Anime Studio 7

General Moho topics.

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Rhoel
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Anime Studio 7

Post by Rhoel »

The excitement and disappointments felt over the Anime Studio 6 release have now passed and now might be a very good time to consider the future needs and features of the next version. Despite calling the thread Anime Studio Pro 7, there is no reason why some of the requests cannot be included in ASP 6 future releases.

Mike has stated the original concept behind Moho nee Anime Studio was to create a vector animation program for television animation. The current vector tools and resulting HD output certainly meet the demanding standards of the broadcaster. But animation series are not completed by any one individual, they are the work of studios, studio groupings and teams of freelancers. That requires a base set of tools which were missing in ASP 5.# and some not implemented in ASP 6. It is a serious handicap for the program's uptake in the studio environment. It could be a giant killer if it were not for one or two missing elements.

Here are the areas which (based on commercial studio experience) I consider need review. The focus is how to make ASP distributed environment friendly ... ie, how can a film scenes be completed by multiple users on LAN/WAN systems.

Configurable Network Path File:
ASP includes the path to external components (such as background images) in the scene file. Move the file to a new machine, change the network setup or reload a file from a two year old backup archive and all scenes are filled with lost files. For a studio, this is very expensive and a serious deterrent for using ASP – it prevents using freelance animators who have a different file structure/operating system.

The solution is relatively easy in practice, though may require lengthy code modification for Mike and the team. It means having a configurable path to scene data. Basically, it's two paths strings, $production_directory path + $local_directory. The $production_directory path is usually kept in the users ASP configuration settings, and the $local_directory stored in the file.

In this way, a freelancers file which was created on C:My Documents/anim_projects/studio_x/new-series_name/episode_01/scene001.anme is easy to import into Studio X's network as the paths are
freelancer.$production_directory_path = “C:My Documents/anim_projects/studio_x/series_name/”
studio_x.$production_directory_path = “//production_HDD3/series_name/”

The path hard-coded into the scene file for both is the same, “ episode_01/scene001.anme “.

In this way, it is easy for collaborations to exchange files easily and with the minimum of changes.

Similar external paths are needed for renderer output directories and stock materials.


External Colour Models.
At the present time, ASP holds its colour model information in the scene file: There is no external reference to a common external colour file. This is a very serious weakness as it means there is no commonality between scenes of the same film ... the fill colour for character_Joe_shirt can be blue in one scene and red in another. This is a problem: Directors are notoriously fickle and think nothing of changing a characters colour set middle production.

But by using an external linked colour reference, it makes life very easy – the externally linked color value of fill of character_Joe_shirt will update on any reload and automatically update at the time of render. Scenes can be built long before the client signs off on the colour style. Its the paint pot system, a fill has the colour of paint pot #124, and it makes no different what paint is in pot #124 – refill the pot with red and Joe's once blue shirt will automatically change to red.

This external system has one very big benefit: By copy and cloning a colour reference file, it is possible to have day and night colours. A scene with Little Red Riding Hood skipping to Grannies house in the morning, can be flipped and reused with a new night palette. To any viewer, no-one is going to recognize the same reused artwork as the colours are changed. Animo used a system where one character colour model held a default palette with sub palettes for night, monotone, matte-ing, etc. Indeed, i have used the colour sub-palette to drive matte channels, where the fills were replaced with a scanned material texture. The effect was remarkable ... Fuzzy-Felt characters which actually looked like 3D animated Fuzzy Felt characters - it was so realistic, Cambridge Animation (Animo's software house) refused to believe it was their own program.

Mike has already indicated this is a big change buy in reality, it is a very necessary one. It is the direct parallel to HTML and CSS files. The commercial advantages are identical, the write once style information and reuse many times. Commercially, it has enabled the Web to go to the next level.

The same is true of ASP. External colour reference are essential in a commercial environment.


Production Management.
Large television series will have many thousands of scenes. Monitoring the progress of an episode is very difficult and relies heavily on proprietary production management software. One tool in PMS is the ability to parse the production directories to read scene files, to determine the progress of any file. To do this, the PMS has to insert a new user layer in which it keep its own data. ASP does permit access to the scene file with LUA and other scripting tools but at the present time, I do not see any reference to user defined layers. For Mike, having the ASP ignore user layers is no great problem, it just needs to be copied any saved/save as file.

For the studios however, having data inserted into the scene is a big leap forward, and for the freelance coders here, the possibility for commercial 3rd party party applications to support the program.


Summary:
If commercial studios use ASP to create the next big series like Reg and Stimpy, the effect of amateur sales will be great. ASP does not need a huge array of commercial tools to make it idea for large productions. The programming investment will see very good commercial returns for Smith Micro.

Without external colour references or directory paths, ASP will continue to be seen as program intended for the single seat/amateur animators (and I do not mean amateurish animators).

And that is not what Mike originally stated the program was for. The industry is going through very tough times and needs good vector tools. ASP is nearly there. It can and should become the giant killer.

I would trust the appointment of as Sarina Product manager might result in greater support for the commercial sector since commercial success is good for ASP, good for SM and good for the end user.


Rhoel.
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Post by Acochran_89 »

these are all very good points...however, i'm curious...would these changes effect the low cost of AS? Right now, it is by far the best, cheap, 2d animation software. Would turning it into a huge commercial tool like that raise the price for future versions? Such as toonboom. It has a lot of networking tools (as far as I've read, but have never actually used), but it is WAY more expensive than AS. They have programs reaching up to $3000!. I can't ever imagine paying that much for a piece of software, especially when there are other programs that are just as good, if not better, such as AS.
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Post by Rhoel »

Acochran_89 wrote:these are all very good points...however, i'm curious...would these changes effect the low cost of AS?
fundamentally, the above requests should not be costly, though only Mike can say: All software gets developed and these suggestions are looking at development in the long term. I would make the comparison with Serif's Page Plus. For years it was considered a toy by DTP professionals, all of them shelling out $1000 a pop for Quark. Then Serif added PDF output and everyone stopped dead in their tracks - it was not just standard PDF but the inclusion the PDF x1a printing format, complete with register marks, print bled and everything you needed for pro-printing houses. Did the price jump to $1000 Nope, it remained at hobbyist prices - it still made big bucks for Serif as suddenly it was moving very large sales volume.

So what are the cost implications for these development suggestions?
Configurable network paths have no major upgrade cost implications - a junior programmer can be assigned the task.

Internal definable file layers for PMS and other 3rd party developers - unlikely to have any financial impact, just an ignore clause and a re-write block on save. But big advantages for the end-user.

External Colour Models - potentially difficult/time intensive to implement. Unfortunately it's critical for the long-term sustainability to ASP and without it, the program cannot become a standard industry tool. If no other new feature/modification was introduced to ASP, external colour models would be it.



How would these changes affect an ASP user in practice?

Well, currently, Dale (dueyftw) is making his own movie, using his own money and grateful for the assistance of four regulars here. He's not a big studio, he's an ordinary ASP user who has a day job and the desire to make his own film. just the kind of customer Mike originally envisaged.

But Dale will have problems using 6.1 (ignoring the fact some of his potential animators are still one 5.6 and cannot contribute due to the lack of backward compatibility issues). One of the principle things which will affect his production (and therefore his bottom line) will be the re-compositing work needed to get all the outside contracted scenes working on his system: It's not easy ... lost layers, incompatible file references etc. Fixable but unnecessary.

What about the artistic side. If at anytime during production he discovers some character colours are not sitting comfortably with his (now available) backgrounds, he's stuck with it - there's no easy fix via an external reference, he has to manually change every scene file: Even using the existing styles mode, the task is extremely difficult and time expensive.

But if he had network configurable paths and external colour files, receiving work from freelances would be a cinch. Indeed, if his fact-sheet to the freelancers was written right, or he supplied scene "blanks" with his config and model files, the process of re-importing could and should work first time. The time saving and flexibility is immense.

Having these features may not make headlines as they are already industry standard features. But not having them could make headlines.

Anime Studio is missing a couple of vital tools which separates the men from the boys. The comparison with PagePlus is a valid one (company size, product cost and projected customer type). They discovered the addition of something small turned the application into a killer application: It didn't depose Quark but its longevity in the market was assured.

Introduction of PDF to PagePlus wasn't earth shattering, it didn't make headlines: But in terms of the application and what it was capable of delivering to the end-user, it was a huge advance: It made the product commercial, on a shoe-string. Nothing else came closein terms of competition. More importantly, the development didn't affect the retail price. It did however serious advance Serif's sales figures: It sold and continues to sell significant units.

there is no reason why Serif's experience shouldn't work for ASP. The changes are relatively small but commercially, a huge leap forward - it enables true studio/cooperative working.

And that's a giant killer.


Rhoel
Last edited by Rhoel on Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Mikdog »

Thanks this is interesting info.
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Post by artfx »

Just out of curiosity, why not have everything included in the scene file and eliminate network paths all together? It's a 2D art program, and vector at that, I can't imagine hard drive space can be an issue. I can go to any store and get a 1 terabyte drive for less than $100 now.

Is there some other advantage I am not thinking of for having elements outside the scene file scattered across a network?
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Post by slowtiger »

Because if you have everything in one file, you can't share its ingredients with other files.

Any film with more than one shot contains a lot of elements which are shared between shots. Examples would be: characters, backgrounds, colour models, sounds, actions. These elements depend on each other a lot: that's called continuity. The characters must not change appearance between shots, the backgrounds need to be consistent, and so on.

If you now include background A into files 1, 2, 3, ... 101 each, you not only multiply occupied disk space by 100. You also lose the ability to make a necessary change to the background only once.

That's why bigger production systems extensively use file references. Remember that everything done twice also costs twice as much time and money, both limited ressources.
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Post by slowtiger »

As for the requested features, I'm not so much convinced that these would be easy to add. And I'm not sure that all of these features should be added to the normal version of AS.

As much as I like the idea of independant colour model files and a useful library for scenes and elements, I don't think the average amateur user of AS (who are the majority, let's face it) would be willing to pay for this. And even among "us professionals" there would be a lot who don't use such features.

It would be nice to have these features as an additional ability, sold separately, maybe even like a "studio license" so every studio buys the "library package" only once, plus one license of AS for every animator. But even this model would need a bigger rework of AS, since the interface to these functions still must be included into the "normal" AS package. That's why I say this isn't a minor improvement but a much bigger change.
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Post by Blue »

I like...no wait, LOVE Rhoel's ideas. However, I'll reserve any judgment on the difficulty level of adding these features.

I'm not sure which version was the "normal version of AS" that Slowtiger was referring to, however if SM is going to put a out a product with the word "Pro" in it, THAT version should have Rhoel's requests in it. I don't think the AS line needs to branch three ways. How many versions is ToonBoom up to?!

Certainly these features do not belong in Debut, in fact I would be pissed if they were, as I paid for Pro to have the Pro features.

I think everyone has read my laundry list of requests and Rhoel's ideas here would be a VERY welcome addition to it. After better FBF of course... :)
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Post by InfoCentral »

I think Smith Micro should sell Anime Studio to Adobe for inclusion in the next release of Flash. The latest version of Flash already includes bones and Adobe is active in progressing this development for Flash.
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Post by Víctor Paredes »

InfoCentral wrote:I think Smith Micro should sell Anime Studio to Adobe for inclusion in the next release of Flash. The latest version of Flash already includes bones and Adobe is active in progressing this development for Flash.
Please No!!
AS and Flash are pretty different software and one should completely change to adapt to the other. And I'm pretty sure Adobe wouldn't take priority for AS (and I have seen how Flash bones works...)

I think Adobe is not very worried about the user experience. Their softwares are each day bigger and slower (remember AS size is about ten megas without all the library files). Each time I open Photoshop I have to go to the kitchen to make me some tea and wait it load to get the same results that I can have much quickly with Sai or Photopaint.
I think one of the fantastic features of AS is that it's an alternative for the adobe monster. We need alternatives, we need diferent ideas, different ways to get results, different prices.
As you can see, I'm not a big fan of what adobe and macromedia have done, I think their interfaces are pretty silly and I'm always looking for alternatives. This way I found Moho for animating, Sai paint tool for drawing and Photopaint to modify images.

I'll be easy meanwhile AS still on the hands of Mike Clifton. That guy is a genius and he can face alone all the competition. I don't care too much if new versions take a long time to be release or if there are some bugs running around. I have confidence the developer is listen us and that new features will be great.
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Post by Danimal »

selgin wrote:As you can see, I'm not a big fan of adobe
Nor is anyone else with a degree of sense.
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Post by PARKER »

InfoCentral wrote:I think Smith Micro should sell Anime Studio to Adobe for inclusion in the next release of Flash. The latest version of Flash already includes bones and Adobe is active in progressing this development for Flash.
No way.
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Post by InfoCentral »

selgin wrote:I'm not a big fan of what adobe and macromedia have done, I think their interfaces are pretty silly and I'm always looking for alternatives.
If your looking for an alternative for Illustrator then Xara may fit your paradigm.
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Post by Rhoel »

InfoCentral wrote:I think Smith Micro should sell Anime Studio to Adobe for inclusion in the next release of Flash.
Somehow I don't think that will happen.

Getting the thread back on topic, I agree with the suggestion by Slow Tigger and others these should be available only in the Pro release ... they might be present in the scene data and program infrastructure etc, but not in the interface.

With regards to cost, only Mike can say for sure. But I have worked on the programming side of another project which required the retroactively addition of network pathnames; the task is just long and boring, but not difficult.

I omitted to mention path names can benefit the lone animator. Projects can take years and hardware systems die. Fortunately people back things up on CD/DVD/external drives. When they come to reload the data, their file systems (and therefore paths) are often different, leading to the lost files. Then relinking the data is easy.

When network paths are adopted, there is a transitional phase. Old data has one long path, whilst the new has two: there are several option around this but on the system I worked on, when an old scene opened and the paths were not set, a pop-up window requested how the file be saved: The action of Save-As... automatically wrote in the new path name to the file.\: Not rocket science.

One of the reasons for going back over the "Pro" side was the disappointment with some of ASP6's new features. It seemed a lot of programming for facilities few people would use - motion tracking especially: Nice idea but how many amateurs have access to the kind of video recording stages needed to get usable traceable action. Few Pro houses are using ASP6 for the limiting reasons listed above.

What I do miss is Mikes presence here: During the "good ole days" before the commercial dragons appeared, there was real collaboration of ideas on how should things work - much of what was discussed was not headline features but tiny changes which were essential to the program's core functionality.

We are at a point in the life cycle of ASP where serious discussion over technical abilities like external paths needs to be discussed. On the surface, it may not seem like a quantum leap: But what the programmers cannot see is how their product is actually used in the field, in the real work. And just as Serif discovered with PDF output, or mobile phone manufacturers with SMS, it's the inclusion of something the consider a minor module which actually revolutionized the product.

I would love to have a pro studio running ASP 7 as its primary animation tool - its price is right. Here in Asia we often have 60 bums on seats working on a film. The PR for Anime Studio is invaluable when its discovered it was the tool used for the Cartoon Network's latest hit series: The sales would really take off. Technically, it has the tools to make The Simpsons or Family Guy (they actually existed in 5.6). But as a studio program, without networking and referenced files, ASP6 simply not there yet:

But its tantalizingly close.

That is where the discussion should be,

Rhoel
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Post by InfoCentral »

I'd like to see how far Adobe has advanced bones within Flash CS5. I'd assume that the development team has seen AS and is using at least that as a base for future development of Flash.
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