Improving the AS FBF workflow

Mark Bremmer · Post by **Mark Bremmer** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 3:06 pm

Well, after all, the AS documentation/manual states right up front that is not designed for FBF work in the section where they describe how to do limited FBF.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 3:57 pm

Yeah, and as I've said elsewhere, Mark, I really don't care if Mike works on this or not (actually, I DO care if it impacts his work on the other features of AS I'd use much more).

To me there are all kinds of FBF programs out there that work just fine, and if that's your style just use them and then if you need AS stuff you can put it all together using a composting or editing program. AS doesn't need to be the be-all and end-all for all aspects of animation.

But I appreciate Wes' attitude of trying to make things work for everyone -- I just don't think AS can handle it and I didn't want him to waste his time finding that out too late.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 10:51 pm

Yeah, I'd only use it for very short tasks. And even then, I'd most likely just render it out to a movie and import the results back in, to save on performance. Basically the only reason I started thinking about this again was to, like Mike(Kelley) said, try to keep MC from having to pay any attention to it. I agree that AS should be what it is, first and foremost.

Before Vern and Mike pointed out the possible limitations, I thought I might be able to half satisfy those who wanted FBF. Well, off to bigger and better things.

realsnake · Post by **realsnake** » Fri Feb 27, 2009 10:22 am

synthsin75 wrote: No way to use only a single vector layer.
.

Hmm....

WatEvr, Hope to see AS improved FBF tools soon synthsin75

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Fri Feb 27, 2009 10:47 am

You know you could just pursue this anyway. Not to give it full fledged "FBF" but the tools themselves to HELP in that respect.

Some of the tools wouldn't be that hard to create really... the placing of layers in a switch, the selection of switch layers on each frame etc. Those tools would be VERY useful outside of FBF.

I often have to drag layers in and out of switch layers to do more work on them. Very much a pain. A tool to do that quickly and easily would be great.

Supposing you named a series of layers (image or vector) with a specific name. Run a menu or button script with the "first" layer selected. It could use the layer order to put all those named/ordered layers into a switch and renumber them or whatever and key the switch.

You could even have a script to do the reverse, put all switch layers into a "temporary" group or bone layer to see them all at once then put them back into a switch with one click.

All of these tools are not... hideously complex and would be VERY useful outside of FBF.

I may take a stab at a bit of this myself. Some great ideas.

-vern

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Fri Feb 27, 2009 1:27 pm

Yeah, I was thinking of something similar, Vern. I was thinking of just having the layers in a group (or bone layer) and then selecting that group and running the script would move all of its layers to a switch layer with the same name.

Realsnake,

As long as there seems to be a need for this, I'll continue to work on it.