Page 1 of 11

Anime Studio 8 Already?

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 12:41 am
by jonbo
It's been almost one year since AS7 came out and now SMITH MICRO is soon releasing V8.0. I think alot of people will wait and see what the new version will include. I found this site, don't know if it's accurate, but a couple of new features might be interesting but sadly, I don't see any new FBF addition. Check it out if you want.



http://www.navarre.com/nds/catalog/item ... 84247.aspx

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 1:36 am
by DarthFurby
Nice find Jonbo!

I'm sure the vendor violated some agreement by posting information about AS 8 so early, including a RELEASE DATE(June 14th, 2011), but now the rest of us can ponder about the new features, which seem mostly geared towards helping the newbie, with one notable exception: Advanced Scripting Support.

At a glance, not excited, but I'll reserve judgement until we have more details.

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 1:48 am
by sbtamu
I wonder how well this will actually work...

NEW! Automatic Image Tracing converts your artwork to fully editable, ready-to-animate vector drawings.

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 1:51 am
by Fulkster
Thanks for the find, Jonbo!

I'm almost a little bummed! I just in the last month bought ver 7... how good a price can I expect for the upgrade?

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 1:57 am
by sbtamu
Fulkster wrote:Thanks for the find, Jonbo!

I'm almost a little bummed! I just in the last month bought ver 7... how good a price can I expect for the upgrade?
They will have an overlap period where you can upgrade for free. I am not sure the time period but it has been posted before.

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 2:03 am
by jonbo
DARTH: as soon as i saw SARINA'S announcement, i just googled ANIME STUDIO 8 features and found the site. Maybe the release notice was late.

SBTAMU: that's the feature that caught my eye too

Fulkster: don't sweat it, smith micro always seems to have sales right after you buy it. so just wait and get at a good price. upgrade from AS7 to AS8 probaly will be on sale at least by christmas

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 6:01 am
by Diana Kennedy
Yep, that tracing feature interests me, too.
Wheew! For one; I'm looking forward for a new AS Version, in the other hand I'm not even trough with learning ASP7...

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 9:13 am
by chucky
Very excited, these features are just the ticket.
It sounds like the users have been listened to , I have a renewed respect for the dev' team.
Bravo, Mike , Sarina et al.
Of course this is all in theory until the demo is released. :wink:

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 11:44 am
by crsP
The most interesting thing to me is that only one bug fix for 7 was released - and that only dealt with the cycling bug. Doesn't bode well for any upgrade.

If the auto trace is like the background removal tool in ASP, then I have no hopes for it's usefulness - even the promo vids didn't show good results.

The character generator and walk libraries etc. sounds like a direct response to Crazy Talk Animator's approach of having the creative process done for you. I guess CTA was successful enough to provide a threat.

This advance scripting sort of lets me know that any new scripts created in 8 will not work for me. Oh well.

No talk of improvements to drawing\construction or frame by frame. WHO are they listening to Chucky, WHO?! heh

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 11:58 am
by ponysmasher
NEW! Additional 3D video rendering options with full support for YouTube 3D formats.
I'm excited about this. Patch layers sound interesting as well.
NEW! Advanced scripting support.
This sound very interesting but I'm afraid that the 'NEW' will turn out to be just a typo. But having even more advanced scripting features would be very nice...

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 11:59 am
by Diana Kennedy
What I would like to know is if ASP 8 allows you to see every tool, even if not yet used, on the timeline, as it was in earlier Versions. Because that was a big headache.

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 12:04 pm
by crsP
ponysmasher wrote:Patch layers sound interesting as well.
I don't know what a patch layer is - never heard of such a thing. Could you please elaborate on what this is?

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 12:34 pm
by AmigaMan
If the Auto Image Tracing works how I imagine then that's something that would be very useful. At the moment I'm tracing lots of images rendered out of 3D software for a frame by frame animation done in Anime Studio and it's quite tedious! :D

I imagine the patch layers could be useful for easily masking the features of a face as they rotate off the side in a head turn for instance??

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 1:03 pm
by ponysmasher
crsP wrote: I don't know what a patch layer is - never heard of such a thing. Could you please elaborate on what this is?
I only know what that webpage said:
NEW! Use patch layers to create masks for overlapping layer elements.
But more/better masking options sounds good to me.

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 1:33 pm
by crsP
Ah, okay. I thought it was something that was more commonly known from other apps, but I had not heard of.