Limner v0.8.2: Animation becomes a studio

Limner v0.8.2: Animation becomes a studio

This release is all about Animation mode. A keyframed 2D camera and per-layer
motion bring real cinematography to your shots; onion skin now ghosts the whole
composited frame; and a dozen timeline upgrades, from zoom to exposure editing
to a composited filmstrip, close the workflow gaps beta testers hit most.
Illustration and Vector modes are unchanged, and your existing files open as
they always have.

New

Camera and motion (Limner Plus)

• A keyframed 2D camera. Pan, zoom, and rotate the whole shot over time:
  add a camera key, set the framing, add another later, and Limner moves the
  camera smoothly between them. Push in on a face, drift across a landscape,
  or spin the scene, all without redrawing a single frame. The move previews
  live while you scrub, always plays during playback, bakes into GIF / MP4 /
  PNG exports, and saves with the document.
• Per-layer keyframes. Give any layer its own motion: keyframe its
  position, scale, rotation (about a movable anchor), and opacity, and the
  layer slides, turns, grows, or fades between keys while the rest of the
  frame stays put. Clouds drift, titles fade in, a cel glides across the shot.
  Key diamonds live right on the layer's timeline row: drag one to re-time it,
  right-click for easing or delete.
• Three easings everywhere. Every camera and layer key steps (Hold), moves
  evenly (Linear), or eases in and out (Smooth), per key.

Timeline

• Composited onion skin. Ghost frames now show every visible layer that
  moved, composited into one silhouette, so a character split across line,
  fill, and shadow layers ghosts as a whole figure instead of one layer at a
  time.
• Timeline zoom. Make the dope sheet's frame columns wider or narrower, so
  a long shot fits on screen and a short one gets room to work.
• Exposure editing. Drag the right edge of a cel to lengthen or shorten
  its hold, the classic X-sheet move for retiming on ones, twos, or fours.
• A composited filmstrip. An optional row of per-frame thumbnails shows
  each frame's full picture, so you can read the motion at a glance.
• Scrub the ruler. Dragging along the frame ruler now scrubs the playhead,
  like every video app; hold Alt and drag to reorder a frame column instead.
• Select a range of frames. Drag across the ruler to select several
  frames, then copy, paste, or delete them as one batch.
• In and out points by the numbers. Type the playback range directly, read
  a real timecode next to the frame counter, and toggle onion skin with Alt+O.

Import

• Image sequences. File ▸ Import Image Sequence as Animation Frames turns
  a folder of numbered images into an animation, one frame per file, in
  numeric order. PNG, JPEG, WebP, BMP, TGA, TIFF, and GIF files are read, and
  transparency is kept.

Improved

• Playback keeps real time. When a heavy scene renders slower than the
  project frame rate, playback now skips frames to stay on the clock instead
  of slowing the whole animation down.
• Add Frame inserts after the current frame, where you are working, instead
  of appending at the end of the timeline.
• Enter plays and pauses the animation (and still commits an in-progress
  stroke or transform first).

Fixed

• Undoing a stroke after switching frames now restores the frame the stroke
  was drawn on, instead of leaving fragments on whichever frame was showing.
• Drawing on a held frame creates its keyframe as part of the same undo step,
  so undo restores the held drawing instead of leaving a stray blank frame.
• Frame rate, playback mode, frame tags, onion settings, and the in/out range
  now mark the document as modified, so those changes are never lost silently
  on close.

Notes

• Painting is blocked, with a clear notice, on a frame where a layer is shown
  moved by its keyframes: the stroke would land away from the pen. Paint on a
  frame where the layer sits at its home position, or clear the layer's keys.
  Opacity-only keys never block painting.
• Onion skin ghosts show layers at their drawn position; preview keyframed
  motion by scrubbing or playing.
• The document format grew two versioned sections for the camera and the layer
  keyframes. Older files open exactly as before; documents saved by 0.8.2
  need 0.8.2 or newer to open.
• Everything above rode through the full test suite (520 tests) and three
  adversarial code reviews of the compositor and sampling changes; every
  finding was fixed before release.