Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

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synthsin75
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by synthsin75 »

Noisefever wrote:I strongly recommend a touch interface. I have a tablet with a pen and AS would be predestinated for that. Sadly it is not.
AS works with Wacom multi-touch.
Noisefever
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by Noisefever »

synthsin75 wrote:
Noisefever wrote:I strongly recommend a touch interface. I have a tablet with a pen and AS would be predestinated for that. Sadly it is not.
AS works with Wacom multi-touch.
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.
chucky
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by chucky »

most of the clicks missing their destination, even with the pen.
Hi, that sounds odd, I have no problem with the pen and accuracy at all.

So you want a big button UI, not multitouch?
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by Noisefever »

chucky wrote:
most of the clicks missing their destination, even with the pen.
Hi, that sounds odd, I have no problem with the pen and accuracy at all.

So you want a big button UI, not multitouch?
A touch interface is more than just bigger buttons or multitouch. Things like using the finger to scroll through the scene and using the pen to paint, zooming and rotating with two fingers.I know zooming works, but it is not more than the standart Win 8 translation from 2-finger-pinch to the Mouse Wheel. Again: at least on my tablet. Even the pen pressure does not work :(
Rainer
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by Rainer »

Weird. You do have pen pressure activated in the freehand options?
chucky
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by chucky »

Noisefever , sorry to here about these wacom problems you are having.
This does sound like a problem with your drivers.
Wacom drivers are notoriously glitchy and have some bad problems when installing updates. They tend not to remove many files and leave a litany of files around your computer when they install updates.
Last year I moved to a cintiq from an intuos on a brand new computer, the wacom drivers got in a horrendous knot.
I got no help from wacom whatsoever.

It particularly interfered with toon boom storyboard , which I was using for work.
Luckily and credit to TB for their support who skyped for no less than 6 hours while we tried to sort out the mangled mess that the wacom drivers had left in the uninstall.
There is no documentation anywhere I have ever seen to explain how many leftover files they have that can interfere with the correct working of the tablet.
Not just registry but deep in system files, you have to manually delete stuff , it's pretty scary.

Even macs can get these problems.
Look it's not always as bad as the cintiq problem I had, but just try this and see if it works.
Use the wacom tool that removes all settings restart and see if that helps, if you are having pressure issues then , it sounds very much like wacom.
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strider2000
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by strider2000 »

I have Anime Studio Pro 10 and I use it some on a 128 G Windows Surface Pro. I also have Manga Studio on there. Pen pressures work fine, so Noisefever, if that's not working you may want to check your drivers and the internet for solutions. Pinch zoom also works in reverse (ex. pinch makes things larger), but 2 finger pan and rotate do not work. I have not yet had a chance to look into Wacom multi-touch.

If I understand what Noisefever is saying I have to agree completely, though I might state it differently. Instead of calling it touch interface, I'd say a tablet/mobile/app style interface. Even though I do use Anime Studio Pro 10 on my Surface Pro, it's barely usable and that's a huge shame, because the ability to create my content on the go is awesome and the trend many artists want. I guess the Anime Studio development team has assumed at least laptops for Anime Studio, which tends to make sense, but I believe there's a growing group of creative individuals that desperately want the mobile Cintiq style pen display capability. The Cintiq Companions are still above many people's budget, but they're coming down (especially refurbished). And the Windows Surface Pro series is killer!!! I got my Pro new for $500.

The challenge to using Anime Studio on these tablets, as opposed to the laptops is that the screen is smaller and you'd like to work without a keyboard in many cases. The tablet style interfaces do a lot with swipe in to give you as much real estate as possible when working. I'd love a tablet style interface, but am not expecting one. However, I think there are a few things could be done fairly easily to make the tablet style computing much more effective. 1 is the pop up menu concept that's a little more tablet friendly. If existing menus can be out of the way, but brought back larger with a simple click that's the idea. Manga Studio is an example of a more traditional program that does a good job allowing the user to customize menus etc. For the Cintiq they have a programmable radial menu (that's equivalent to a drop down). As I'm writing this it occurs to me that this might be doable with the scripting language (Noisefever, you might look into that. I may look into that as well.) However, it would be nice if the menu options could be controlled by touch.

Hypothetically I would start with only the main workspace (all menus/toolbars etc would be hidden). I could then do a swipe from the bottom and the screen would be replaced with customizable finger sized buttons that fill the screen. I make my choice (change a tool or select something from a menu) and am back to my fill screen for working. Perhaps a different gesture would switch between workspaces, like the timeline.

Which brings me to the biggest barrier to the tablet for Anime Studio, the horizontal time line. That works great for larger screens, but it takes a 10.6 display to about a note card when you add all the menus etc. If the timeline could be rotated more like a traditional time sheet (speaking conceptually) that would be great because there is usually more space horizontally than vertically.

If anything close to these kinds of things will be part of this upcoming release I'll be ecstatic, but I expect for now I'm just sharing ideas (though I'm thinking I may really want to look into how much I can do with a script). For the Anime Studio Developers, if you're artistically inclined (as in you like to use a pen for creating content for Anime Studio) and haven't had a chance to work with a Surface Pro, please see if you can find a way to try one. Once you do I think you'll see why it's a real game changer and why it would be so awesome to have Anime Studio use that space more effectively. Awesome program, awesome device = awesome creations! :)

I can't wait to see what's in the next release :)
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by Noisefever »

Yes, that was exactly what I was trying to say, strider2000. You have done that much better, thank you!

pen pressure: yes, I thought that it may be a driver problem, too. But it works in Manga Studio. So this can be only half of the truth. I have one of this rare Sony Multi-Flips (And even the 15" screen is too small to work with touch btw).
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by dkwroot »

Add the ability to export Quicktime videos from Windows machines. In Flash, I can export Quicktime with no issue, but in Anime Studio I don't even get the option to pick Quicktime. The primary reason I'm requesting this is because Quicktime supports alpha channels, which is kinda important...

At the moment, I'm exporting to SWF and then converting to Quicktime in Flash. I hate having to use Flash like a crutch and would prefer to use Anime Studio alone. This and SVG export would be great additions in a future update.
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slowtiger
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by slowtiger »

Quicktime on Windows will not happen because Apple doesn't support QT on 64bit, even on Mac. They didn't announce any other framework yet, which is a pain in the ass.
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dkwroot
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by dkwroot »

slowtiger wrote:Quicktime on Windows will not happen because Apple doesn't support QT on 64bit, even on Mac. They didn't announce any other framework yet, which is a pain in the ass.
I didn't know it worked in 32 bit mode. I can live with this. :D
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by chucky »

Noisefever wrote:Yes, that was exactly what I was trying to say, strider2000. You have done that much better, thank you!

pen pressure: yes, I thought that it may be a driver problem, too. But it works in Manga Studio. So this can be only half of the truth. I have one of this rare Sony Multi-Flips (And even the 15" screen is too small to work with touch btw).

Manga Studio has more options for pressure it is not limited to wintab but has tablet pc too. Manga studio is a great bit of kit.

The problems I described above actually only occurred in toon boom products for me and it 'was' entirely the drivers fault, I only know this because I manually had to fix the problem and they were definitely due to legacy and orphan files deep, deep inside system 32 , the directory, app data and the like.
It is without question the uninstall part of the driver update process, it is fatally flawed.

I personally hope that wacom gets some competition, their monopoly is unhealthy and places many limits on users.
Imagine accurate pressure sensitive styli available on all capacitive screens. It would free artists from the currently limited size of penabled devices and the lack of portability ( having said that, I do throw my cintiq 22 in a padded artbag over my shoulder to ride my motorbike, it's not as bad as you'd think) of the larger screens while adding computational power- I would love to throw an A3 sized tablet or larger running windows , high speed with a terrabyte ssd..... oh to dream. :D

Right now you have to rock up to a briefing or off site with a tiny gutless windows tablet that runs out of batteries, it's embarrassing and crippling, let's have some serious 'Artboards ' or Artpads. hell I would even switch to a mac if they woke up and made an 'ipro' . :lol:

I hope you get the pen issues working, noisefever, V11 is geared up for a much better freehand experience- you can even erase with busting your shapes...true . :wink:
elerouxx
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by elerouxx »

Hi there!

I am very interested about a touch interface, or at the very least that multitouch works on a Surface Pro or similar tablet.

I have a Surface Pro 1, which has wacom technology, but multitouch is not intended for it but for bamboo or intuos tablets.
I read somewhere that AS displays the multitouch button (awkwardly placed on the timeline window!) if a DRIVER is installed - so I installed the Bamboo driver on my surface, and the button is there now!

But it's grayed out so it can't be used.

Being able to navigate with touch would be very, very useful for the time being, even with the non-touch interface. And with the new ability in AS 11 for creating frame to frame animation, AS users would benefit a lot from a surface, cintiq or other on-screen drawing devices, but the lack of multitouch (and the lack of any touch-friendliness at all) is a serious drawback.


Has anyone being able to try if multitouch works in AS 11?
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by dkwroot »

Blending SmartBone Actions should be a priority for the next update. How this should work is that Anime Studio should use the plus sign as a keyword for creating blended actions in the action editor. So if you had actions "TURN" and "OPEN" for a head and mouth, you would create an action called "TURN+OPEN" to control how these two actions are blended together.

This would require that you normalize the activation values for smartbone actions. I believe this can be achieved by looking at the currently active frame in an action and then dividing it by the action total frame length. Once the normalized activation values are determined for smartbone actions TURN and OPEN, the following equation would be applied to determine the activation amount of the corrective action "TURN+OPEN"

( (TURN + OPEN) * TURN * OPEN ) / 2

By doing this, we should be able to create corrective actions that automatically blend two smartbone actions together for perfect results.

If you guys do add this feature, make sure you create a new tab for it in the actions window or things will get really crowded.

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strider2000
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Re: Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

Post by strider2000 »

I definitely agree that some mechanism for blending smartbones would be great :) Not sure I fully understand the activation amount dkwroot mentions, but it does bring to my mind that you might want to have activation control. Perhaps formula A works in some scenarios, but formula B is better in other scenarios. Just an idea.
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