New in Anime Studio 6

General Moho topics.

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Víctor Paredes
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Post by Víctor Paredes »

Lost Marble wrote:My second point is about standard interfaces and workflows. Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm not necessarily a big fan of standard ways of doing things. As an example, I've always hated the way Illustrator and other vector apps work, so when you see differences in Anime Studio, they're intentional. It's up to you if that works for you or not.
That is what make AS so great!, I always say something similar on the places I work, but it's comforting to hear it from you. It's about breaking paradigms.
I'm just working with corel photopaint, and was thinking ten minutes ago, why if looks so huge, make so many things and all seems to be thinked before you do, corel photopaint is not a so cool app as Anime Studio. I know they are not comparable about what they do, but they are comparable as the way they break or not the standards. Photopaint breaks some standars made by photoshop (and that is why I chose corel instead adobe) but almost the entire application is a tribute to standards.
But AS is a standard breaker, it's something totally new, totally risky, but even so it works perfectly.

I remember the story of qwerty and dvorak keyboards. Qwerty keyboard was actually created to write slow, it was made in writing machine times and looked for a way to avoid the "keys hammers" keep hold when you wrote too fast, so it takes all the most used keys and put all far away each other, this way you would need more time to jump from one to another.
Dvorak, instead, re ordered the keys to break the qwerty paradigm, and it's a keyboard where you can write much faster, created in times of computers.
Even when the election between write slower or faster is so evident, almost nobody uses the dvorak keyboard. Me neither :roll:
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Post by NetGenSuperstar »

I'm trying to learn Dvorak myself. I still stumble over my own fingers just using QWERTY, though.

I haven't used ASP6 much yet, but there was one thing I noticed: font rendering is much better. I've only noticed slight conversion errors in Chinese text; and that's quite a huge step. I wouldn't have even thought it to be possible, due to the differences between OpenType and Anime Studio curves. But it's been done, and now I'm excited for version 6 in a completely unexpected way.
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Víctor Paredes
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Post by Víctor Paredes »

NetGenSuperstar wrote:I haven't used ASP6 much yet, but there was one thing I noticed: font rendering is much better. I've only noticed slight conversion errors in Chinese text; and that's quite a huge step. I wouldn't have even thought it to be possible, due to the differences between OpenType and Anime Studio curves. But it's been done, and now I'm excited for version 6 in a completely unexpected way.
I noticed that too, I think it's part of the AI better import. AS is reading the curves and importing them in a different better way. It's great for which work with projects with lot of text. Before, I had to create my text as a png and import it, because it was faster than writing in AS.
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heyvern
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Post by heyvern »

I hate the AI interface so much now I now use Anime Studio for print illustration work. I tried to use AI a few times in the recent past and gave up it was so frustrating. I switched to AS and if I HAVE to have eps I export one frame to SWF and use flash to convert to eps or AI format.

The one thing now that really gets me confused when using AI is why I have to have "double sides" on adjacent shapes. I completely forgot that AI can't connect lines to the middle of other lines to create fills.

I actually spent 30 minutes once reading the AI help to see how to do that before I remembered it didn't work that way. :oops:

-vern
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Manu
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Post by Manu »

but then Illustrator's booleans and knife tools more than make up for that. In fact, these are the things I miss more than anything when going to ASP.
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Post by synthsin75 »

Genete wrote:What really really will be an improvement on workflow is the ability to select any shape without need to previously select the layer, just a single click on the canvas and the most top shape (whatever the layer it belongs to) is selected. It would avoid mouse movements to the layer list and the workflow would increase enormously.
-G
As soon as Mike releases the new scripting documentation, I'll be able to implement this. My 5.6 tool for this just ran into too many things I had to get only from the file format. As long as those things are now visible to the scripting interface, I'll be able to get that done pretty soon.

It will include layer selection by clicking on any visible bone, vector line, or shape in the workspace.

:D
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Post by Tom_E »

Heck, I'm just happy there's an eyedropper tool in AS now. :D And the AI importing has been improved? Oh happy day!!!
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Re: New in Anime Studio 6

Post by mrpcsol »

human wrote: Which leaves us to the dummy brigade, and that's where I come in. As the forum's token dummy, I want to turn the dialogue to a matter of substance: namely, usability. I've used scores and scores and scores of applications since the days of the VIC 20 (anybody remember that?), and I have to say that I have never come across an application that violates user-interface expectations as severely and routinely as Anime Studio 5.

Ultimately, as I have said elsewhere, the problem is that AS 5 breaks the fundamental feedback loop between user controls and the application state. As a result, the user has to constantly apologize for the app in his head, resorting to workaround after workaround after workaround. The classic instance of this is when you select an object, its color and fill do not show in the Styles box. I use a LOT of other applications. Not a single one of them would have the impertinence to act that way.

There are indeed a few frustrating issues, as the style box, as you say. but this is easy to understand since the application is creative. It comes from scratch, not trying to become a Flash imitator.

The 3d camera tools are steady, easy to use, the Flash compatibility is steady too, the IK bones work among several great things. There are unconventional wrong ways, yes, but the outcome is good, useful, above all.
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Post by mrpcsol »

mkelley wrote:Sorry -- your complaint falls on deaf ears here (I guess much as mine in the other thread felt to yours). I *like* the interface in AS -- it's intuitive and easy to use to me (unlike ToonBoom, which constantly confuses me).
The AS interface is GREAT and very easy to use. Is so easy, it raises doubts if such a great program can have such a easy interface.

I spent like a month trying to figure out what could be so good about Toon Boom, as you mention above, and I have not yet found.

They call a tween a "peg", a term they invented, I guess, and takes hours of technical reading to find this out, and even then the pegs can be for cameras, shapes, extremely confusing.

Several times I try to export/import from Flash, something happens.

And they have conflicting time lines, vertical and horizontal, I also wonder why.

The camera view is also fantastically confusing. I am sure it is not me. I called people to ask.

Importing is limited, and the so called "all in one animation solution" will not edit BITMAPS out of plain arrogance I guess. (See http://say-web.com/?p=117)
smileypete
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i'd welcome this

Post by smileypete »

hi people

being able to copy and paste events from the timeline of one object to another would save me some time... ie object tracking or opacity events etc...

i dont have pro, but intend on buying it when 6 comes out, i tried toon boom and found it too intense, also tried, maya, but i think i'd need a whole production team to get that under way.

happy with the simplicity of anime studio

pete
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Post by rogermate »

Lost Marble wrote: First, in version 6 we've tried to streamline and improve a lot of little things.
...
One example is this (these aren't big features you'd put on a product box): Anime Studio used to have a notion of the "current fill color". When you created a new shape, it would be filled with the current fill color. Now this wasn't necessarily what you would see in the Style palette. Depending on what was currently selected, the Style palette might show something completely different from the current fill color.

In version 6, this has changed. There is no "current fill color" as a separate object. When you create a new shape, whatever you see in the Style palette is what will be applied to that new shape.
This might be the smartest focus of V6 as far as getting, and keeping, new users IMHO.

I spent hours trying to figure out what was wrong. My pen, a PC virus? I couldn't understand why the current color - which to me was the color displayed in the Palette, was not working. This eccentricity among others such as the "Frame zero booby trap" had me stop using the program. But then I'd see the amazing content others produced. I was reluctant to, and never really fully climbed the learning curve Because of the eccentricities. For me, being "Non windows standard" - it was being non-intuitive plus I couldn't figure out why, was essentially a deal breaker. If not for this forum I'd never have continued with it.

Hopefully 6 will get me going quickly, not sure if I want Debut or Pro.
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Post by InfoCentral »

rogermate wrote:Hopefully 6 will get me going quickly, not sure if I want Debut or Pro.
I would go for the Debut deal at $19. Then later, much later, when your find yourself using it all the time and there is that feature in Pro that you think would just make your day. Get the demo and see if it does...
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Post by rogermate »

InfoCentral wrote:
rogermate wrote:Hopefully 6 will get me going quickly, not sure if I want Debut or Pro.
I would go for the Debut deal at $19. Then later, much later, when your find yourself using it all the time and there is that feature in Pro that you think would just make your day. Get the demo and see if it does...
Good idea. Being honest with myself, there is so much software that I have and never really use that much. And AS Pro 5.6 was clearly one of them. I'm not 100% what Pro feature I've used that is not in Studio. Again, for a real pro the difference between $49, $130, and $200 list (is it only $170 street) doesn't mean much. But for me, not getting "a deal" is enough to keep from wanting to fork over big dollars.

Clearly, $19 is a reasonable upgrade fee. I'm so addicted to updgrades that I've at least got to get that.
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Post by jackismyazz »

Blend-morph could easily prove fatal for ANY other software. :twisted:
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