Synfig/Krita/Kdenlive Animation Notes
From 2020-06-03
So you want to do hand-drawn animation on Linux and/or entirely with
Free Open Source Software, and that animation involves lip syncing? Well,
here's some notes as I work on my first decent sized animation in Synfig/Krita/Kdenlive
and I get my pipeline ready to go for smooth production work on future animation.
-
If you want better (imho) Papagayo import that doesn't forcibly put a
rest at the end of every word,
grab this branch
and build it. The build process for Synfig is very very nice, by the way! I
wish all large apps were this smooth to build and rebuild.
You should try out
this version of Papagayo, cobbled together from various
forks over the years, that is fast and supports single-frame words and has other
nice quality of life improvements. Please help me get it building on other platforms!
If you're running a modern Ubuntu and using the Synfig AppImage,
there's probably gonna be a ton of
fontconfig
errors and the UI will look weird. Errors mentioning
unknown element.
Lots of them. This happens to me in Krita as well on another machine when
run via AppImage, though this did not fix Krita on that machine.
The solution is to
run the AppImage and provide the system fontconfig libraries via LD_PRELOAD.
The exact line I had to use is:
bash
LD_PRELOAD="/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so" \
Downloads/SynfigStudio-1.3.14-testing-2020.04.30-linux64-b2662.appimage
Hunt down those two libraries in /usr/lib and replace the paths with
what you have and the fonts will look all pretty and stuff.
Or build Synfig from source and you won't have this issue.
Inkscape .sif export is not well supported, even for things like
rectangles. Synfig also doesn't seem to like Inkscape SVG files.
This is fine, as I'm doing titling in Kdenlive and only importing
hand-drawn bitmaps from Krita into Synfig.
I was going to do the whole thing in Synfig, but I found a combination of
Krita, Synfig, and Kdenlive is what you'll probably want. I envision a
much larger, more involved blog post/video series once my Papagayo
fix is in for Synfig. This also means separate Synfig files for, say,
camera distances from things, so you don't need to worry as much about
RAM usage in Synfig as you're making a lot of smaller scenes (exported
at HuffYUV-compressed MP$ files) and assembline them in Kdenlive.
By default, importing a bitmap is…wrong. The dimensions are all messed up.
Edit > Preferences > Editing > Imported Image > Scale to fit canvas
is what you want. This means you're importing in everything at full size, so
export everything at full size from Krita. The exports are compressed PNG
files, and disk space is cheap nowadays.
It looks like you can easily build at a lower resolution, say 640×360, and
then export to a larger resolution, say 2560×1440, and everything scales
as it should. As long as the assets are high enough quality, of course.
This pipeline works as expected because Synfig is storing references to
imported images and not the whole image data:
Export rough animation frames in Krita
Import frames as image sequence into Synfig
Export cleaned up animation frames with same names in Krita
Reopen the Synfig file
The new, cleaned up frames will appear in Synfig
Only put one voice into a Papagayo file, otherwise
none of the voices will appear when imported into Synfig.
It seems like it's best to split the audio files into
one clip per Papagayo file per character pose. In one scene,
Bamboo will have two body/face positions, so I'll need
two clips and two Papagayo files.
-
L is L, Th
etc is
C, D, …
Which means you'll, at most, need art for: AI, O, E, U, L, WQ, MBP, FV, etc, rest
The best way I found to make the mouth parts and export them in a way that
makes Synfig's handling of them less of a pain is:
Create a new group layer above the layer where the character's head
is located.
Draw each mouth, in a new layer, with the layer named after the part.
-
Import the Papagayo file into Synfig.
Import each mouth image individually, and drag the imported image into the appropriate
folder in the Papagayo group object.
BOOM, mouth animation.
Since Synfig supports
Python plugins that work by
manipulting a temporary Synfig (XML) document
during an import, I'll figure out a way to import all of the mouth patterns for a
Papagayo file somehow. Or, I'll just make a Python or Ruby script to modify the
SIF file and put in the links via the command line. Yay XML! :(
Below is a Python script to run in Scripter in Krita to create layers for each mouth pattern
used in a Papagayo file. You only get the layers for the mouth patters you're
actually using, which will save on drawing.
Select a Group layer where the new layers should be deposited and run it. This sets
up the layers I will typically use for an art piece: Pencils, Colors,
Shading (set up Multiply blending mode), and Inks. This works fine in Krita 4.3.0:
- snippet.python
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QFileDialog
from krita import Krita
KID = Krita.instance().activeDocument()
active = KID.activeNode()
file, _ = QFileDialog.getOpenFileName(None, "Create phoneme layers for Papagayo file", "", "Papagayo File (*.pgo)")
# rest is the default when a frame doesn't have a specified phoneme
phonemes = ["rest"]
with open(file) as f:
for line in f:
line = line.rstrip()
if line.startswith("\t\t\t\t"):
_, phoneme = line.split(" ")
if not(phoneme in phonemes):
phonemes.append(phoneme)
for name in phonemes:
layer = KID.createGroupLayer(name)
active.addChildNode(layer, None)
for artName in ["Pencils", "Colors", "Shading", "Inks"]:
artLayer = KID.createNode(artName, "paintlayer")
if artName == "Shading":
artLayer.setBlendingMode("multiply")
layer.addChildNode(artLayer, None)
All in all, the process was pretty decent. It took some time to figure out
the Synfig way of doing things, but once I got that, the actual pipeline of
Krita → Synfig → Kdenlive was very smooth. Expect something way more
substantial describing the process in the coming months.