I'm confused! (Anime studio 6)

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Thu May 28, 2009 4:11 am

heyvern wrote: We DO have the option of using Fazek's tools... uh... as soon as they are fixed up... I should get started fixing up Fazek's tools so they can be ready asap. -vern

Which seems to indicate that not all (or any?) old scripts will run under the new system. Just how much work will it be to convert? My insanely useful color adjustment script is very important to me (and I'll guess there is nothing like it in 6) but I'd hate to have to spend a lot of time "fixing" it.

And... as you note, documentation is first and foremost a consideration in scripting, so I hope at least the functions are documented (even if by document we simply mean listed, with parameters needed). Obviously if all the tools are written in LUA we can look to those as examples and that will help, but vastly improved script access is worthless if we don't know how to use it.

All the next features announced yet don't really thrill me -- but better scripting does.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Thu May 28, 2009 4:15 am

Okay, my initial excitement is quickly giving out.

ASD6 is highly unstable!!!

I'm getting it to crash every two minutes now.

I'm going back to 5.6 to work on my 2.9D rig.

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Thu May 28, 2009 4:34 am

Hi synthsin75,

I know its not your responsibility, but can you please send detailed crash reports to Mike. It would be great to get these ironed out before the major release, although it's possible some of them have already been fixed since Mike has already told us the version sold by WalMart is an earlier version and there will be an update available for it.

Patmals · Post by **Patmals** » Thu May 28, 2009 4:37 am

I believe Mike already mentioned the "Wal-mart" version needed an upgradeor a patch?

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Thu May 28, 2009 4:41 am

Sorry, but my enthusiasm has given out. I just don't have it in me to track down the causes right now.

Anyhow, many will be in my shoes shortly, and can help out.

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Thu May 28, 2009 4:55 am

Synthsin, Are you using ASD6 as it came out of the box, or have you copied over any scripts or custom tools over from ASP5. Just wondering if the crashes are related to a script compatibility issue.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Thu May 28, 2009 4:59 am

No, I'm using it straight out of the box. And not doing anything fancy even. Sorry, I wish I could be more supportive, but the info from beta testing kind of took the wind out of my sails as far as trying to show it off.

That left me with actually working with it, and....well...it doesn't work so well.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu May 28, 2009 5:22 am

The Walmart version not the "final" version as Mike indicated. They obviously had to get those boxes out to them well in advance.

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The sequencer... sliding layers and visibility
Mike explained this to me and it does make sense. Layers in AS are "always visible". Unless you key frame visibility or opacity they stay "on". If you slide a layer forward in time, it is still visible on frames before the "start" of that layer or that layer's "frame 0".

Mike and I sort of argued about this a teen tiny bit but as it turns out it makes sense now and I actually found a way to make it work exactly the way I want it to.

All you do is key frame the visibility off on frame 0 and on again on frame 1. Then you slide the layer around and it is exactly like the beginning is "off" by default. I will probably do a tutorial for this. I just figured it out about 5 minutes ago and it works like a CHARM.

So it is very very very very easy to set a layer to have a "block" of time where it is visible... you just key frame the visiblity off and on for a segment of the layer time line. Then you can slide it around on the time line and easily go back and change where the keys start and stop for visibility.

(cool tip: Right click in the time line view and slide the time line of a layer to offset it. You don't even have to use the sequencer. I LOVE THAT FEATURE!)

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As for scripting enhancements... uh... yeah... not as much as I had hoped but WAY more than I expected. Probably more than Mike thinks. He apologized for not being able to do more script enhancements but what he did do is FANTASTIC. There will be enough new script enhancements to keep me busy for a long time.

What I discovered is that the new features in AS sort of... negate the need for a lot of access to the scripting. I don't have to "script" a new time line because the new time line is better than anything I could have done in lua. By the way... you can copy and paste bones in the application now. COPY AND PASTE BONES!!!! How cool is that? That will save HOURS of work for me creating those head rigs. There's a "script" that isn't needed now.

There was one thing Mike mentioned about scripting that I haven't completely studied yet... but it did make me a bit light headed. He mentioned "walking the file". Any scripters out there might understand that concept... if it is what it sounds like... it could be really cool. No more "parsing the file format". Haven't played with it yet.

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The key interpolation that was added is not just for bones... it's for EVERYTHING. So saving layer animation is going to be much easier. There are some old Macton scripts that do this sort of thing. I plan to revisit the code. Now with key interpolation included, an entire file... a whole dang file could have ALL animation saved out and loaded back in. That has been my dream for a while now.

This fits into my dream of creating a project management application for AS. It is those small tiny additions to the script interface that can have a HUGE GIGANTIC impact.

I am serious... when the key interpolation script access was added it took about ten minutes to fix my save and load bones script to use it. BANG! No more "parsing the file format". Yeehaaa.

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Updating "old" scripts

The version of Lua in AS 6 is version 5.1. Anyone familiar with lua will know that some old ways of doing things in lua are gone from the newer version. They've been... what's the term... I forget the term... DEPRICATED... is that it? Anyway the looping through tables is slightly different but it's easy to fix. You use pairs and ipairs now instead of... whatever it was before. Took a few minutes to hunt down the code for this on google. All my bookmarks were for the "old" version of lua.

Many of my layer scripts required ZERO CHANGES. The custom script I created for my 2.5d head rig worked without any changes. The most changes are for tools, sorting through lists using ipairs and some minor changes in some strings at the "top" of the tool scripts. Compare an "old" tool with a "new" tool and you can see the changes that are needed.

Scripts also now have their own "resource" folder in the application. You keep images in there for interface elements. This is cool. I have yet to study this totally but it looks... cool. This means a script can reference an image or icon in the resource folder of the script folder. You couldn't do that at all before.

You can learn a ton just by looking at the tool scripts themselves. I've been making a list of differences by using a "diff" comparison in Jedit with the same tool from each version. I reverse engineered a lot of stuff just from that. I discovered the script "resource" folder that way. I saw a path string to this folder and almost fell off my chair.

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One key new feature in 6 is the "Sequencer". Sliding layers in the time line. Think about this for a moment. You need access to the DOCUMENT TIME and the LAYER TIME. They are different. So now there is a new "frame" script... thingy... for the frame of the document or the frame of the layer. The layer frame can be different from the document frame now due to sliding it in the timeline.

This is COOL as heck. My head spins with ideas on how to use that for scripting.

I anticipate that it will take a while to get a handle on all the new stuff that can be done with scripting. Hopefully many of the new features are included so THOSE can be scripted as well.

The future is so bright I'll have to wear shades.

-vern

Agent_Smith · Post by **Agent_Smith** » Thu May 28, 2009 5:39 am

On the layer visibility, there is also a preference to "Enable Drawing Tools Only on Frame 0".

A neat tip is that turning this off not only allows you to draw on any frame but if you create a new layer or import a sound for example, the new layer is created at the point where the current time indicator is.

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Thu May 28, 2009 7:21 am

Thanks for the scripting info, Heyvern.

People deciding whether it's worth upgrading definitely need to consider that the script writing gurus around here will be able to write some cool new scripts that will only be supported by version 6.0.

For me, it's a no-brainer. Heck, it's almost worth the $130 alone to get a hold of your nuts (I can't believe it's not 3D) head rig!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu May 28, 2009 8:07 am

Here's a sample animation of the guy I donated:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4UEnbpR ... re=channel

The "final" version is slightly different and "improved" a bit. His body rigging is not up to my standards and I will probably have a new version for download in the future. My main goal was to provide the "head". He is a lot of fun to pose.

-vern

chucky · Post by **chucky** » Thu May 28, 2009 11:44 am

Well what can I say.
This is all very exciting, thanks Vern for 'fessing up and all the new info.
WOW Agent Smith , my credit card is out and ready to rip!
Mike , you see, some other people had no faith, but I think once someone has shown their metal, then you can rely on that.

Wooohoooo!

It sounds like there are so many great improvements here, all the ones we begged for and some we never could have imagined.
Tracking huh? Woah, I remember timidly suggesting this many months ago and I was shot down in flames. So forum people, tracking hey? Not so so stupid now?

Thanks again Mike, good on you I hope you sell a bundle and this app is given the respect and market position it deserves.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Thu May 28, 2009 12:51 pm

Hmmm, forgive me for being a sour puss here (I think that's my job given the gushing of the beta) but my biggest problem with scripting is not any new cool features but simply the ability to access stuff that's there. Not being to script styles, for example. It sounds like what you are saying is that Mike did not enable those sorts of things and if so, that's a very sad thing indeed.

I do understand that many things you might want to script are negated by changes -- that's the whole point of a new release -- but equally there will be many things now that people DO want to script precisely because of those changes. If the basic functionality is still hidden then it's really disappointing to me (that's kind of why I stopped scripting -- too many attributes of things couldn't be reached. I'm used to a tool like Max in which *everything* is exposed, because the API is fully featured).

But have fun with your audio editor (ho-hum, who cares?)

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Thu May 28, 2009 1:06 pm

I would love to see a list of features divide into two groups:

1) Ones that makes the life easier to the artist (new tools, channel visibility, GUI improvements, etc.)
2) Others that add new real features (better and animatable gradients, video tracking, sond layer, etc.)

The second makes me specially scary because it means that meanwhile I don't have a new version of the AS6 I cannot load any of the new anme files to my old 5.6 version.

Hmmm, also there is not Debut version for Linux (and I bet never will be, only PRO), so if I'm with linux (for its stability, performance, opensource, and free of charge software) and I cannot get at at last the Debut version, (so then I have to get the PRO that is +$129)... I think I'm out of the wheel...

I would invest $129 better in hardware (new HD for example) than in software.

-G

bleep · Post by **bleep** » Thu May 28, 2009 1:07 pm

we haven't seen any video of AS6 debut on youtube, wonder why?