Reduced Character Wizard in v10?

[richinri]

Great job on the upgrade and videos! I love the character wizard and wonder why it doesn't have the bald guy and other characters like it used to have? I have not downloaded the extra content yet but I only have like 3 characters in the wizard to play with. Is this the case or did my install go wrong?

[Ronbo]

I also have only 3 characters: a boy, a creature, and a mannequin.

[dkwroot]

I don't think it's a glitch as much as it's a work in progress. Anime Studio is making huge efforts to clean itself up and create a professional look to attract customers in the industry (A very wise move). If you guys look at the character wizard, you'll see lots of new stuff of higher quality was added and you'll also notice that old content has been phased out. I have no doubt that they're currently looking into revamping the wizard all together to take advantage of the new features as well as give it a nice make-over.

I think it would be fantastic if the developers added new reference characters to the character wizard so that animators can use them like an artist uses a mannequin. This would be fantastic for helping with proportions and animating the body at different angles, but would also be extremely useful for referencing movements. At the moment, the motions in the character wizard are extremely crude and badly need a target bone and smart bone makeover.

[Distinct Sun]

It looks like the assets are all there. Just some of the presets were removed.

1. Any content you had made can be moved to the new content chosen location and it will get picked up.

2. Any presets you had saved are a little more tricky to track down. On the mac it is in your user/library preferences/ Smith Micro/ Anime Studio /Anime Studio / 9/ Character Wizard Presets/ folder
You can move or copy those to the 10 folder and relaunch the app and the presets will show up.

3. The built in presets that were in 9 are in the app bundle/somewhere. Its tricky poking around in there. Might be easiest to just open AS9 select a preset and save with a new one, then go to location in number 2 and retrieve and add to AS10.

hope that helps.
Jason

[richinri]

That's the issue. I deleted 9.5 before I noticed the reduction in the character wizard and my 9.5 backups aren't available right now. I can't draw for squat and am sure that might be true for a lot of people. That character wizard really was a time saver and I can't quite understand why they would reduce the presets even if they are working on improving it.

[Droxon]

To be honest, i'm glad they didn't spend time working on the character wizard.
It's the only feature that i don't really like about anime studio.

It even makes the software looks bad with those creepy characters/animations.

[richinri]

To be honest, i'm glad they didn't spend time working on the character wizard.
It's the only feature that i don't really like about anime studio.

It even makes the software looks bad with those creepy characters/animations.

I think most experienced artists or animators feel that way. But for budding animators the wizard is an awesome tool. Development of AS is dependent both on customer loyalty AND new users.

[wizaerd]

To be honest, i'm glad they didn't spend time working on the character wizard.
It's the only feature that i don't really like about anime studio.

It even makes the software looks bad with those creepy characters/animations.

All the more reason it should be worked on, so the assets look better, and be made much more useful. If the artwork was a bit better, and more options were available for the different body elements, it could be an extremely useful tool for prototyping as well as getting some basic characters built for beginners to study, use, and edit/modify.

[InfoCentral]

So has anyone located the legacy content folder in ASP 10 yet?

[Lost Marble]

So has anyone located the legacy content folder in ASP 10 yet?

Actually, all the same parts are there in the character wizard - all the heads, mouths, eyes, etc. We just removed some of the presets. But you can take the ones that are still there and change out the various body parts or click the Randomize button to generate as many character wizard characters as before.

Also, we've included a bunch of new characters in the content library that you should check out. Lots of good stuff there if you don't want to draw your own.

[Telemacus]

Personally I find it very disappointing that the character wizard hasn't evolved at all over the last few versions.
Someone has suggested the "randomize" feature. It's a pretty good idea... if you want to scare the kids at home! (they look so ugly, they look as if they were made with computer programs in the 1980s...)
I understand that for the professional animators out there, this is perhaps not such a great deal, but for the rest of us, it would have been worth it. Creating a simple character that looks "decent" with the current character wizard takes a fair bit of time.
I think the effort that was spent on creating the new characters that AS 10 coems with might have been better spent improving the wizard. Why? mainly because very few people like using characters that others have made, even if they're pretty good ones.

[Telemacus]

So, here are my suggestions:

- Get the artists to work seriously on:
* sets of eyes,
* mouths
* feet
* hands
* hair
* shoes
* clothing
* props

- Make it easier to add new images to those sets.
- Make the default characters in the wizard look good, instead of scaring people away!
- Add more actions (ok, maybe head-turns would be a little over the top, but perhaps running, different kicks, clapping, smiles, etc.)

I don't know, I just think the character wizard is so far behind everything else in the program...

[Ronbo]

Personally I think that the Character Wizard is a really, really cool idea. More as a concepting tool than a finished-art device. Something that you could use to visualize and develop a character as a rough sketch, which you would then further refine into a wonderful and personalized character design. Poser does this in a more realistic 3D style and it is quite awesome.

My main suggestion would be to replace all of that incredibly ugly art with characters designed by Selgin and Chucky.

[InfoCentral]

My main suggestion would be to replace all of that incredibly ugly art with characters designed by Selgin and Chucky.

+1

[richinri]

I appreciate the fact there is the randomizer. It all depends on what type of cartooning you are doing. My pet projects are usually adults talking so the wild characters that come up with randomize aren't usually what I am looking for. It just seemed a little odd to me that you would cut down on presets. Not quite sure why anyone thought that was a good idea. The character wizard is what gave me the incentive to stick with AS because I can't draw for sh** and need presets to get me rolling. I have met good drawers that just don't seem to get the fact some can't do that easily. Others sit down and it is done in 10 minutes. Gifted artists always hate tools like the character wizard. But AS has a learning curve as we all know and that wizard for people like me are a big help. So my two cents is more presets.