb of RAM. It's possible we may be saving more than the 99 undos, I forget what our limit was set to. But I promise that disk bloat will not be permanent so long as you save and close Ae. If Ae were to crash or Force Quit however, the deletion process would be bypassed. You'd have to collect your After Effects file/dependent SPF files to a new folder, and then delete the previous SPF folder to remove the bloat.
2) Expressions do not work, but we would like them to someday. In the mean time, please pre-compose those frames, then use a time-remap on the pre-comp, and loop the time-remap. I know that's not ideal. I hope we can support expressions in the future, that would be awesome. For now, a workaround is needed.
3) We save to SPF just because it was easy, fast, and efficient, for our first build. It's our own format. In the future it would be great to give the user the option to write to 8 bit PNGs, or 32 bit TIFFs, both of which would be editable in dozens of other programs. I'd like to scrap SPF altogether someday. Admittedly this has slipped down the priority list for now. Hopefully soon, but I can't make promises on when, because there are some core improvements we need to make first.
4) Also- PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT USE Paint & Stick with Ae 13.5.0! I'm hoping you meant 13.5.2, which is After Effects 2015, fully up to date. We do not support 13.5.0,(Ae 2015's first release) because it's missing important SDK features that were updated in 13.5.1. 13.5.0 was an anomaly, and to my knowledge, the only version Paint & Stick really isn't compatible with. Ae CS6, 2014, 2015, and 2015.3 should all work just fine, but please make sure they are up to date to just be safe, because we only test with updated versions.
What's the demand been like for Paint + Stick's integration with Blender? Is it massive or middling?
Hi Akwesi,
Sorry to say the demand for integration with Blender has been very low. Most of our users are Cinema 4D users. At this time, it's not a priority, but if you know of any Blender developers who may be interested in creating a Sticky Pass exporter, we'd be open to discussion with them. Perhaps the demand would increase when the tool became available, I would really like to support Blender and other 3D packages eventually.
hey there and thanks for this great plugin. i wonder if it would be possible to add a function with u could draw straight lines or lines on a path u can define before? cheers, mac
I bought a paint only license and when I just tried it it got rendered with the 'demo' grid.
Any tips? Thanks!
Hey Gilbert, can you please submit a help ticket? https://aescripts.com/contact/?direct=1 It'll let us take a look at your current license, and fix it if there are any problems.
If you were a beta user, please make sure you have the latest version of Paint & Stick installed, because the beta version is not licensable. You can download it here:
Hi. My UI does not look like the ones on the tutorial. I cannot figure out how to change brush color. My Paint and Stick UI has: Frame location, Paint Tools, Stick Paint Tools, Onion Skin, Advanced, and Utilities. I don't see "brushes" for example. Please advise. I have deleted preferences, restarted, changed brush folder location, etc. I'm not sure how to uninstall.
Hi. My UI does not look like the ones on the tutorial. I cannot figure out how to change brush color. My Paint and Stick UI has: Frame location, Paint Tools, Stick Paint Tools, Onion Skin, Advanced, and Utilities. I don't see "brushes" for example. Please advise. I have deleted preferences, restarted, changed brush folder location, etc. I'm not sure how to uninstall.
Please open a support ticket and provide screenshosts so we can see what you are referring to and are able to help you further.
Hi. My UI does not look like the ones on the tutorial. I cannot figure out how to change brush color. My Paint and Stick UI has: Frame location, Paint Tools, Stick Paint Tools, Onion Skin, Advanced, and Utilities. I don't see "brushes" for example. Please advise. I have deleted preferences, restarted, changed brush folder location, etc. I'm not sure how to uninstall.
Hi Geoffrey,
If you're not seeing "brushes" you may be expecting the UI for Paint & Stick 1.0, but you have Paint & Stick 1.5 installed. There are some old videos floating around the internet for Paint & Stick 1.0, but please refer to the latest videos on Paint & Stick 1.5 here:
The first video: "Getting Started With Paint & Stick" will show you the button "Show/Hide Brush Palette" which will bring your brush palette up as a separate window. This UI is different from our original UI, but it's much more powerful. The box to change color is in the top left of the brush palette, directly to the left of the "open swatches" button. It defaults as gray/eyedropper, which is why it may be hard to find, but just click it and choose any color. (The video shows this too.)
Also, please make sure to install the latest version of Paint & Stick. 1.5.4 is available now, and 1.5.5 will be out within the next few days, which should prevent crashes on specific machines. To download the latest, go here:
If you have the beta version installed, it cannot be licensed, and will always watermark. So please make sure to download the release from the page above. Installing the latest version should auto-replace the old, but because you've requested info on how to un-install, here's a video on that too.
I've got the Beta version from a few months ago that I've downloaded from the website but didn't manage to use it at the time.
Now that I've updated CC17 it says that the license can't be used on this version.
Is paint&stick it not compatible with CC 2017?
Thanks in advance, the plugin looks amazing!!
Cheers
Joao Monteiro
It's definitely compatible with CC2017 it's just that the beta expired so your license is no longer valid. You can purchase a license here: https://aescripts.com/paint-and-stick
Might there be any tutorials to use Paint & Stick with Newtek's Lightwave with regard to creating Sticky and ID passes? I also have EXRTrader.
Unfortunately there are not, we only support Cinema 4D at the moment. We do however have a concept video that explains how the pass is created. It uses Maya as an example, but perhaps some of the tools are the same?
Well... Someone came through on the Lightwave forum and looks like I might have a technique now. The setup is extremely simple; much easier than in C4D in fact. Just spent the entire morning though running tests in order to find the right settings for EXRTrader that are happy in After Effects and it looks like I finally hit on the correct combo.
Will most likely purchase in the next few days then hopefully post a video showing the setup with Lightwave.
it´s possible to just use the onion skin for shape layer animation? I´ve downloaded the demo version but It just sais that tthe plugin does not support shape layers. It would be great to have onion skin built in after effects.
Well... Someone came through on the Lightwave forum and looks like I might have a technique now. The setup is extremely simple; much easier than in C4D in fact. Just spent the entire morning though running tests in order to find the right settings for EXRTrader that are happy in After Effects and it looks like I finally hit on the correct combo.
Will most likely purchase in the next few days then hopefully post a video showing the setup with Lightwave.
Hey Mark, that sounds awesome! Sorry for the delay, through the chaos of the last few days a handful of email notifications slipped through the cracks. Feel free to submit a help ticket if you'd like to talk to us directly about how you did it, or if you have any questions. I've never used Lightwave but I'd be curious to see.
it´s possible to just use the onion skin for shape layer animation? I´ve downloaded the demo version but It just sais that tthe plugin does not support shape layers. It would be great to have onion skin built in after effects.
Thanks
There is a workaround for that, where you can use Onion Skin on an adjustment layer above your shape layers. You just have to make sure your background is turned off. Please take a look at this video for the full explanation:
The full explanation starts at 6:06, and the adjustment layer is shown at 7:20. Hopefully that's what you're looking for!
Well... Someone came through on the Lightwave forum and looks like I might have a technique now. The setup is extremely simple; much easier than in C4D in fact. Just spent the entire morning though running tests in order to find the right settings for EXRTrader that are happy in After Effects and it looks like I finally hit on the correct combo.
Will most likely purchase in the next few days then hopefully post a video showing the setup with Lightwave.
Hey Mark, that sounds awesome! Sorry for the delay, through the chaos of the last few days a handful of email notifications slipped through the cracks. Feel free to submit a help ticket if you'd like to talk to us directly about how you did it, or if you have any questions. I've never used Lightwave but I'd be curious to see.
Cheers, Chris Paint & Stick Product Manager
Thanks Chris. Probably gonna be awhile but sounds like I've interested a couple other Lightwave users.
it´s possible to just use the onion skin for shape layer animation? I´ve downloaded the demo version but It just sais that tthe plugin does not support shape layers. It would be great to have onion skin built in after effects.
Thanks
There is a workaround for that, where you can use Onion Skin on an adjustment layer above your shape layers. You just have to make sure your background is turned off. Please take a look at this video for the full explanation:
The full explanation starts at 6:06, and the adjustment layer is shown at 7:20. Hopefully that's what you're looking for!
Cheers, Chris Paint & Stick Product Manager
Oh Man! That´s just what I needed. You have a new customer
I'm very new to aescripts.com and I recently discovered the existence of Paint & Stick.
I was wondering if it is possible to stick animated textures on a 3D object as well? So for example, to ad an animated 2D face (created with the function Paint) on a 3D character. Or do you perhaps know a way how I can achieve such style/technique?
My early, simple tests with Lightwave went swimmingly. When work schedule eases up after the holidays, I hope to do something a bit more complex and post a vid or two with notes.
My early, simple tests with Lightwave went swimmingly. When work schedule eases up after the holidays, I hope to do something a bit more complex and post a vid or two with notes.
Loving Paint & Stick so far, it's great to be drawing in After Effects so easily.
Only issue I've found is recurring error messages when changing brush attributes (screenshot attached). I've reset prefs and changed brushes folder location a few times but no dice. Sometimes it pops up three times in a row, and appears to behave the same in 2015.3 and 2017. Recently moved from OS X 10.10 to 10.11 with same result.
Loving Paint & Stick so far, it's great to be drawing in After Effects so easily.
Only issue I've found is recurring error messages when changing brush attributes (screenshot attached). I've reset prefs and changed brushes folder location a few times but no dice. Sometimes it pops up three times in a row, and appears to behave the same in 2015.3 and 2017. Recently moved from OS X 10.10 to 10.11 with same result.
Any help would be appreciated!
Alex
Please update to the latest version 1.5.5 which fixes this issue. If you are still seeing the problem please open a support ticket and send us your AE prefs file and brush folder.
Loving Paint & Stick so far, it's great to be drawing in After Effects so easily.
Only issue I've found is recurring error messages when changing brush attributes (screenshot attached). I've reset prefs and changed brushes folder location a few times but no dice. Sometimes it pops up three times in a row, and appears to behave the same in 2015.3 and 2017. Recently moved from OS X 10.10 to 10.11 with same result.
Any help would be appreciated!
Alex
As Lloyd said, I think this should be fixed in 1.5.5, which was released recently. The only thing I can think of from your message is the "&" in your brush folder name might be throwing it off. We don't support non-alpha-numeric characters. Please change the brush folder name to PandS_Brushes, rather than P&S_Brushes, if upgrading to 1.5.5 does not work. And of course please send in a support ticket if the issue is not resolved!
Loving Paint & Stick so far, it's great to be drawing in After Effects so easily.
Only issue I've found is recurring error messages when changing brush attributes (screenshot attached). I've reset prefs and changed brushes folder location a few times but no dice. Sometimes it pops up three times in a row, and appears to behave the same in 2015.3 and 2017. Recently moved from OS X 10.10 to 10.11 with same result.
Any help would be appreciated!
Alex
As Lloyd said, I think this should be fixed in 1.5.5, which was released recently. The only thing I can think of from your message is the "&" in your brush folder name might be throwing it off. We don't support non-alpha-numeric characters. Please change the brush folder name to PandS_Brushes, rather than P&S_Brushes, if upgrading to 1.5.5 does not work. And of course please send in a support ticket if the issue is not resolved!
hope all is good. Love the plugin, tho I need some help please...
Windows 10, After Effects CS6.
The issue is the first one one the FAQ, funnily enough. Symptoms are; cant select brushes, error message appears when changing brush size in the composition window (please see attached image). I have tried the FAQ suggested steps several times with no results.
Interesting thing; I can get the brush to change by selecting a new brush and then adjusting the opacity slider at the top of the brush pallete. It is unreliable and difficult to reproduce.
From looking at the screen captures of the plugin, the brushes are also being cropped in the preview, hope this gives you some insight into what is going on here. (see attached)
hope all is good. Love the plugin, tho I need some help please...
Please make sure you are running the latest version. If you are and are still having issues please open a support ticket https://aescripts.com/contact/?direct=1
I'm having a problem with Paint & Stick were I'm unable to paint anything. Every time I try and use a brush I end up moving the layer around rather than painting on the layer. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious but I'm following the steps exactly as they're show in the tutorials and it's just not working for me.
I'm having a problem with Paint & Stick were I'm unable to paint anything. Every time I try and use a brush I end up moving the layer around rather than painting on the layer. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious but I'm following the steps exactly as they're show in the tutorials and it's just not working for me.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Luke
Hey, your UI is just hidden in that project file/comp! Just gonna copy and paste this from the FAQ...
"My Toolbox has disappeared Your After Effects UI is hidden. With Paint & Stick selected, on Mac press "CMD+SHIFT+H", or on Windows press "Control+SHIFT+H". This is a feature built into After Effects. The UI is hidable on a hotkey so you can quickly hide Keyframes, masks, and other unnecessary controls to see your composition cleanly. Because the Paint & Stick toolbox is part of the UI, you must show it to work with it. "
Without the UI visible, the behavior defaults to the pointer, not to the brush. Please let us know if you have further issues!
Our video team works from a fibre server and we keep getting an error when we route the Paint and Stick keyframe folder to that volume. Any idea why that happens? Our workaround is to just keep the keyframes local and then everything runs smooth. Just a little curious if this is a design choice or a weird bug with our setup. We love the plug-in and it works a treat otherwise! Thank you and keep up the great work!
Our video team works from a fibre server and we keep getting an error when we route the Paint and Stick keyframe folder to that volume. Any idea why that happens? Our workaround is to just keep the keyframes local and then everything runs smooth. Just a little curious if this is a design choice or a weird bug with our setup. We love the plug-in and it works a treat otherwise! Thank you and keep up the great work!
Your error message is not showing up, something went wrong with the upload. Could you please submit the image in a help ticket? Also, please let us know the exact directory, and your operating system. It may help us narrow it down. Sorry for the problems you're having!
Our video team works from a fibre server and we keep getting an error when we route the Paint and Stick keyframe folder to that volume. Any idea why that happens? Our workaround is to just keep the keyframes local and then everything runs smooth. Just a little curious if this is a design choice or a weird bug with our setup. We love the plug-in and it works a treat otherwise! Thank you and keep up the great work!
Your error message is not showing up, something went wrong with the upload. Could you please submit the image in a help ticket? Also, please let us know the exact directory, and your operating system. It may help us narrow it down. Sorry for the problems you're having!
1) I drew like 7 frames with few messy brush strokes on them (on the solid layer), gone back and forth few times to add few more strokes. But what bothers me, for those 7 frames, I saw a whopping 171 SPF files pile up in designated storage folder, 72 MB!! Why is it so memory-intensive, and why so many SPF files per frame, as if it stores every separate brush stroke instead of frame. Am I doing something wrong? I saw on your tutorial, it shows one frame = one SPF file.
Using After Effect CC2015, version 13.5.0.
2) - tried using expression to loop frame sequence- but it seems like Paint & Stick does not support expressions. How can I loop 7 frame sequence few times?
3)- is it possible for you guys to make Paint & Stick store frames as PNG files instead of those SPF's that cannot be read by anything else?
Thanks!
Chris
i wonder if it would be possible to add a function with u could draw straight lines or lines on a path u can define before?
cheers, mac
If you were a beta user, please make sure you have the latest version of Paint & Stick installed, because the beta version is not licensable. You can download it here:
https://aescripts.com/downloadable/customer/products/
Sorry for the inconvenience, but this should be an easy solve.
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager
If you're not seeing "brushes" you may be expecting the UI for Paint & Stick 1.0, but you have Paint & Stick 1.5 installed. There are some old videos floating around the internet for Paint & Stick 1.0, but please refer to the latest videos on Paint & Stick 1.5 here:
https://aescripts.com/knowledgebase/index/view/faq/paint-and-stick/
The first video: "Getting Started With Paint & Stick" will show you the button "Show/Hide Brush Palette" which will bring your brush palette up as a separate window. This UI is different from our original UI, but it's much more powerful. The box to change color is in the top left of the brush palette, directly to the left of the "open swatches" button. It defaults as gray/eyedropper, which is why it may be hard to find, but just click it and choose any color. (The video shows this too.)
Also, please make sure to install the latest version of Paint & Stick. 1.5.4 is available now, and 1.5.5 will be out within the next few days, which should prevent crashes on specific machines. To download the latest, go here:
https://aescripts.com/downloadable/customer/products/
If you have the beta version installed, it cannot be licensed, and will always watermark. So please make sure to download the release from the page above. Installing the latest version should auto-replace the old, but because you've requested info on how to un-install, here's a video on that too.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ym9wqzyun8ey9le/uninstall%20paint%20and%20stick.mov?dl=0
Please let us know if this solves your issue, or if we can be of further help.
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager
https://aescripts.com/knowledgebase/index/view/faq/paint-and-stick/#Different3Dpackage
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager
I posted a similar message on the Lightwave forum at Newtek so hopefully there will be someone who's figured it out.
Will most likely purchase in the next few days then hopefully post a video showing the setup with Lightwave.
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager
The full explanation starts at 6:06, and the adjustment layer is shown at 7:20. Hopefully that's what you're looking for!
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager
You can download it here for free:
https://aescripts.com/downloadable/customer/products/
Just run the installer, and apply your original Paint & Stick 1.0 license.
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager
Thank you in advance,
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager
Loving Paint & Stick so far, it's great to be drawing in After Effects so easily.
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager
Will let you know if I come across it again. Thanks!
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager
"My Toolbox has disappeared
Your After Effects UI is hidden. With Paint & Stick selected, on Mac press "CMD+SHIFT+H", or on Windows press "Control+SHIFT+H". This is a feature built into After Effects. The UI is hidable on a hotkey so you can quickly hide Keyframes, masks, and other unnecessary controls to see your composition cleanly. Because the Paint & Stick toolbox is part of the UI, you must show it to work with it.
"
Without the UI visible, the behavior defaults to the pointer, not to the brush. Please let us know if you have further issues!
https://aescripts.com/knowledgebase/index/view/faq/paint-and-stick/
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager
Cheers,
Chris
Paint & Stick Product Manager