Storyforge Documentation

Installation & System Requirements

Windows: Download StoryforgeSetup.exe from the download page. Run the installer and follow the setup wizard. Storyforge will be added to your Start Menu.

macOS: Download Storyforge.dmg. Open the disk image and drag the Storyforge icon into your Applications folder. On first launch, right-click and choose "Open" if macOS shows a security prompt.

Linux: Download Storyforge.AppImage. Make it executable with chmod +x Storyforge.AppImage and run it. No installation required.

Creating Your First Project

1. Launch Storyforge. The Welcome Screen appears with your recent projects and folders.
2. Click New Project (or Ctrl+N).
3. Enter a project name, choose dimensions (e.g., 1920×1080 for HD), and set the frame rate (default: 24 fps).
4. Click Create. Your project opens with one scene ("Scene 1") and one board ("Board 001").
5. Start drawing! Select the Brush tool (B) and draw on the canvas.

Interface Overview

Storyforge uses a panel-based workspace powered by the Qt Advanced Docking System. Here are the main areas:

• Canvas — The central drawing area. Zoom with scroll wheel, pan with Space+drag or Middle Mouse, rotate with R+drag.
• Timeline — Bottom panel showing board blocks with thumbnails, audio waveforms, and video tracks. Drag board edges to change duration.
• Strip — Horizontal strip of board thumbnails below the timeline. Drag to reorder boards.
• Layers Panel — Right side. Shows all layers for the current board with visibility, lock, blend mode, and opacity controls.
• Boards Panel — Table view with thumbnails and metadata fields (title, dialog, action). Inline editing available.
• Browse Panel — Visual grid/list overview of all scenes. Filter by color label or flag, sort, and navigate.
• Color Panel — Color wheel, HEX/RGB/HSV input, color history, favorites, and harmony modes.
• Options Panel — Shows settings for the currently selected tool (size, opacity, flow, hardness, etc.).
• Toolbar — Left side. Quick access to all 14 drawing tools.
• Menu Bar — File, Edit, View, Canvas, Board, Tools, Window, Help menus.

Basic Storyboarding Workflow

1. Plan your scenes. Create scenes for each sequence using the Browse panel or Board → Add Scene. Give each scene a color label for quick identification.
2. Add boards. Press Z to add a new board, or X to duplicate the current one. Navigate with A (previous) and D (next).
3. Draw your storyboards. Use the Brush (B), Pencil (N), or Pen (P) tools. Hold E for a quick eraser, release to go back.
4. Add metadata. Fill in the title, dialog, and action fields in the Boards panel for each board.
5. Set timing. In the Timeline, drag the right edge of board blocks to set frame duration. Set in/out points for range playback.
6. Preview. Press Space to play back your animatic. Toggle loop mode in the timeline.
7. Export. Go to File → Export to generate PDFs, videos, or images for your production team.

License Activation & Management

After purchasing a license from your Dashboard, you'll receive a license key.

1. Open Storyforge and go to Help → License Activation.
2. Paste your license key and click Activate.
3. Your license is now tied to this machine. No internet is required after activation.

Moving your license: To use Storyforge on a different computer, go to Help → License Activation and click Deactivate. This frees your license so you can activate it on another machine. Each license supports one active machine at a time.

Brush Engine Overview

Storyforge uses a stamp-based brush engine that places evenly-spaced circular stamps along your stroke path. Each stamp's size and opacity respond to pen pressure, creating natural, expressive marks.

Key parameters you can adjust in the Options Panel:

• Size (1-500 px) — Diameter of the brush. Adjust with Ctrl+Drag on canvas or the slider.
• Opacity (0-100%) — Overall stroke transparency. Adjust with Ctrl+Alt+Drag.
• Flow (0-100%) — How much "paint" is deposited per stamp. Low flow = build up color gradually.
• Hardness (0-100%) — Edge softness. 100% = sharp edge, 0% = fully feathered.
• Spacing (1-200%) — Distance between stamps as a percentage of brush size. Lower = smoother strokes.
• Smoothing (0-100%) — Stroke stabilizer. Higher values smooth out hand tremor but add slight input lag.
• Scatter (0-100%) — Random offset perpendicular to the stroke. Creates textured, spray-like effects.

Pressure curves: Choose from Linear, Soft, Hard, or S-Curve to control how pen pressure maps to size and opacity. Configure in Preferences → Pressure.

Blend modes: Each stroke can use one of 12 blend modes: Normal, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Darken, Lighten, Color Dodge, Color Burn, Hard Light, Soft Light, Difference, Exclusion.

All 14 Drawing Tools

Every tool is accessible via a single key press. Hold the key to temporarily switch, release to return to the previous tool.

Pen Pressure & Tablet Setup

Storyforge supports pen tablets from Wacom, Huion, XP-Pen, and other manufacturers that provide Windows Ink or WinTab drivers.

• Size variance — Pen pressure controls brush size (light press = thin line, full press = full size).
• Opacity variance — Pen pressure controls stroke opacity (light press = transparent, full press = opaque).
• Both can be enabled independently in the Options panel for each tool.

Configure pressure response curves in Edit → Preferences → Pressure. Choose from:

• Linear — Direct 1:1 mapping. Most predictable.
• Soft — Lighter touch required. Good for detail work.
• Hard — Heavier touch required. Good for bold strokes.
• S-Curve — Soft in the middle, steep at the extremes. Balanced feel.

Brush Tips & Custom Tips Advanced

Storyforge includes 8 built-in procedural brush tips (available in all tiers): Circle, Rectangle, and generative shapes with density and edge noise parameters.

Procedural tip settings:

• Density — Stochastic dropout. Lower values create a stippled, TVPaint-style texture effect where random stamps are skipped.
• Edge Noise — Perturbs the boundary of each stamp for organic, natural edges instead of perfect circles.

Custom brush tips (Advanced): Load your own grayscale images as brush tips from the Options panel. White = full paint, black = transparent. Place custom tip files in your user resources folder.

Grain textures: Apply paper texture to your strokes. Built-in textures include Paper Rough, Paper Fine, Canvas Weave, Linen, Noise, and Paper Cold Press.

Multi-tip mode: Enable random tip switching to cycle through multiple tip shapes with each stamp. Creates varied, organic textures.

Brush Presets Advanced

Save and load complete brush configurations as presets for instant recall.

• Save a preset: Configure your brush settings, then click the Save Preset button in the Options panel. Give it a name and assign it to a category.
• Load a preset: Open the preset browser in the Options panel and click any preset to apply it instantly.
• Categories: Presets are organized into categories (Pencils, Inks, Paints, Markers, etc.). Storyforge includes default presets that are refreshed on each launch.
• A preset stores: size, opacity, flow, hardness, spacing, scatter, smoothing, brush tip, blend mode, density, edge noise, grain texture, pressure curves, and all variance settings.

Smudge Tool Advanced

The Smudge tool (S) blends and smears existing pixels on the canvas, simulating a wet paint effect.

• Strength — Controlled by pen pressure. Light press = subtle blend, full press = strong smear.
• Uses the same brush engine: size, spacing, and hardness apply.
• Works on the active layer only. It reads and writes pixels in-place.
• Full undo support — each smudge stroke is a single undo entry.

Perspective Snap Guides Advanced

Enable perspective guides from Canvas → Perspective Guides. Three modes are available:

• 1-Point — One vanishing point. All guide lines converge to a single point.
• 2-Point — Two vanishing points on the horizon. Vertical lines remain straight.
• 3-Point — Three vanishing points, including one above or below. For dramatic angles.

Vanishing point handles: Drag the VP handles to position them anywhere on or off the canvas. In 2-point and 3-point mode, dragging one VP adjusts the shared horizon line. Use the Move tool (V) to drag VP handles.

Automatic snap: When perspective guides are visible and snap is enabled, the Brush, Pencil, Pen, Eraser, and Smudge tools will snap your strokes to the nearest guide line. The snap engine uses direction-aware scoring — it considers both distance to the line and the direction you're drawing to lock onto the most relevant guide.

Selection & Transform Tools

Selection Tool (L) — Three selection modes accessible from the Options panel:

• Freehand — Draw a freehand lasso selection.
• Rectangle — Click and drag a rectangular selection. Hold Shift for a square.
• Polygon — Click to place vertices, double-click to close the polygon.

Selection modifiers:

• Shift+click — Add to existing selection.
• Alt+click — Subtract from existing selection.
• Ctrl+A — Select all.
• Ctrl+D — Deselect.
• Ctrl+Shift+I — Invert selection.

Magic Wand (W) — Click to select contiguous pixels of similar color. Adjust Tolerance (0-255) in the Options panel. Higher tolerance = more colors included.

Transform (T) — Activates transform handles on the selection or entire layer. Drag corners to scale, drag outside corners to rotate. Press Enter to apply or Escape to cancel.

Project Structure

Storyforge organizes your work in a clear hierarchy:

Project → Scenes → Boards → Layers

• Project — The top-level container. One .sfp file = one project. Contains project metadata, dimensions, frame rate, and all scenes.
• Scene — A sequence or shot grouping. Each scene has its own board list, color label, flag, and audio clips. Think of scenes as chapters.
• Board — A single storyboard frame. Contains title, dialog, and action text fields, duration (in frames), and a layer stack.
• Layer — A raster drawing surface within a board. Each layer has its own opacity, blend mode, visibility, and lock state.

Scene Management & Browser

Manage scenes from the Browse panel or Board → Scene menu:

• Add Scene — Creates a new empty scene at the end.
• Duplicate Scene — Copies the active scene with all its boards and layers.
• Delete Scene — Removes the scene and all its boards. Requires confirmation.
• Rename Scene — Double-click the scene name in the Browse panel.
• Reorder Scenes — Drag and drop scenes in the Browse panel.
• Color Labels — Right-click a scene to assign one of 7 colors for visual organization. Filter scenes by color in the Browse panel.
• Flags — Flag scenes for review or attention. Filter flagged scenes in the Browse panel.

The Browse panel supports grid and list views, adjustable thumbnail sizes, filtering by color/flag, and sorting options. Multi-select is supported for batch operations.

Board Navigation & Shortcuts

• A — Previous board
• D — Next board
• Z — Add a new blank board after the current one
• X — Duplicate the current board (including all layers)

You can also click any board thumbnail in the Timeline strip, Boards panel, or Browse panel to navigate directly.

Smart naming: When you duplicate "Board 005", the new board is automatically named "Board 006". Zero-padding is preserved. No more "Copy of Copy" clutter.

Boards Panel & Metadata Fields

The Boards panel shows a table view of all boards in the active scene with:

• Thumbnail — Live preview of the board's composite image.
• Title — Short description of the shot (e.g., "EXT. PARK — DAY").
• Dialog — Character dialogue for this frame.
• Action — Action/direction notes.
• Duration — Frame count (displayed as time at the project's FPS).

All text fields are inline-editable — click to edit, Tab to move to the next field. These fields are included in PDF and image exports.

Copy, Cut & Paste Boards

• Ctrl+C — Copy the selected board(s) to clipboard.
• Ctrl+X — Cut the selected board(s).
• Ctrl+V — Paste board(s) after the current board.

Board clipboard works across scenes — you can copy boards from one scene and paste them into another. Layer data, metadata, and duration are all preserved.

Multi-Board Selection & Painting Advanced

Select multiple boards using Ctrl+Click or Shift+Click in the Timeline strip or Boards panel. Once multiple boards are selected:

• Simultaneous painting — Draw on the active board and your strokes are automatically applied to every selected board on the same layer.
• Atomic undo — A single Ctrl+Z reverts the stroke across all boards.
• Batch operations — Add, delete, or rename layers on all selected boards at once. Set duration, copy/cut/paste.

Layer Basics

Each board has its own layer stack. The Layers panel shows all layers for the current board, ordered from top (front) to bottom (back).

• Add Layer — Click the + button or use the Layers menu. New layers are created above the active layer.
• Delete Layer — Select a layer and click the trash icon, or press Delete.
• Reorder — Drag and drop layers in the Layers panel to change stacking order.
• Rename — Double-click the layer name (or press F2) to rename.
• Visibility — Click the eye icon to show/hide a layer.
• Lock — Click the lock icon to prevent drawing on a layer.

Blend Modes & Opacity

Each layer has an opacity slider (0-100%) and a blend mode dropdown. The blend mode controls how the layer's pixels combine with the layers below it.

Available blend modes (12):

Merge Down, Flatten & Duplicate

• Duplicate Layer (Ctrl+J) — Creates an exact copy of the active layer above it.
• Merge Down (Ctrl+Shift+M) — Merges the active layer into the layer below it, respecting blend mode and opacity.
• Flatten Image — Merges all visible layers into a single layer. Hidden layers are discarded.

All layer operations are fully undoable.

Undo/Redo System

Storyforge provides a powerful tile-based undo system:

• Ctrl+Z — Undo the last action.
• Ctrl+Shift+Z — Redo.
• Up to 50 undo levels per board (configurable in Preferences).
• Each board has its own independent undo stack.
• Undo covers: drawing strokes, layer operations (add, delete, reorder, merge, rename, visibility, lock, blend mode, opacity), board operations (add, delete, reorder, duplicate, duration change), selection changes, transform operations, and fill operations.

Tile-based diffing: The undo system only stores the changed 256×256 pixel tiles, not the entire layer. This keeps memory usage low even with many undo levels.

Timeline Overview

The Timeline is a sequencer-style panel at the bottom of the workspace. It shows:

• Frame ruler — Top bar with frame numbers and FPS-based tick marks.
• Board track — Horizontal blocks representing each board. The width of each block corresponds to its duration in frames. Thumbnails are shown inside each block.
• Audio track — Green waveform bars showing imported audio clips.
• Video track — Camera/video thumbnails for video reference tracks.
• Playhead — The red vertical line indicating the current frame. Drag to scrub.

Resize board duration: Hover over the right edge of a board block until the cursor changes to a resize handle, then drag left/right to change the duration.

Playback Controls & Range

• Space — Play / Pause.
• Stop — Stops playback and returns the playhead to the start.
• Loop — Toggle loop mode to continuously replay.
• In/Out points — Set markers to limit playback to a specific range. Drag the In/Out handles on the ruler, or use the menu.
• FPS — Playback speed is determined by the project's frame rate (set in New Project dialog or Edit → Project Settings).

Onion Skinning

Onion skinning shows ghost images of neighboring boards overlaid on the canvas, helping you maintain consistency and plan motion.

• Enable from View → Onion Skin or the timeline toolbar.
• Previous frames — Shown in red/pink tint.
• Next frames — Shown in blue/green tint.
• Count — Show 1-10 frames in each direction.
• Onion skin opacity decreases with distance from the current frame.

Strip Panel & Thumbnails

The Strip is a horizontal row of board thumbnails below the Timeline. It provides a quick visual overview and easy navigation:

• Click any thumbnail to navigate to that board.
• Drag thumbnails to reorder boards.
• The strip and timeline are connected in a single panel with a resizable splitter.

Board Duration & FPS

Each board has a duration measured in frames. At 24 fps, a 24-frame board lasts exactly 1 second during playback.

• Default duration is set in project settings (Edit → Project Settings).
• Change duration by dragging the right edge of a board block in the Timeline, or set it numerically in the Boards panel.
• Duration is preserved when duplicating or copying boards.

Image Export

Go to File → Export → Export Images to export your boards as JPG or WebP images.

Two templates:

• Simple — Plain board image, optionally with title/dialog/action text below. Available in all tiers.
• Sidebar — Board image with a metadata sidebar panel showing all fields. Advanced only.

Options: Page size, orientation, format (JPG/WebP), quality slider, and scope selection (Whole Project / Active Scene / specific scene). Live preview is available before exporting.

PDF Export & Templates Advanced

Go to File → Export → Export PDF. Three professional templates are available:

Scope: Export the Whole Project, Active Scene only, or a specific scene.

Video Export Advanced

Go to File → Export → Export Video to render your storyboard as a video file.

• Formats: MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, WebM
• Codecs: H.264, H.265, VP9, AV1
• GPU acceleration: Uses hardware encoding when available for faster exports.
• Quality presets: High, Medium, Low
• Overlay options: Title, timestamp, captions, scene/board numbers with configurable padding.
• Audio: All audio clips from the timeline are mixed and included in the video export using ffmpeg's filter_complex.

Batch Import Images Advanced

Go to File → Import → Batch Import Images to import multiple image files at once.

• Each imported image becomes a new board with the image on its base layer.
• Images are sorted in natural order (e.g., img1, img2, img10 — not alphabetical).
• Supported formats: PNG, JPG, WebP, BMP, TIFF.
• You can also drag and drop images directly onto the canvas to add them as a new layer on the current board.

Scene Export (.sfs) Advanced

Export a single scene as a .sfs (Storyforge Scene) file from File → Export → Export Scene.

This creates a portable archive containing all boards, layers, and metadata for just that scene. Use it to:

• Share individual scenes with team members.
• Import scenes into other Storyforge projects.
• Back up specific sequences without exporting the entire project.

File Formats

• .sfp (Storyforge Project) — The main project file. A ZIP archive containing all scenes, boards, layers (stored as WebP images), metadata JSON files, audio clips, and project settings.
• .sfs (Storyforge Scene) — A single scene exported as a ZIP archive. Same internal structure as a scene within an .sfp file.

Layer images are stored as WebP for optimal compression and quality. The file format uses a directory structure: scenes/scene_XXX/boards/board_XXX/ with a JSON manifest for each level.

Project Logo & Branding

Add a project logo from Edit → Project Settings. The logo is:

• Displayed in PDF export footers alongside the Storyforge app logo.
• Stored as logo.webp inside the .sfp file.
• Supports any image format on import (converted to WebP internally).

Audio Clips & Waveforms Advanced

Import audio clips from File → Import → Import Audio. Each scene can have multiple audio clips displayed as green waveform bars in the Timeline's audio track.

• Supported formats: MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, AAC.
• Waveform visualization: Audio is analyzed using ffmpeg to extract a PCM envelope, which is displayed as a green waveform in the Timeline.
• Per-clip controls: volume, mute, start frame, in-point, and duration.
• Playback: Audio plays back in sync with the timeline using Qt's QMediaPlayer.
• Video export: All audio clips are mixed into the exported video file using ffmpeg's filter_complex (atrim, adelay, volume, amix).

Video Reference Overlay Advanced

Overlay reference video footage directly on the canvas for rotoscoping and animation reference.

• Per-board settings: Each board can have its own video reference with independent in/out points and opacity.
• Canvas overlay: The video frame is drawn between the canvas background and your board's layer composite, so you draw on top of the reference.
• Frame extraction: Uses ffmpeg with an LRU cache (100 frames) for smooth scrubbing.
• Timeline integration: Video thumbnails are shown in the camera track of the Timeline.
• Controls: Set opacity, toggle visibility, adjust in/out points from the Timeline or Board properties.

Video Import & Transcoding Advanced

Import video files as reference tracks from File → Import → Import Video.

• Supported formats: MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, WebM (any format ffmpeg supports).
• Videos can be embedded into the project file or linked to external files.
• Fast hardware-accelerated transcoding when available.

Media Embedding vs. Linking

When importing audio or video, Storyforge gives you two options:

• Embed — The media file is copied into the .sfp project file. The project is self-contained and portable — share one file, everything travels together. Increases file size.
• Link — Only the file path is stored. The project file stays small, but the media must remain at the same path. If you move the media file, the link breaks.

Themes & Accent Colors

Go to Edit → Preferences → Appearance to change the visual theme.

• Default — Dark gray theme, balanced for long sessions.
• Light — Light background for bright environments.
• Dark — Deep dark theme for minimal distraction.
• High Contrast — Maximum readability with strong borders.

Accent color: Choose a custom accent color to personalize buttons, selections, and highlights. Live preview updates immediately.

Workspace Layouts

Storyforge includes three built-in workspace layouts accessible from Window → Workspace:

• Default — Balanced layout with all panels visible.
• Drawing — Maximized canvas with minimal panels for focused drawing.
• Review — Emphasis on Browse panel and Timeline for reviewing and organizing.

You can also rearrange panels freely by dragging their title bars. Panels can be tabbed together, split into separate areas, or auto-hidden (pinned to the edge). Your custom layout is saved automatically. Use Window → Lock Panels to prevent accidental panel moves.

Preferences

Open with Edit → Preferences. Key settings include:

• General — Language, autosave interval, default project dimensions.
• Canvas — Background color/texture, default zoom level, scroll direction.
• Drawing — Default brush size, default tool, cursor style.
• Pressure — Pressure curve selection (Linear, Soft, Hard, S-Curve) for size and opacity.
• Playback — Default FPS, onion skin defaults, playback quality.
• Performance — Undo levels (max 50), cache settings, GPU rendering toggle.
• Shortcuts — Full keyboard shortcut editor with conflict detection and reset to defaults.

Color Panel & Harmonies

The Color panel provides multiple ways to pick and manage colors:

• Color wheel — Click to pick hue and saturation, use the vertical strip for value/brightness.
• Input fields — Type exact values in HEX (#FF5500), RGB (255, 85, 0), or HSV (20, 100, 100) format.
• Color history — Automatically tracks your last 24 used colors.
• Favorite colors — Click the star icon to save a color to your favorites grid for quick access.
• Primary/Secondary — Two active colors. Press X to swap foreground and background colors.

Color Harmonies Advanced: Enable from the Color panel dropdown. Shows mathematically related colors on the wheel:

• Complementary — Opposite color on the wheel.
• Analogous — Adjacent colors for harmonious palettes.
• Triadic — Three evenly spaced colors.
• Split-Complementary — Base color + two colors adjacent to its complement.

Welcome Screen & Project Manager

The Welcome Screen appears on launch and acts as a two-level project manager:

• Level 1 — Projects: Shows all your projects organized in folders. Each project displays a thumbnail, name, last modified date, and scene count.
• Level 2 — Scenes: Click a project to see its scenes. Each scene shows a thumbnail and board count.
• Folder organization: Create folders to organize projects by client, genre, or any criteria.
• Recent Projects: Quick access to recently opened projects at the top.
• Actions: New Project, Open Project, Import Scene. Right-click for rename, delete, move to folder.

Access the Welcome Screen anytime from Help → Welcome Screen.

Complete Shortcut Reference

All single-key tool shortcuts support hold-to-use: hold the key to temporarily switch to that tool, release to return to your previous tool.