Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

[Greenlaw]

Maybe. but not with a win 8 tablet pc. at least not with mine. and with working I mean usable. of course it runs like any other desktop app, but this is not usable with that user interface. too small buttons, too small interaction tools. most of the clicks missing their destination, even with the pen.

I know what you mean. I have a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2 Enhanced tablet PC and I've run into issues with some apps that do not properly scale up the interface when the screen is set to the default resolution of 2560 x 1440--the buttons and text look super tiny and can be difficult to see, let alone select. In the case of ASP 11, the general parts of GUI looks fine on this Win 8 tablet computer but some palettes and windows do render very tiny. To be fair, it's much worse in Photoshop where every part of the GUI renders tiny. Here's what I'm seeing on this computer:



I think the only option at this time is to reduce the resolution of the tablet computer's screen. Hate doing that but at least I won't go blind or crazy working with the tiny icons and text.

Hopefully, over time, as high-res tablet screens become more common, more programs will become screen resolution aware and self-adapting.

G.

Edit: I tried reducing my screen res from 2560 x 1440 to the next preset 2048 x 1152. That doesn't sound like a lot but it does make the much buttons more usable. Guess I'll just do that until more programs are configured to deal with high res tablet computers.

[Pinesal]

I like the new referenced layers but one thing would make it even more useful is the option to have them reference multi-directionally. Meaning that if I manipulate the referenced layer, the referred layer changes, but also the other way around, the referred layer also changes the referenced layer. It would make it easy to animate multiple angles of a character and have all the actions sync up.

[oliverillustrator]

I second that, this is a great idea.
Kinect Mocap is pretty bad for 3d purposes (due to limitations in depth tracking), but for 2d it would fit like a glove. Great idea.Don`t think facial capture is necessary for a start. Just pupeteering the body.

I think Xbox Kinect Motion Tracking would be so freaking awesome.. Imagine.. You set your character up with bones and you set up your Kinect and being able to move your character real time? Also with smart bones we can also control emotions, turns, etc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxbH-QDHAVg

Plus for that software there is plugins where it captures face motions and allows you to move more individual parts of the body like fingers, toes, etc... Can you imagine if we can do a whole smart bone rig and be able to control it real time like this? Even though that is 3D I'm sure it can be done with 2D as well.

[Noisefever]

There are allready bigger versions of the button graphics. The question is: how to enable them?

[Greenlaw]

I second that, this is a great idea.
Kinect Mocap is pretty bad for 3d purposes (due to limitations in depth tracking)...

Don't mean to derail this thread but, IMO, Kinect mocap can work fairly well for 3D. Here's a motion capture test I did about 3 years ago with my daughter (then 5 years old) using Kinect capture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJZabVZqCl0

This example is raw mocap (before cleanup) and using an early beta version of iPi Mocap Studio 2 software with Kinect for Windows and a PC. (The software is currently at version 3 which is even more accurate because it allows you to synchronize up to four Kinect devices.)

Here's a short film my wife Alisa and I made about four years ago using an even older version of the software: https://vimeo.com/55185005

And here's an excerpt from our current production (this footage is two years old.): https://vimeo.com/68543424

We recently started using three synchronized Kinect devices to finish this project but I did use the triple setup to create visual fx for a couple of live action movies last year. I used it mainly for digital stunt doubles and also some creature effects, and the results were quite good, especially considering the insanely tight schedule and budget we had to work with.

No, you're not going to make the next 'Avatar' with this system but Kinect mocap is certainly capable of doing good 3D work. Best of all, I can set up this system in our living room in about five minutes and start capturing data as I need it.

As for 2D puppetry, yeah, should be a piece of cake. Although you can probably do something similar in ASP right now just using video footage and the tracker for animating bone targets. (I haven't tried that myself...just thinking out loud.)

G.

[braj]

I'd love a style table view that would show every defined style in a table with the set parameters for each that you can edit and add new styles.

[Greenlaw]

...To be fair, it's much worse in Photoshop where every part of the GUI renders tiny. Here's what I'm seeing on this computer:..

This won't help for Anime Studio and high density screens but I did discover an interesting fix in Photoshop CC. If you look in Preferences under 'Experimental Features', there is an option labled "Scale UI 200% for high-density displays":



This makes the GUI look normal on this screen but it does introduce a new problem: at 200%, the PS GUI is now sometimes too large for the screen--some panels open so big, they are clipped off the edge of the screen, even when the screen res is set at the default 2560 x 1440 resolution. Sigh! You just can't win.

Anyway, it would be great if ASP 11 had a similar High Density Screen option in preferences but offered more size options (I think 150% would be more suitable to the Wacom Cintiq Companion 2 screen.)

G.

[dkwroot]

My primary suggestions for AS 11.1 are:
-- Give the ability to drive smartbone actions with bone position/scale
-- Give the ability to blend actions together using corrective actions. (I described this earlier)


Either of these methods will enable us to build seamless 2.5D characters so it's practical to just pick the one that looks easier to code. I was REALLY hoping you guys would have added this in AS 11, so please consider it for 11.1


If you guys decide to use position/scale of a bone to control actions, I'd suggest just doing an order of importance method. Basically, when a smartbone action is being created the code will first check if the bone angle was keyed, then it'll check scale and finally it'll check position. This seems like the easiest way to implement the code as it means you don't have to create any crazy buttons or naming schemes. The code just checks for active key channels and relies on the user to use good naming systems.

I made a thread regarding this topic in greater detail here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=27453

[animationfamily]

Hi,In previous versions of Anime Studio it was not possible to apply a mask of layers containing already masks, for example /typecasting masked layers mouth eyes/ This is a problem when it is necessary to apply the mask of such typecasting in animation as stuck in the snow,water and others.

Do you plan in the future the oppurtunity for simultaneous opening of more than one TimeLine for selected layers to easily and accurately synchronize their animation

[dkwroot]

-- Give us the option to break layer references for groups without breaking the referencing of layers nested in the group.

[dkwroot]

-- Add the ability to lock a layer. This is very important for reference layers since we sometimes just want to lock a references so that we can't accidentally modify it. It might be useful to be able to lock specific sets of channels. For example, an animator might want to lock the point manipulation ability for a vector reference but keep the ability to translate the layer.

Layer locking could also have the added ability to prevent a locked group from being expanded. This could be useful for FBF layers and reference layers as it acts as a way for a rig creator to nudge an animator away from messing with things they really shouldn't.

-- Add the ability to show/hide specific layer types within the layers panel. For example, an animator might want to hide all reference layers or all image layers within their layer panel so that they can more easily navigate it. We could even use the layer colors to establish groups which can be hidden and revealed at the press of a button. This could be very useful.

-- Give the ability to change tool icon size. I'd suggest cutting the toolbar down to 2 buttons wide and making the buttons bigger. If you guys cut the camera buttons down to 1-2 buttons and collapse some of the other tools together, you could easily slim down the tool bar and make the program sexier. I would also suggest updating the icons themselves and making them more sleek and appealing.

[jayfaker]

Animating target bones and parent bones are great. The next natural step, though, is to make it so you can use non-step keyframes to morph the bone between the parents/targets. That way things don't have to perfectly align before you switch parents/targets.

So you have two keyframes, one is 0% transition, the other is 100% transition. Between 0 and 100% the position of the bone is influenced 25% by one parent/target and 75% by the other parent/target.

I guess that's how it would work with the way ASP does parent/target animation right now. The other way it would be done is direct morphing, where the parent position is exactly where the child will end up. So you would have Parent Bone 1 and Parent Bone 2 and the child would stick to Parent Bone 1 at 0,0,0 and then at the next keyframe the child would stick to Parent Bone 2 at 0,0,0. In between it would be a direct morph between the position of Parent Bone 1 and Parent Bone 2, evaluated at every frame. This would work for both parents/targets.

Anyway, I hope this makes sense.

[dkwroot]

Here are some GUI enhancements that I think are 'doable'. I focused on making the GUI more efficient and cleaner.

[dkwroot]

Here is an extremely important update that we need:
-- Add the ability to keyframe Style changes. This is a big deal for using layer referencing efficiently.
-- Add the ability to set a smartbone to 'dedicated smartbone' which would allow the local bone layer to be bypassed by higher level bones for nested bone control.
-- Add reference options and preferences. For example, every time we reference a layer we might want certain channels to always be unlinked. A real world example of this would be a layer with smartbones within it. We might want to smartbones to always be independent, so having a quick option during referencing would be nice.
-- Add the ability to show/hide which layers are visible in the layers panel based on layer color and layer type.
-- Add the ability to organize layers in the layers panel based on layer color and layer type.

I made a video explaining the importance of these updates:

[synthsin75]

Here is an extremely important update that we need:
-- Add the ability to keyframe Style changes. This is a big deal for using layer referencing efficiently.

Are you talking about the "Style 1" and "Style 2" dropdowns or style properties?