I'm done. (edit: okay lets talk about this)

[sargumphigaus]

This program is way too buggy. Everything that was once easy to use back when I was on AS9 (I never got AS10) is suddenly impossible to do. Yes, I know that the interface is subject to change per update. But when Fills just randomly stop matching strokes with the bucket tool, when the eyedropper just doesn't work anymore, when brushes malfunction over and over, when masking doesn't work because AS isn't compatible with your gpu (i'm still WTF'ing about that) and so on and so forth. I want to animate, I don't want to configure. If you are configuring, you're not animating. If you're not animating, you're not getting better at animating. That's all I care about...So I'm just gonna throw up my hands and walk away. Give AS some time to breath and work out their flaws. Let smarter people than I am figure this out.

Enjoy. could be my last video.



In the meantime I'll be using Adobe Flash.

[DK]

Hi sargumphigaus,
Not understanding why you are dumping AS when you said that AS9 worked perfectly for your needs?
I do get the odd bug now and the only time I ever want to dump the software completely due to buggyness is only when testing Betas, hence they create backwards compatibility to at least a previous stable version. What version are you using?
You can just re-install AS9 and use that till things get sorted. I have had up to 4 versions installed at times. Have you reported theses bugs that are annoying you? On many occasions I have been guilty of thinking " bug" but turned out to be user error.

Hope this helps and you keep using AS as I am one of your silent fans
D.K

[sargumphigaus]

Hi sargumphigaus,
Not understanding why you are dumping AS when you said that AS9 worked perfectly for your needs?
I do get the odd bug now and the only time I ever want to dump the software completely due to buggyness is only when testing Betas, hence they create backwards compatibility to at least a previous stable version. What version are you using?
You can just re-install AS9 and use that till things get sorted. I have had up to 4 versions installed at times. Have you reported theses bugs that are annoying you? On many occasions I have been guilty of thinking " bug" but turned out to be user error.

Hope this helps and you keep using AS as I am one of your silent fans
D.K

I'm not dumping AS. I probably could have worded this better. I'm taking a break. I animated this guy. The outline took a half hour to throw together. He's not good, but I was just trying to teach myself the basics. But when I started applying color, the principals were just felt like they were tripping on acid. I just ran into errors upon errors upon errors upon errors upon errors. And they would just come and go randomly. I can't recreate them, but I can't prevent them from happening either. The coloring process took the entire day due to trouble shooting. By the time I had it figured out, it vanished without a trace. It's just chaos.

I recreated this in flash, and the process took me 2 hours. No issues whatsoever.

don't get me wrong. I'm not saying flash is better. This program has a lot of advantages over flash. AS is one of the most underated animation programs on the market. The thing is, I spent a lot of money on a drawing tablet, thinking to myself, "Well, AS is implementing Fbf, bout f****ng time!!!!! Meanwhile, This tablet I've been looking at is perfect given the timing of everything. The stars aligned, I made my move. 500 dollars later, I'm getting my arse handed to me. I need to justify my purchase of this tablet. (I LOOOOOOOOOVE this thing) and AS is just hanging me on petty problems over and over and over again. yes, some were user errors. I'll admit that I'm an idiot. But the way the principles just rewrite themselves mid project...It's killing me. I'm ripping my hair right out of my head.

The thing about 9 is, Elsewhere, my movie, the thing i've been writing since I was 14 (i'm 29 now) is something that can only be done with fbf. And now that I have this tablet, everything changes. I'm starting from scratch. I have to. The ambition denies anything to the contrary. I won't delete AS, I'll keep firing it up to mess around with it. But until this program stops being meticulous, or I reckon my own stupidity...I'll continue to practice with flash.

[slowtiger]

The outline took a half hour to throw together. ... But when I started applying color

I think this is reason for things going wrong for you. AS is not like any pixel drawing program, where you draw like on paper, first an outline, then fill it with colour.

Think of AS as a program stacking little pieces of paper, each already coloured and with an outline. In principle a bit like this:


Now all shapes in AS are flexible, and with smart positioning of points you can let several shapes appear as one, with an unbroken outline.

So the basic workflow with AS goes like this:
- select a curve
- create a shape
- apply a style, or choose fill and outline manually

This is the workflow I use, and I rarely have any problems with colouring.

Now remember that any curve can hold several fills and outlines on top of each other! This is the most common reason for "odd behaviour". AS doesn't magically change colours, but most likely you created a new shape or erased a shape so it reveals what was under it the whole time.

I don't recommend using the paint bucket since AS needs to guess what I mean - and it might guess wrong. I build my shapes one by one so I know exactly what I did.

[Danimal]

I want to animate, I don't want to configure. If you are configuring, you're not animating

There is an extraordinary amount of truth in this statement.

Hopefully you can go back to version 9 which did work for you and continue sharing your original and terrifying cartoons as they're really quite good. If the new version is giving this much trouble though, no way anyone can fault you for throwing your hands up and walking away.

[Brooke]

Sargumphigaus I feel your pain

I'm done too!!!

ASP 11 is now, for me a pile of junk. Sure it has lots of great features but it is now useless to me. I have lost countless hours trying to import and work around importing a video with an alpha channel.
I am aware that the 64bit mode doesn't support quicktime. But now my 32 bit mode is constantly crashing and there is no work around.

I posted it in the bug section and there has been no feedback, which I'm not surprised by.

I cant even save the file as legacy file and open it up in AS10 because AS11 keeps crashing when I attempt to.

I too also feel that I have bought a beta software, that I am merely testing out for Smith Micro.
No wonder why people use cracked versions. It's a bit ironic that the bought versions are in fact cracked (functioning wise). I have wasted time, money and effort.

I had similar problems with AS 10 when it came to importing alpha movie files but at least it would function in the 32 bit mode.

This is beyond a joke. I just don't know how I'm going to sort this mess out. I'm fed up of constantly having to think of workarounds that utilise other programs, extra work and time, for failings in a software that should be able to do as it says on the tin.

[sargumphigaus]

I've had some time to think about it. I'm still frustrated, but I think I'll give this another shot.

I know that the fbf function that they're using is still new. It's young, and it is just built out of preexisting features, they just modified the switchlayers. In all honesty, I still don't see how fbf layers are better than switch layers. Yes, you can draw directly on the frames, but when you go into preferences and uncheck draw only on frame zero, you can draw directly on switchlayers portions as well. You just have to take 3 extra seconds to add a new frame. I honestly don't think it's as cumbersome as they say it is.

But then, let's talk about reference layers, because that's supposed to be the game changer here. Well I figured out how to fbf with it thanks to Chucky's tutorial, but truth be told, I don't think the programmers even had that in mind when they made it I base this on the fact that they don't talk about it in their in program tutorials or instructions or even mention it on the website pitch itself. This feels like a loophole that was found and exploited, Hence why I'm getting all of these bizarre errors.

I think what sealed the deal for me, what really made me feel like a sucker was when I imported the Samurai character from the advertisement. I was told by several people that it was made with fbf, and the program pretty much uses it as the posterchild for the feature, so I pulled it up to examine and study the way it was put together to help me further understand the intended means of the new fbf function...the thing is though...it wasn't made with fbf layering at all. It was just a standard series of group layers that used basic tweening and cycling. They set the key frames exactly one point apart from others to make the transitions look like fbf. None of those characters they have were made with fbf layering....that kind of made me feel like I'd been had. Which added on top of all these glitches and bugs, made me snap. I know its not a big deal, but holy crap, did that annoy me.

But I could let that go. Switch Layers are far more superior. Fbf layers are good for mapping out an animation real quickly to give you an idea of what you're doing before using a multi-layered switch to more or less trace over the outline. Before I would use flash for that. This way I don't have to minimize the program...It's just...I paid over a hundred bucks for that concept and that alone. Whatever...

I'll probably throw together a video to show how I fbf in this program and try to show how it compares to present fbf/ref layer system, and share it in this thread. I might not. I haven't decided yet.

In the meantime, where does one report bugs and glitches? (nvm i found it)

[ianmage1]

I'm with you guys on the crashing part. AS10 crashed a lot for me as well, but it was somewhat tolerable; AS11's crashing is not. The program crashes so damn frequently that I've had to force myself to save every time I add a keyframe.
I get that my projects are on the demanding side, but the newest version of AS should, at the very least, be able to run my work as well as AS10 did, which really isn't asking for much...

[DK]

Hi ianmage1,
I would strongly encourage you to report the bugs and not just put up with it. One of my sore points is that when a Beta is released, on the splash screen it states not to use the Beta's for production work. Unfortunately that is exactly where the bugs get sorted out, in a full production environment.That said the AS team are great when it comes to fixing bugs so the sooner you can report it the sooner they can fix it.

Cheers
D.K

[sargumphigaus]

I'm with you guys on the crashing part. AS10 crashed a lot for me as well, but it was somewhat tolerable; AS11's crashing is not. The program crashes so damn frequently that I've had to force myself to save every time I add a keyframe.
I get that my projects are on the demanding side, but the newest version of AS should, at the very least, be able to run my work as well as AS10 did, which really isn't asking for much...

One thing I noticed is that when you apply fills, it for whatever reason adds it a couple of times over, as in throws 8 variations of the same exact fill in place. If you're using the freehand tool, there's a good chance that you're throwing together a lot of extra hidden points for the vectors, and that will choke your hardware. This is actually something I discovered last night. I was so tired though, I couldn't really do much to try and deconstruct it. I'll mess with it when I get home tonight some more to really figure out why that happens. If it turns out to be bug, I'll report it.

Here's a funny story. I rigged a character for an animation. I had this characters walk cycle in place within the main rig, in addition I had his head spin layers in place on a separate switch layers within. Long story short, I established like 20 layers or so to commemorate his action. So 20 switch layers, plus the 8 within the head and the 12 steps in the walk cycle...20x8x12 = over a 1000 vectors that were hidden within. I didn't even suspect that it was still reading it all but it was. Sometimes the program can crash because of severe complications you can't even see...

God willing, we will figure this out!

[ianmage1]

@sargumphigas That sounds frustrating. I'm not even using any of those new features; I'm just trying to animate one of my AS10 rigs, and AS11 crashes when I select the transform bone tool--it doesn't crash every time I use the tool, but the transform bone tool definitely triggers it...

@DK Thank you for that advice. I'm going to do some experimenting to see if my problem can be replicated; then I'll report the bug.

[sargumphigaus]

@sargumphigas That sounds frustrating. I'm not even using any of those new features; I'm just trying to animate one of my AS10 rigs, and AS11 crashes when I select the transform bone tool--it doesn't crash every time I use the tool, but the transform bone tool definitely triggers it...

Here's what I've gathered. You have a definitive style. I have a definitive style. (remember that conversation when I pointed out how were were polar opposites?) Thing is, the programs new features clearly aren't conducive to mine. Granted, there's nothing stopping me from using the style that I was already using. Fact of the matter is, it does not support all forms of drawing styles. If your drawing style is sketchy like mine, then this fbf feature is going to just take the form of a spring loaded boxing glove and just launch out of the screen and smash you in the face mid animation. (bad analogy I know, but it gets the point across) but if you're a more refined and well trained artist, it will fair just fine for you.

But I am of the impression that you use bones. I really don't know how things work for you in particular. In regards to your issue, have you tried turning down the display quality? It's the tab on the bottom right corner. I noticed this version tends to render it in real time when you don't have the layer selected. It could choke your hardware.

[synthsin75]

I'm with you guys on the crashing part. AS10 crashed a lot for me as well, but it was somewhat tolerable; AS11's crashing is not. The program crashes so damn frequently that I've had to force myself to save every time I add a keyframe.
I get that my projects are on the demanding side, but the newest version of AS should, at the very least, be able to run my work as well as AS10 did, which really isn't asking for much...

Do you have GPU acceleration enabled? Do you have a discrete graphics card and is your computer using it for AS?

[synthsin75]

Fact of the matter is, it does not support all forms of drawing styles.

That sounds like nonsense to me. Just saying.

[ianmage1]

In regards to your issue, have you tried turning down the display quality?

Oh, yes. Even on the lowest settings, I'm getting frequent crashing.

Do you have GPU acceleration enabled? Do you have a discrete graphics card and is your computer using it for AS?

I always had GPU acceleration disabled, because having it enabled seemed to slow everything down. I only have an integrated graphics card, unfortunately, but I do have it enabled for AS; I'm wondering if I'm doing anything wrong here, apart from not having a discrete graphics card...
My pc doesn't have the fanciest specs, but AS10 was able to, most of the time, run decently on my hardware, and that's the performance I'd like to get from AS11.
Thanks for all the responses. Much appreciated.