Daily routine

[cableon]

Hum, wait... smooth joints for bone layers DO work for switch layers -- or at least they do for layers inside switch layers. My bad.

[cableon]

So this is the closest compromise between cut out animation and 12-fps, 2D stopmotion that I have found so far. Not the easiest one, though.

[Doodlyday]

Cool stuff! I love it!

[cableon]

Thanks Doodlyday!

This one is just finished, and also available there :

[cableon]

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU SmithMicro for adding frame by frame layers & accurate drawing tools at last in AnimeStudioPro11. And seemingly very cool and handy lighting tools. Thank you.

Haven't had the time to test everything yet, by far, but that only looks great, and is a huge relief.

[Víctor Paredes]

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU SmithMicro for adding frame by frame layers & accurate drawing tools at last in AnimeStudioPro11. And seemingly very cool and handy lighting tools. Thank you.

Haven't had the time to test everything yet, by far, but that only looks great, and is a huge relief.

During the beta I thought, "this guy (cableon) will really love this feature"

[cableon]

Haha you BET!

[cableon]

So -- could not resist experimenting ASP11 FBF animation with Chucky's layer template :



And it DOES work for sure. Thanks again Chucky!

***

Only used the *bluepencil* and *pencil* layers in the present case, with an additional duplicate *pencil* one set above the bluepencil one :



(Quickly tried out the light and shades layers, which are great as well, in separate attempts : cf here and there)

***

Only a couple observations regarding technical matters however :

1°) the B-pencil hand-drawn vector lines on both my *pencil* layers tended to unexpectedly transform into blue pencil lines once inbetweens were added (it still shows at times in the above loop) : I had to re-draw approximately 15 frames out of 30 of both *pencil* layers. My attempts to get back to the proper bluepencil style did not seem to have any effect, although I do have to reckon little familiarity with ASP's styles in general : I barely used Chucky's awesome presets here, without even transforming them.

2°) ASP seems to automatically soften "heavy" scribbles (cf foreground rocks in this case), as though the smoothing option was set to its maximum (when in my case it was set to zero), especially after drawing a dozen frames : such jottings then get reduced to single lines.

3°) Hatched drawings (ie hair above) also sometimes tend to get delayed and appear only a few seconds after they were actually drawn, again especially once the whole sequence is well advanced. That only occurs once in a while though.

Points 2°) and 3°) might be due to my own machine getting overdriven (I run ASP11 under Mac OS 10.9.5 on a Macbook 2009 Pro, with 8Go of RAM, plus a Wacom Cintiq 12WX tablet), although I slightly doubt it : no other apps were running while I was working on that very short, 24fps sequence, and my 500Go HD is barely half-filled. I furthermore very rarely encounter such 'overwork' episodes, generally speaking. Nothing serious all in all, but I thought I should perhaps report it, just in case. Has anyone else come up with such little 'bugs' or delays in FBF animation ?

Anyway, being able at last to draw FBF in ASP is a great improvement, and I cant wait to try Chucky's new brushes : the official FBF webinar looked very promising on that matter as well!

[cableon]

Demo reel 06/2015 :



Soundtrack : Chin Chin - 'GG & the Boys'

More animations here : http://www.ronald-grandpey.net/?animations
And here : http://rrolab.tumblr.com

More soon!

[chucky]

Hi Cableon, love what you are doing btw great stuff.
I should have been more present round here to answer questions and be more supportive, but I've been busy and pretty sick for a few weeks ( some mega flu).ANyway I saw your post about inbetweening problems.
Yes that does happen for the time being we need to let the dev team know, but for the meantime here's a workaround ( feel free to pass it on to anyone who needs it before a patch gets it sorted)

SO what you can do to prevent the duplicated vector in the referenced FBF layers is just make a mark on that reference layer any kind on line or dot will do , that will prevent the vectors being transferred.
Yes it's weird and you have to remember to ditch that mark eventually.

Try it out , I hope it works for your situation.

Oh and always use GPU acceleration when drawing to prevent that softening and try to use merge strokes if you can.
I'm hoping we'll get 'peaking ' in freehand before too long , especially as the freehand is becoming much more popular each time it improves.

Try out some of the ink brushes , listed alphabetically under 'CK Ink etc.etc.'

[cableon]

SO what you can do to prevent the duplicated vector in the referenced FBF layers is just make a mark on that reference layer any kind on line or dot will do , that will prevent the vectors being transferred.
Yes it's weird and you have to remember to ditch that mark eventually.

Hum, WEIRD indeed -- seems to work however... Thanks Chucky!

Oh and always use GPU acceleration when drawing to prevent that softening and try to use merge strokes if you can.
I'm hoping we'll get 'peaking ' in freehand before too long , especially as the freehand is becoming much more popular each time it improves.

GPU acceleration is *always* on here, yet hardly preventing bugs with "heavy scribbles" after a few frames...
Yeah, really longing to seeing the freehand drawing function further improved too! It does seem to work great for setting up short, rough sequences and transitions so far -- I haven't really tested it on lengthier, detailed bunches of 24fps efforts yet though. Still trying the whole thing out, the freehand drawing option is already pretty handy and comfortable to use as such and I am sure it will get even better in future updates.

Try out some of the ink brushes , listed alphabetically under 'CK Ink etc.etc.'

CK pencils are really great for sure -- my favorite ones being he HB and B ones. Thanks for so accurately reproducing their 'real' equivalents!
Any release date in sight for the complementary set announced in the official FBF webinar by the way ?

Thanks again for your kind support, and congratz with your great work!

[escrowarrow]

Are you working in anime studio pro 8, before the AS 11 upgrade? This script don't seem to work in 9

[cableon]

Hum, if you are referring to frame-to-frame animation and Chucky's templates Escrowarrow, I am afraid they only are available since ASP11...

[escrowarrow]

I mean controlling switch layers with bones

[strider2000]

cableon,
I love the look of your work, especially the washing machine skit For the tall guy's blink did you do that as separate layers and control with bones, or was the blink a set of separate drawings? Do you use a light box for your drawings (just curious)? Sounds like, at least for newer characters you're trying bending the bitmaps with bone joints. I find the question of blending switch layers (now FBF) and bone animation very interesting. Still learning and thinking on when to do which.

Regarding the smart bone script, is it actually needed anymore? I can see it's value in earlier versions, but I just use regular smart bones to control switch layers and don't use a script. I do use step interpolation when I create the action, but it seems to do what your using the script for. If there's something the script does that the current smart bones can't do, I'd love to know what that is.

escrowarrow,
I can't remember if 9 has smart bones or not. I thought it did. If it does have smart bones, what problem are you hitting that the script would solve? Maybe you and cableon are doing something I've never tried.