Moho Forum

I'm not just talking about the animation software itself, I'm talking about all the software you use to create the full animation, such as video editor, separate image editor, etc.

As of now, here is the software I use to create my animations as of May 2014.

Animation : Anime Studio Pro 8 (I'll be using 9.5 tomorrow, Anime Studio is pure awesome!)
Video Editing / Audio Editing : Vegas Movie Studio HD 11 (Good video editing software, it's like a watered down version of Vegas Pro, but it's still great.)
Images : GIMP (Great free and open-source image editing software, it's like Photoshop in a way.)
Music Composing : LMMS (Great free and open-source alternative to FL Studio.)

I used to use Synfig Studio and Pencil until I had the money to get Anime Studio Pro.

List yours on this topic.

Animation : Anime Studio Pro 9.5
Video Editing / Audio Editing : Vegas Pro - audio is initially imported and processed using Audio Studio, then brought into Vegas for editing
Images : GIMP
Music Composing : I generally use music I already have.

I dabbled with Muvizu for a while. It's great and produces QUICK animations, but has a frustrating system of movement and is unfortunately focusing all of its further development on features I neither like nor want so I can't say how much I'll use it any more.

2d Animation: Anime Studio Pro 10, Blender
3d Models: Blender
Images: Photoshop, Blender
Video Editing: Blender

Blender is gradually consuming all of my attention. It's an incredible piece of software.

dkwroot wrote:Blender is gradually consuming all of my attention. It's an incredible piece of software.

I used Carrarra and still have it but found it kind of tough to use. Something about creating 3D just took so much of my time and in many cases I ended up just using pre-made models, which even still feels like cheating.

Blender seems to get rave reviews everywhere I read about it, but how simple is it to pick up? I enjoy using 3D for album artwork and might like using it if it's simple enough to learn. I particularly like a manual with tutorials to get a feel for things, I didn't see that in the one posted online though it was admittedly a very fast look.

Anime Studio Pro
TVPaint
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere
Maya
Quicktime Pro

I think it's good to use whatever software does what you need to do best.

The list of production software I use daily is endless, so I'll keep this one limited to the primary tools used in 'Scareplane':

Anime Studio Pro 10 (2D animation)
LightWave 11.6 (3D modeling, lighting and animation)
Eyeon Fusion 6 (compositing)
Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (drawing, painting, image editing)
Vegas Pro 12 (video and audio editing)
Acid Pro, Izotope RX3, Melodyne, Sound Forge Pro (sound design)
Toon Boom Storyboard Pro
Final Draft (script writing)
Freeplane (open source mind mapping-great for brainstorming and planning)
Open Office (open source office suite--scene tracking and production notes); alternatively, I use Google Docs because it's easy to share and collaborate.
Pad of drawing paper, pencils, Sharpie (okay, not technically software but whatever)

Normally I like to use Magpie Pro to animate the lipsync (It's what we used for Happy Box and what we're currently using for the new Brudders short) but since there was really only one line of dialog in the Scareplane, I just manually animated Switch Layers for the mouth shapes. But if you have a ton of lipsync you need to get through quickly, Magpie Pro does the trick--the program is kinda like Papagayo but with more features and it supports a broad range of animation programs.

When Alisa and I get around to making another short with ASP, I'm probably going to add Toon Boom Animate (for frame by frame segments) and After Effects to our production pipeline.

G.

Danimal wrote:

dkwroot wrote:Blender is gradually consuming all of my attention. It's an incredible piece of software.

I used Carrarra and still have it but found it kind of tough to use. Something about creating 3D just took so much of my time and in many cases I ended up just using pre-made models, which even still feels like cheating.

Blender seems to get rave reviews everywhere I read about it, but how simple is it to pick up? I enjoy using 3D for album artwork and might like using it if it's simple enough to learn. I particularly like a manual with tutorials to get a feel for things, I didn't see that in the one posted online though it was admittedly a very fast look.

3d modelling is actually a lot of fun in Blender. It's very easy to pickup and you can quickly implement it in your pipeline. Blender has a very well documented wiki and has lots of tutorials on youtube. I highly suggest learning Blender, it's very useful.

It's always good use other software with Anime Studio, a video editor will let you final edit your video and compress it into a smaller format (usually), I use Vegas Movie Studio HD, I usually edit in 720p, but sometimes I'll do 1080p, one time I done 4k.

I agree. I have a few brand biases but mostly I'm software agnostic, which means "whatever gets me through the job/project quickly so I can move on to the next one" works for me.

G.

It's always best to work with AS clips in a video editor, Anime Studio's built in rendering system doesn't really do a good job at compressing MP4s, QuickTime works great, but in 64-bit you can't use QT, I always render clips in AVI and then delete them after editing, raw video takes a lot of space, but I don't really like to "double compress" videos, it makes it look a little worse.

Anime Studio (ANME) to AVI to Vegas Movie Studio (VF) to MP4.

With ASP, I like to render out in one of two formats. For straight passes that I don't intend to composite, I like AVI with the free Lagarith codec because it's a lossless format. Then, using VirtualDub (preset and batch render,) I transcode the AVI to a highly compressed low res AVI version for editing on a timeline in Vegas Pro, with the intention to swap it out with the full res Lagarith version when I'm ready to render the final edit. I keep the same names for both versions to make the swap painless. (FYI, Lagarith is not meant for realtime playback but it's great for preserving highest image quality for final output while taking up less disc space.)

When the final production edit is ready, I render in whatever format is needed for delivery. For Vimeo uploads, for example, I use the recommended AVC/mp4 format with the proper levels settings. I also like to render a version with Lagarith for archival purposes.

If I intend to composite a scene in another program (like Fusion or After Effects,) the other format I like to use is .png frame sequences--this is where ASP's Layer Comps feature really comes in handy. Many of the shots in 'Scareplane' were output from ASP this way and composited in Fusion before bringing them into Vegas Pro for final assembly and audio.

G.

Bump!

Things have changed a little, here is my updated list of applications I use to create cartoons.

1. Anime Studio Pro 9.5 (animating)
2. Vegas Movie Studio HD 11 (editing, might get a better program in the future...)
3. GIMP (storyboard art)
4. LMMS (music and some sound effects)
5. Audacity (some sound editing)
6. OpenOffice (script writing)

I do a lot of workout exercise diagram for my exercise program for personal trainers

I use Poser 2014 and render them to realtime toon mode black/white PNG and then import them to AS10 with outline option on for final render

That's my primary system for work.

Otherwise for animation I also use:
KRITA for photoshop and drawings
ArtRage for mix media painting
Lightworks for video editing
Adobe After effect for video effect
Hash animation master for organic modeling and rigging of all model
Messiah3D for final render of 3D animation
AS for final render toon animation

Anime Studio 10 (of course)
LightWave 3d (I even wrote an importer to bring AS files into LW so I could mix in 3d elements, and a Papagayo importer for lip sync)
Serif Photopaint for 2d stuff on PC (closest thing to Photoshop I could find and only 70 quid)
Hitfilm Ultimate for compositing and editing.

I've tried blender a few times, and always found it awkward to use. I do love the feature set though.

Dodgy wrote:Anime Studio 10 (of course)
LightWave 3d (I even wrote an importer to bring AS files into LW so I could mix in 3d elements, and a Papagayo importer for lip sync)
Serif Photopaint for 2d stuff on PC (closest thing to Photoshop I could find and only 70 quid)
Hitfilm Ultimate for compositing and editing.

I've tried blender a few times, and always found it awkward to use. I do love the feature set though.

Hi dodgy, would you have the importer for lightwave available, would love to see some of your work using AS and LW together

thanks