Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

A place to discuss non-Moho software for use in animation. Video editors, audio editors, 3D modelers, etc.

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exile
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Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by exile »

https://www.2dimensions.com/

I looked at some of the examples - there was some interest expressed in this forum for game animation. I didn't see anything you can't do in Moho, but registration seems to be free for their beta phase. It's an online tool which some might see as an advantage.

I found out about it from McCoy Buck's Moho Facebook page, along with the news that the main developers of Moho are no longer working for Smith Micro. He doesn't see a bright future for Moho and wants to shift his tutoring activity towards Nima. I don't think it's anywhere near a substitute for Moho, but am curious about the experiences some users might have had so far.
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Re: Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by SimplSam »

Seems like it has some potential for games character manipulation (not sure about character 'animation' yet), with a pleasant interface. But it also feels lacking on any number of fronts. For example: After adding bones over an image. I could not find a way to Edit the bone hierarchy - and insert an new inline bone. i.e. Add a bone and change parenting. [bone1]-[bone2] >>[bone1]-[bone3]-[bone2]. Also you appear to need to add bones, define a mesh, then bind bones to mesh. Whereas with old-trusty Moho - you just add the bones and let the flexi-bind magic happen. I am sure it will mature over time, but for now ....

Also (whilst I am here) - I am not entirely sure about Mr Bucks' divergence away from Moho. He appears to be intent on damning it in favour of NIMA. Whilst in reality the 2 products are chasms apart and targeted at very different audiences/purposes. If he were trying to get users off Spine 2D and onto NIMA I might understand the logic. But as it stands... I fail to do so.
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Re: Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by exile »

Appreciate your comments, Sam. You took time to check this out and saved some of us a duplicate experience. My personal take on this is that I spent a great deal of time checking out other software when I thought the price of Moho was going to be out of my reach as things were going. Synfig, Open Toonz, Blender Grease Pencil all have interesting features, but none could begin to replace AS 11, not to mention Moho 12. So as Danny Sugar wrote, we have a functional present compared to a possible bright future for alternatives.

I wrote McCoy about this thread and that he is welcome to post here. He already got a rocky reception to his comments on Moho in his Facebook group, so I'll stay neutral now. If you're trying to make a living from tutorials you're in a different position than the normal user, I can understand that.

I'm sorry that good people lost their jobs at Smith Micro and that the future of Moho is in doubt. But for the time being, I don't see what good it will do to panic.
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Re: Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by chucky »

Wow,
looks very much like Moho with a clean line UI and an equally up to date web presentation.
Obviously this company has a mature perspective on what a 2d animation program is.
Moho is so great but it's development is always fighting it's shackles.
If only it had the backing it deserves.

I would hate to see a massive ship jump to any copy cat app.
If Nima outshines Moho on the back of more internal support for development and better marketing, then so be it.

Strange days.
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Re: Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by exile »

chucky wrote:Wow, I would hate to see a massive ship jump to any copy cat app.
If Nima outshines Moho on the back of more internal support for development and better marketing, then so be it.

Strange days.
Strange, indeed. I guess I'll take another look at Nima. Moho seems to be caught between the devil and the deep blue sea - a stronger company would make it as expensive as Adobe products, and smaller companies either can't or don't want to risk the resources to keep it moving forward.

I had to laugh out loud at Chucky's line in the Muvizu thread - Got drunk in Vegas and have to sell all my stuff - and my neighbor's. Some of the offers are good. Rebelle was well worth $20, for example. I just hope we don't end up like some Magix customers - their Music Studio program actually got worse with upgrades, good features were taken out and the last good version won't run on a post-XP operating system.
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Re: Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by chucky »

Well , I had to laugh out loud when you mentioned Magix.
I just upgraded Vegas a couple of days ago...uhoh.
I'm sure there's a transition that new teams have to embrace but they released that with a massive update price hike and it's as stable as jelly.
The Magix version is more like ' Snorted half a pound of coke in Vegas and now the dealer's gonna break my legs. Quick, buy my old camero.' :mrgreen:
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Re: Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by exile »

chucky wrote:Well , I had to laugh out loud when you mentioned Magix.
I just upgraded Vegas a couple of days ago...uhoh.
I'm sure there's a transition that new teams have to embrace but they released that with a massive update price hike and it's as stable as jelly.
The Magix version is more like ' Snorted half a pound of coke in Vegas and now the dealer's gonna break my legs. Quick, buy my old camero.' :mrgreen:
I had the pleasure of using Magix's own video software. Now I use the AVS editor - primitive but seems to function. Maybe that half pound of coke explains some executives' decisions. :wink:
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Re: Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by drumlug13 »

chucky wrote: I just upgraded Vegas a couple of days ago...uhoh.
Yikes... Please don't tell me that Vegas 14 sucks. I was hoping to upgrade to 14. I'm only using Movie Studio but version 13 blew so bad that I just went back to using version 12.

2016 turned out to be the year of "dead rockstars" ... Maybe 2017 is going to take out a bunch of software.
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Re: Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by Greenlaw »

I'm using Vegas 14 Pro. I cut my 2017 demo reel using the program, and it went very smoothly.

I really appreciate some of the small but necessary fixes, like how FINALLY Smart Sample can be set to Disabled by deault--this always made me nuts in previous releases. And the new GPU based Smart Adaptive Deinterlacing is quite good! This isn't something I need often but I did need it a few weeks ago and it produced the best/fastest results I've seen. (I can get better results using Re:Vision Effects' Fields Kit but that's too slow if you need to deinterlace a ton of footage.)

What I like about Vegas is that I can usually throw any size footage in there and it usually just works. (MKV is an exception. Vegas doesn't like it but there are tools to remux to other containers.)

I noticed the other day that it can output ProRes natively now (Build 211). I don't normally need ProRes but that's good to know because I've had clients insist on ProRes delivery and I've had to convert my output using other programs.

The only big issue I've run into with Vegas 14 was with the project I'm currently editing. Early this year, I had switched from using AVI to MOV and using the lossless MagicYUV codec. This worked great for the short demo reel I mentioned above but with the longer piece I'm working on now, Vegas became sluggish and crashy.

So I switched back to AVI but kept using the MagicYUV codec. Now Vegas is speedy and responsive again and I haven't seen a crash since. I checked with the Vegas forums and a user there told me that he uses AVI with MagicYUV too, and avoids MOV for Vegas because it brings too many problems.

FYI, I did try the MagicYUV MOV files in Premiere the other day, and they seem more stable there, at least in the brief test I did. I keep wondering if I should go back to using Premiere (I had stopped using it about 10 years ago,) since it comes with my CC subscription anyway, but I just like using Vegas too much.

I'll keep using Vegas unless the new company somehow really screws it up for me. So far, it's been working well for me though and I'm pretty happy with it.
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Re: Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by chucky »

In regards to Vegas 14, I just discovered the problem.
I t was very very unstable and would crash at the drop of a hat, normally when doing anything with plugins.
The trick was the fps.
Using pngs . I found there was a mismatch between project, assets and events. Mysteriously the assets were showing as 25 fps when everything else was 24.
I can't say when or how the mismatch occurred , but I had never had issues with any other Vegas and this project has been in the making for some months with no problms until the update.
Since I went through and matched everything, I actually haven't had a single crash.
I'll be sharing the discovery, but I wasn't happy with the swerving from the rep who blamed everything but vegas , NVidia, the plugins, my computer, when it is certainly the way that Vegas converts frame rates. Now I know that I don't have a problem as there is a reasonable work around.

Without the crashing I am actually very happy with Vegas again, which is heartening as I didn't want to change, I would be happy to stick with it and watch it get better and better .
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Re: Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by uddhava »

chucky wrote: Without the crashing I am actually very happy with Vegas again, which is heartening as I didn't want to change, I would be happy to stick with it and watch it get better and better .
Glad to hear it.
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Re: Anyone tried Nima 2D game animation tool?

Post by Greenlaw »

I recently upgraded my Vegas Pro 14 to 15. I was actually quite happy with 14 and held off upgrading till the last possible moment before the 'new release' discount offer expired. I went with the basic 'Edit' upgrade this time because I haven't had to master a DVD/Blue Ray in four years, and there didn't seem to be any updates in DVD Architect anyway.

I won't say this was a necessary upgrade for me but there are things I do like about it.

The new 'dark' interface is welcome because I do a lot of my work late in the evening. Vegas finally looks more like every other program I use, which is much easier on my eyes. (And helps with proper color perception too.)

Other changes to the UI: the visibility of many timeline/layer buttons are now switchable. Most of the buttons are hidden by default, which confused me at first. Once I realized what they'd done, I turned the buttons I needed back on and left some of them off. It did result in a less cluttered UI. The windows are fully dockable now. (A modern docking UI is something I'm still hoping for with Moho.)

Rendering takes better advantage of GPU processing now and it's supposed to be much faster. I was helping my daughter edit her new short film with Vegas 14 over a week ago, when I switched over to to test it. I think 15 was rendering her faster but since the project is fairly simple and only a minute and a half long, it was hard to tell. Plus, my tablet computer doesn't have the fastest GPU in the world. I'll test this again on my workstation with a beefier project when I get the chance.

I tried the new 'Freeze Frame' feature on her project. This is a 'minor' feature but it's definitely easier than the previous workflow of saving the last frame in a clip and then importing and time-stretching it.

No crashes since I've been using Vegas 15 but then this wasn't an especially heavy project either. I'm sure there have been stability improvements but I'll need to test this with a bigger project to know for sure.

So far, I think Vegas 15 a good update but not sure it's good enough to justify the upgrade cost yet. Faster rendering with a heavier project could determine that. TBD.
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