Creating Motion Paths with the Motion Tool

With the Motion

tool, you can modify motion paths by adding and moving keyframes on the peg.

Because of the 3D Sceneplanning views, you can create motion paths that go from east to west, north to south, or front to back. When your character moves front to back on a motion path, Toon Boom Studio automatically resizes it as it moves closer to, or farther away from, the camera.

When you activate the Motion tool and you have selected a peg that has not been modified, two keyframes appear stacked on top of each other at the center point of the Sceneplanning view window. The first keyframe has an arrow that points right and the last keyframe also has an arrow and it points left.

You can grab a keyframe with the Motion tool and drag it in any direction to create a motion path that goes in a straight line. When you create a motion path with non-constant segments, you’ll see a series of tick marks. Each tick mark represents the position of the element at each frame in the peg as it is tweened (interpolated).

To shape a motion path and change the direction elements attached to the peg will move, you add control points and keyframes and change their position.


	You can improve the display quality of pegs in the View windows by changing the Smoothness setting on the Peg tab. You must enable Smooth Pegs on the Sceneplanning tab of the Preferences dialog boxes to see changes to a peg’s smoothness. You can reposition pegs like you can change the position of most elements in the 3D space. When you reposition a peg, all elements attached to the peg also move. In addition, the values of points you add to your motion paths are based on the static position of the peg, plus the change in position to the motion point.