Onion skins for review AND preview - and merging?

[Palfrey]

I have NO idea what started going on after my previous 'first few thoughts' post - is it always that weird in this forum?
Anyway, thanks to those responders who provided the originals of each new or different answer - but I've no idea what the other responders thought they were doing. STRANGE.

Anyway - I had two further thoughts which I forgot to mention. I found reference to 'The List' very interesting and I can't see these ideas there, but maybe I missed them because there is a lot to absorb. Anyway, these were my thoughts -

ONION SKINNING

Onion skinning works really well in Stykz as a way of referencing positioning in the previous frame, but it would be really useful if you could also have a different tone or colour of 'skin' to preview positioning in the NEXT frame.

I came to this conclusion after creating a very basic 8-frame walk cycle. Once this was working to my satisfaction, I then went back to frame 1 to duplicate it. My intention was to then 'ease' the transition between frame 1 and the 'new' frame 3 and thus gradually extend the 8-frame sequence to double its length with much smoother transitions - and so on, and so on.

I have seen this method in action elsewhere and it can work well and I'd have thought that with the relative simplicity of stick figures and line-based objects, it would work especially well.

In the end, all I could do was to manually flick between frames 1 and 3 and try to see in in mind's eye exactly where changes needed to be made, and to then alter the new frame 2 based on memory. Where transitions are small and subtle this might not be too difficult, but in the case of my original 8-frame cycle, the transitions were quite large and it took a long time to accurately find the inbetween positions.

(2) MERGING

Is it possible to merge two pivot points from two different 'elements' that are on top of each other? I won't explain the whole problem that gave rise to this thought, but for another test, I had two separare elements which overlapped with a pivot point belonging to each one that was on top of the other and it would have been very useful to have made these into a single, fixed element by fusing or merging the two separate pivot points.

As I said - if either of these ideas is already on The List (or is already possible), I apologise, but I haven't as yet found any mention of them.
If they AREN'T there, maybe it would be worth proposing one or both as a future feature?

[GuitarMangler]

I believe both of those are already on the list.

[DarkFlame]

I believe both of those are already on the list.

I can confirm that. They're also some of my favorite features.

[Hoboapple]

Option to show onionskins for the next frame as well as the previous one

Merging figures (useful for creating figures that are vertically symmetrical - for example creating one side of a sword, copy it, flip it, and merge it to make a full sword)

That's what you meant, right?

[stykzman]

I have NO idea what started going on after my previous 'first few thoughts' post - is it always that weird in this forum?

Not usually, but sometimes...

ONION SKINNING

Onion skinning works really well in Stykz as a way of referencing positioning in the previous frame, but it would be really useful if you could also have a different tone or colour of 'skin' to preview positioning in the NEXT frame.

As Hoboapple wrote, this is on The List under the "Features That Are Targeted For 2.0" section, although it doesn't specify having a different tone/color. What I'll probably do is expand on the onion skinning options in the Preferences window to support individual settings for the previous frame's skins and the next frame's. (If you weren't aware of the Preferences option, go to the Edit menu, pick Preferences and click on the "Interface" area in the list to the left of the Preferences dialog.)

(2) MERGING

Is it possible to merge two pivot points from two different 'elements' that are on top of each other? I won't explain the whole problem that gave rise to this thought, but for another test, I had two separare elements which overlapped with a pivot point belonging to each one that was on top of the other and it would have been very useful to have made these into a single, fixed element by fusing or merging the two separate pivot points.

Yup, got those on The List as well ("Features That Are Targeted For Some Version After 2.0")... but feel free to continue making suggestions!