What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

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CMcartoons
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What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by CMcartoons »

Just wanted to see what features some of you folks would like to see in the next versions of AS?

Personally for me I would love to see:
  • More tablet support.
  • Some support for Frame by Frame animation.
  • Ability to export Vector art from manga studio to AS.
I think with just a few improvements for frame by frame animation, this software could rival programs like toonboom, and other more "conventional" animation programs, while still being a great place to start for beginners. I'm sure we can all agree that AS offers the most robust "puppeting" system of all, but I feel like with a few tweaks, it could easily become a staple program for most animators.

So how about you? What features would you want to see?
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Greenlaw
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by Greenlaw »

First, a fix for Dynamics. In 10.1, it's significantly slower than it was in 9.5. in fact, I would say it's practically unusable when you have a lot of bones in your characters, let alone multiple characters in your scene. Similar character setups in 9.5 calculate in near realtime but I don't want to go back to 9.5 because it lacks the constraints I need in 10.1. Frustrating.

For new features, I'd like to see more focus on FBF drawing. I was hoping the new drawing tools that were announced for 10.x were it, but it wasn't really. DKW Root's tools come much closer to what I had been expecting, specifically more optimal freehand paths and the erase points tool.

Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the current release. :)

G.
BrokenEquipment
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by BrokenEquipment »

Customizable Character Wizard! If I could import my own character it would make creating characters a whole lot easier.

It would also be nice to copy and paste keyframes onto other layers. Example: Copying key frame points from a switch layer and paste them to another switch layer. That would be useful for when lip syncing on one angle and then using the same lip sync on another angle.
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jayfaker
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by jayfaker »

Small things:
1. Rounded stroke joints on sharp corners. (Right now they are crunchy.)
THEN add the option for sharp or chamfered stroke corners too.

2. The ability to separate the camera xyz dimensions to keyframe them separately.

3. Make an 'everything' channel, so I can see where keyframes are in the project no matter what layer I have selected.
If I select keyframes on the 'everything' channel, the layer palette highlights the layers that have those keyframes.


Big things:
1. Make it so all palettes can be docked anywhere you want.
THEN add support for dockable palette scripts.
THEN add as many hooks into the software for palette scripts as possible.
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Greenlaw
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by Greenlaw »

You know what makes me nuts? The position of Constraints panel. I usually run ASP on a laptop with a small screen when I'm away from home or otherwise away from the desk, and this is a problem because the panel pops up exactly in the middle of the screen and covers up a huge region, and it almost always covers up what I'm trying to edit. I always wind up panning my focus to work in a narrow patch to the left or right of the Constraints panel. I wish I could tear the panel off and move it to the side like the Style and Action panels; even better if we could also collapse or minimize the panels by double clicking the title bar.

I'm sure other users are working smaller screens, so in general it would be great if undocking/docking for any and all the panels was something like what we see in many Adobe products.

G.
Last edited by Greenlaw on Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Greenlaw
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by Greenlaw »

Another pet peeve I'd like to see addressed:

Minimize Frame-to-Frame Randomness should be on by default for brush strokes. Sure, having this feature disabled can be a valid 'look' but I think most users would prefer to have their lines not chatter like crazy.

In a job Alisa and I finished recently, we had to keep a close watch that Minimize Frame-to-Frame Randomness was manually enabled for every drawn line in every shot because sometimes the line chatter wasn't noticeable until after we rendered our final 1080p frames and composited them. In fact, for one shot, we did not catch that this feature was disabled for the hair of one character until after the job had been submitted to the client for review, which caused a brief delay in final delivery. If this feature had been enabled by default, we wouldn't of had to worry about it so much.

Thanks for listening. :)

G.
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jayfaker
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by jayfaker »

ADVANCED CHARACTER CONTROLS

Since bones have now evolved into character controls, we need a way to create more clean/intuitive character controls with them. So, the ability to assign vector/raster images to bones and allow the user to grab those instead of the bones. That way we can create nice control interfaces for the animator.

I imagine you could do this by putting a bone layer into a group with other image/vector layers. Then in the constraints palette, each bone could have a drop down where you select the image you want to attach to the bone. You could then position and scale the image so it lines up with the bone depending on how you want it to move, like an arrow for a dial or a dot centered on the bone origin for a slider button, etc. Then you could hide the bone and the interface would be clean.

Speaking of sliders, I also would want a way to constrain bones to a path. Like follow path, but for bones. That and/or you could also draw walls around your bones so the bone can't move outside a designated region. That way you could make character control sliders where the bone slider buttons (see above) can only move as far as they were designed in any direction. I imagine these paths would also be found on a vector layer in the same group as the bone layer. That way there aren't any hierarchical issues.

Lastly, it would be nice, then, when you're animating, to be able to manipulate certain bones, like character control bones, no matter what layer you have selected. That way you could have multiple characters, and sub bone structures manipulatable without having to select the layers. Maybe a check box that you can check on each bone layer that allows bone manipulation no matter what layer you have selected.

EDIT: Last, make sure non of these bone constraints/abilities are actually isolated to character controls. Because just like everything else, I can already see how bones following paths and hitting walls would be really cool elsewhere. :D

Sorry for the long post.
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Greenlaw
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by Greenlaw »

I rely heavily on ASP's Comp Layers feature and Batch Renderer. This combo works well enough in ASP 10 but I would like to see these features improved.

For example, when the Batch Renderer window is opened, it will automatically load the currently open project if the project has been saved. That's really nice but after I select my Comp Layer and click Duplicate for the next one, the file selection remains on the scene I just finished setting. If Batch Renderer could instead select the newly created duplicate, this would save me a few extra clicks for each Comp Layer. A few clicks may not sound like much but considering that all of the 22 scenes in our last film required a minimum five Comp Layers to set, with some scenes having as many as eight Comp Layers, that was a LOT of extra clicking just to get a render going.

Also, the Overwrite Frames option in the Batch Renderer does not work, and we had to remember to manually delete our previous renders whenever we needed to re-run any Comp Layers. Otherwise, the Batch Renderer would create new folder with a new name, which meant our compositing program would not automatically update with the revised layer renders. Also, because the Renderer requires us to manually delete previous renders before rendering a revision, it increases the very human chance of accidentally deleting Comp Layer renders we didn't intend to delete.

Again, thanks for listening. :)

G.
Last edited by Greenlaw on Fri Mar 27, 2015 12:27 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by Dodgy »

Dockable all windows! I have wanted a dockable actions window for so long.

Sub-frame motion blur/vector motion blur so I can get nice smooth blur, not just previous frames faded out.

Probably making the tools top bar a side bar/panel with all its pop out windows permanently out in the panel. The bones constraint panel is a pain to use, just clunky.

Folding more selection methods into the transform and other tools, following the model of the Fazik tools. When I use them, I never have to go to the selection tools for bones or points as they have those functions built into the other tools.
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by mtbuck24 »

I pretty much second all that dodgy has said. Motion blur would make a lot of this stuff look more sweet! I think something awesome would be able to take the tabs when you have multiple projects open and instead of taking and clicking from one tab to another you can actually take and drag that tab to another part of the screen, most useful for those with dual monitors. Kinda like how internet browsers these days work. All in tabs but you can take and drag the tab and have two window views instead of the one.

Anybody have an idea of when we should be seeing a new update? It's been pretty quiet on the SM side

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I teach moho and animation on youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@mccoy_buck
willf
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by willf »

The ability to set keyframes for shape order within layers -- where a keyframe is created when shapes are moved to the back or brought forward -- similar to how we can keyframe layer order now.
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PRIMAL MORON
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by PRIMAL MORON »

Multiwindow Rendering: so we can use the 2/4 way port setup for creating things at different qualities or demonstrate things in multiple views.

New layer type: reflection, make it a point to target that can be used to create reversed, 3d oriented, or shadow (one color) across multiple layers, offer the option to mask it so it'll overly other layers in all modes or on it's own in shadow mode. (I can actually see this working if it used a reprinted gradient for direction and then repeat the picture across a certain distance with settings.)

Resolution control: still cannot believe you are stuck with web resolutions, offer higher quality, please!

Preset render stretching: this one would be good for making icons, or making huge pics in 4k, with adjustments to certain settings to fit (like the render at half size, only any size you want or a preset chosen by you)

color profiles: cymk to accompany the resolution change would be wonderful if doing printing.

Gif output: a must, animation programs can all do it pretty well, it's good for icons and avatars.

Animated Gif import: Transparent video import, but still no animated gif support?

Timer script: good for making simulations ad time prints, offering countdown or stopwatch, as well as time and date.

New layer type, Numbers: which can be tracked to a setting and display the result, live. you got text and scripting, i don't see how this couldn't happen.

Flash export done right: it's pitiful you claim to be an animation program in vector, can import svg, and psd, that cannot even export a simple flash with better quality, even if you rendered the video first and wrapped the video into a flash with playable controls, mute included, that would be better than now.

A mobile app: maybe not all the bells and whistles, but i saw that sock puppet thing, add to it and make a lite program, please.

Detachable display: pop up display with the ability to duplicate the window, or stem from it.

New Global modes, day/night: just make a few changes to the lighting and colors and you would have a very useful tool there.

Autoref external parts: i think it's been said, but something that changed when this specific file does, in parts, would be wonderful.

That's all i got for now,
Cheers~
-Matt
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by Rainer »

Just a tiny thing to add - on the timeline "Add Keyframe" right click menu, I would like to have "cut/copy/paste" added.
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by heiseman »

- The option to draw using bezier points/curves rather than the current method. I understand a portion of you all are used to the current tools. But people like myself would love to illustrate our characters in illustrator and then import them into ASP without heaps of extra points appearing. So a bezier option would be greatly appreciated.
- Proper motion blur.
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Víctor Paredes
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Re: What would you like to see in 10.5/11?

Post by Víctor Paredes »

PRIMAL MORON wrote:Resolution control: still cannot believe you are stuck with web resolutions, offer higher quality, please!
In Pro, you can set your resolution to a maximum of 9000x9000. I don't see your point.
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