Future Directions for ASP - philosophy and features

[Fergus]

This thread is a suggested follow on from GCharb's posting indicating his withdrawal given concerns about the direction of AS development. I'm wondering what others feel are KEY philosophical and/or feature development directions they'd like to see (or to avoid).

PHILOSOPHY: My 2 cents on the philosophy as a complete beginner is that 2D and 3D seemed to me very different things, and that 2D had its own style and standards. Since 3D seemed more complex to get started, I thought I'd learn 2D first and see where that took me. I bought ToonBoom Studio first, but I came to feel that it required too much artistic skill for me so I bought AS Debut 6, liked it, and then upgraded AS Pro 6. So I have some sympathy with GCharb re the 2D/3D thing (if I've understood his point of view correctly), although I'm just entering this world as a hobby.

UPGRADE: As to upgrade philosophy, I really felt existing users got the short straw with the ASP 7 upgrade pricing. I had only gone to ASP6 in April, so missed the free upgrade and I was amazed and irritated when I found new users were able to buy at the upgrade price right at launch. I did upgrade, however, because the package looked great - and I am finding it very interesting and fun. eg I have immediately have used the physics feature.

FEATURES: As to features development, two I'd mention at this early stage are:
i) some way to minimise the constant tool changing (eg is there a way to have selection and transformation roll into one so I don't have to keep flipping back and forward between tools?)
ii) some way to have multiple scenes in the one file (unless that's there already and I don't know about it)

To grasp just how unqualified I am to post anything: my somewhat sad attempts as I begin are to be seen here advertsing our church's food drive...
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... C2DD3DEDC8

[InfoCentral]

...as I begin are to be seen here advertsing our church's food drive...

For some inspiration and ideas for your next church animation take a look at Zeb's cartoons.

[Fergus]

Thanks for the link. They're excellent - and way beyond me at this stage to do anything much like that! But good to see.

[chucky]

When a professional animator wants to put together an animation with both 3d and 2D, he usually uses a 2d tool for the 2d, a 3d tool for the 3d, then composite everything. To imply that the tool-set introduced in ASP 7 is even close to quality as what can be done in even the cheapest 3D tools is amazingly amateurish.

I think this COULD possibly be very useful for animatics and previz, more a tool for the director than the coal face animators.

Often during that process, you need to be using 2d and 3d on the fly and flexible, the render only has to indicate light source and mood, not to stun the audience.
Also there are all sorts of note layers and you can drop in scratch audio on the run.

3 things have to happen first

Camera and other edit decision data, z space etc. needs to be exportable as a native function, for after effects.
Better, quick sketch drawing tools for sketching ,colouring and blocking . This is something professional animators would have to insist on.
Editable light source. 3d is totally dependent on this- NO sale otherwise

Until these are implemented, Anime is still a work in progress, a toy, not a pro tool worthy of expensive support packages- like the current upgrade strategy, I don't blame Mike.

I think this post crosses 2 current thread topics, so I might repost this on the AS direction post also.

[InfoCentral]

...way beyond me at this stage to do anything much like that! But good to see.

He has one called I'll Shine which he also shows how he story-boarded it before actually starting the cartooning process. Check out I'll Shine and then have a look at the storyboard video I'll Shine animatic for an inside look at Zeb's work flow.

[chucky]

I've just been snooping at the " reprobates" forum.
Mainly because I see that's (unfortunately for SM) the best place to go to find out more detailed information about the new release.
I expected grumpiness from the full stick cranks, so I took it with a pinch of salt.
I totally love the sound all the features that are being added, whether they are useful for everyone or not.

One thing, besides the cc trial, I heard about; that has nothing to do with the software's programming, is really quite strange here.
I'm talking about the pro version, now.

It it true that there are advertisements running inside the software itself?
And that upon opening the library browser anime automatically connects to SM without even a auto on /off toggle?

[InfoCentral]

And that upon opening the library browser anime automatically connects to SM without even a auto on /off toggle?

If that is happening it is easy to block using the firewall.

[chucky]

InfoCentral, that's not an answer, more 'info' please.

[InfoCentral]

When an application tries to connect to the internet your firewall should stop it, alert you that this is happening and then give you the choice to let it do it this one time, always allow it connect, or block it permanently. Is that clear enough?

[neeters_guy]

Under Edit->Preferences->Options, check "use old library" to use vers. 6 style library. Also, the vers. 7 library requires Flash 9 and IE7, so if don't have these installed or you don't have internet access, this particular "feature" won't work anyway.

[chucky]

Thanks Neeter's , I have the now FREE demo right ( sans credit check) now and I am going through it.


Unfortunately most of the new functions are locked but there's enough here for a taste of at least the real thing..

[InfoCentral]

So how do you like the "real thing?"

[chucky]

I've posted a little here and there on the forum,
Here is one of the more negative postings.

viewtopic.php?t=16891



Overall I'm all for any improvements, but it seems Smith Micro are just inserting bloat-ware and limiting Mike's real innovations.
The poser stuff is awful ,
Motion graph improvements - good,
Control curve- nice but artefacts.
Improvements in curves - ace
Less brush options -bad. We need more and better, with customisable presets, not less and fix the line bugs, already!
I haven't tried the physics I will have to get the pro demo, that wasn't available before.I shall do that now.

[Paul Mesken]

I bought ToonBoom Studio first, but I came to feel that it required too much artistic skill for me so I bought AS Debut 6

There you have it. That's the direction ASP should take.

ASP shouldn't try to be a 3D program. There are lots of those already and one really good one is even free (Blender). Such 3D packages have a really, really steep learning curve and even if ASP could accomplish to "dumb it down" then it wouldn't be as good as stuff that is made with Maya, Blender, etc. (and that's where the end result will be compared against).

I think the audience for ASP are the ones who want to quickly slam together a little cartoon with no drawing skills needed whatsoever. Cartoons like the ones that can be seen on Cartoon Network, Nick, etc. Like Fairly Odd Parents, Kim Possible, Dexter's Laboratory etc.

The only way to do such a thing is give the user a lot of customizable characters (which can be dressed, elements like noses, eyes, hair, etc can be chosen) which can move around by the simply clicking of buttons (walk cycles built in, angry walk, happy walk, standard emotions) and have lots of props like furniture, cars, houses.

Of course, this would take SmithMicro a lot of additional development and they would need to hire real artists. I'm not so sure whether SmithMicro really wants to invest a lot in this product to establish themselves in that market.

One thing I would like to see would be a really good vectorizing tool. In which a pencil sketch is turned into a vector drawing in the software (the software would be the "inker" of dem olde animation days). Such a thing is a non-trivial programming problem which is a programmer's eufemism for bloody hard, nearly impossible. There are, of course, algorithms like the Hough transform and its many descendants but there's a difference between detecting lines, curves and other geometrical elements and cleaning up a real pencil sketch by a real human who understands the sketch.

[knunk]

I think the audience for ASP are the ones who want to quickly slam together a little cartoon with no drawing skills needed whatsoever. Cartoons like the ones that can be seen on Cartoon Network, Nick, etc. Like Fairly Odd Parents, Kim Possible, Dexter's Laboratory etc

WOW! Quickly slam together?!?

Im speechless.....