Anime Studio 7

heiseman · Post by **heiseman** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 5:14 am

I'm not upgrading from version 5 until they include proper editable velocity curves so i can get better looking ease in and ease out motion. The current ease in, ease out, smooth etc controls are pathetic. The ease ones especially don't even work like they're meant to. For example, try to animate a bouncing ball realistically and you will know what I mean.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 7:52 am

Editable velocity curves WOULD be nice.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:23 am

Well, I do bouncing ball type actions all the time in AS. By hand. No need for some curve editor as long as you did your homework and know what you're doing .

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:36 pm

Yep. I learned a LOT from the example you posted of the bouncing sun slow. By adding 2 more keyframes between the contacts and the highest point. Really very useful that. Kind of base all my up and down on that principle.

I actually wrote a long reply to this explaining how to add those keyframes to get a nice bouncing ball but then deleted it all. I seem to do that a lot.

jezjones29 · Post by **jezjones29** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 3:22 pm

When I create a project, I always try and map a network drive or a shared folder to M: (for Moho) - I then create a folder with the same name as the project and save all work in there. That way, if I move computers all I need to do is reconnect the M drive.
This is also very helpful if two or more people are working on the same project.
(I work a lot with GIS (mapping) and this is what we do with these systems)

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 2:54 pm

heiseman wrote:I'm not upgrading from version 5 until they include proper editable velocity curves so i can get better looking ease in and ease out motion. The current ease in, ease out, smooth etc controls are pathetic. The ease ones especially don't even work like they're meant to. For example, try to animate a bouncing ball realistically and you will know what I mean.

I just wish I could have the ability to use ease-in/out on switch layer keyframes. It's very hard to get motion that doesn't look mechanical or just plain wrong when using switch layers.

InfoCentral · Post by **InfoCentral** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 3:17 am

It appears that the Adobe Dev Team has added physics to the Flash bone toolset. The bone tool comes in at the end of this video. They have also added control points to Photoshop so you will be able to bend and move body parts sort of like bones. Very interesting developments for Adobe CS5 on the horizon.

PARKER · Post by **PARKER** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 4:02 am

They are making Flash bone tools as good as AS bone tools

heiseman · Post by **heiseman** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 2:33 pm

[quote="slowtiger"]Well, I do bouncing ball type actions all the time in AS. By hand. No need for some curve editor as long as you did your homework and know what you're doing .[/quote]

I know how to do it by hand as well. I know all the tricks of using extra keyframes to achieve similar results. The point is, it's just extra work, and complicates the timeline unnecessarily. If animation in Flash keeps improving, I might have to switch back again. At the moment, Anime Studio is still better but maybe not for long.

Rhoel · Post by **Rhoel** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:00 am

My thanks to InfoCentral for hijacking the thread into a ASP vs Flash discussion. We are all very aware of Adobe's creep into the stronghold of ASP. That is why it is so important to look at what features are needed to keep it ahead of Flash in the TV market.

A corrected ease-in/ease-out keyframe control was requested back in 5.3 days - I even wrote a code block which did the job effectively. That fix has slipped every bug fix/new release since. And yes its a necessary commercial tool.

It would be good to look at constructive ideas rather than promoting the opposition who have a product at twice the cost, half the features and by their own admission, have a product not designed for TV animation. Certainly Flash has no group working tools, a vital requirement for the studio environment.

To me, that is the area to concentrate on if ASP is going to survive in the pro market. Some of ASP weaknesses can be handled very well by Combustion/Mirage etc. I am looking at bolstering the core system and animation production tools. And to me, the number one is the external colour model: That will wipe the floor with Flash, period. It's a quantum leap in terms of animation production. The network friendly change would rank second in importance.

And that is good for everyone.

Rhoel

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 11:03 am

Certainly Flash has no group working tools, a vital requirement for the studio environment.

Over there in a discussion at TVP, Flash was mentioned as being a good tool for groups. I reckon they thought that symbols in a shared library are as good as any version control system of a bigger production system.

Rhoel · Post by **Rhoel** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 11:54 am

slowtiger wrote:
Certainly Flash has no group working tools, a vital requirement for the studio environment.
Over there in a discussion at TVP, Flash was mentioned as being a good tool for groups. I reckon they thought that symbols in a shared library are as good as any version control system of a bigger production system.

The only drawback is once a colour is a fill, it cannot be changed: At least in ASP you can apply a style fill colour which can be changed later. I am hoping Mike can look laterally at that facility as a base for the new external colour ref: At the moment, it is possible to import a character object, which also imports it's colour styles. In theory, parts of the jigsaw are already there.

Final word on Flash:
Somewhere I have an email from Flash technical support in response to
the discovery libraries didn't frame advance when a sequence was exported as a PNG stream: Their response was "Flash is not designed for television animation".

We framed it on the wall

Rhoel

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 12:47 pm

Well, they didn't claim otherwise in all the years Flash was used for TV animation.

It was TV execs who somehow got the idea of using Flash would cut their costs when they saw examples of what some adventurous animaters were able to achieve despite Flash being not designed for character animation.

This stupidity went so far that a friend of mine was told "I don't care how it looks as long as it's done in Flash".

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 2:20 pm

Rhoel wrote:I am hoping Mike can look laterally at that facility as a base for the new external colour ref: At the moment, it is possible to import a character object, which also imports it's colour styles. In theory, parts of the jigsaw are already there.

That is a really excellent idea! A cool part about it is, as you mentioned, you can change the color in the external reference and all the corresponding scenes change accordingly (like style sheets or SSI for the internet). In this way you could drop in the character but change the color reference and have characters actually wearing different clothes once in a while instead of the same outift day in, day out. That's just one example but it's an excellent idea nonetheless.

human · Post by **human** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 5:24 pm

Well, somebody needs to tell Adobe that their physics demos are INFINITELY retarded.

Seesaws and pinball!

Is that the best they can do with physics?

I guess the cool Wookie suit makes up for it, though.