Creating Advanced Cycles

During animation development, you design more complicated cycles.

For example, a bouncing ball cycle where the sequence of drawings goes backwards and forwards during the cycle (1-2-3-4-3-2-1).

You can use the Advanced Cycle dialog box to automate the process of creating cycles and labelling cells.

To create advanced cycles:

1. Select the element where you want to create the cycle.

2. Select Element > Cell > Create Advanced Cycle. The Advanced Cycle dialog box opens.

3. In the First Drawing and Last Drawing panels, select the drawings that you want in the first and last position of the cycle. You can type values in the Name fields or use the slider to select the drawings.

4. In the Exposure panel, set the exposure time for the drawings in the cycle. You can set a different exposure for the last drawing in the cycle to stay on-screen.

5. In the Loops panel, select the number of times you want the cycle to repeat.

Select None if you don’t want the cycle to repeat.
Select Continuous if you want the cycle to restart with the first drawing on each loop.

For example, if you created 2 continuous loop of drawings 1-2-3, the resulting loop would be: 1-2-3-1-2-3.

Select Forward-Backward, if you want to restart the loop with the previous drawing.

For example, if you created 2 forward-backward loops with drawings 1-2-3, the resulting loop would be: 1-2-3-2-1-2-3-2.

Type the number of times you want the cycle repeat in the Loops field. If you want to repeat the cycle for a specific number of frames, type a value in the Frames field.

6. Select how you want to insert the cycle.

Select Insert Frames to add the cycle in the current location.
Select Overwrite Frames to delete frames that overlap the cycle.

7. Click OK when you are done. Toon Boom Studio updates the Exposure Sheet window with the new cell labels.