Squeakydave - CelAction is great but, animation wise, there is nothing in CelAction you can't do in Anime Studio as far as I remember. In fact you are limited to cut-out style and (unless it's changed) you can't animate the layer order and no nice smooth bending joints. If you just want to do basic cut-out animation it's ideal but you can do that very well in AS surely?
I had a recent demo of it and there are lots of cool production type stuff built in that I have been dreaming of in AS for years. The way a character is put together with head turns and matching lip sync is quite brilliant.
You are right it is limited to cut out style but that isn't much of a problem for me. Especially when I factor in the extra time I need in AS to over come bone locking limitations and Completely re-drawing imported illustrations to get points in the correct place for deformations.
When all is said and done It is a slightly different thing and I am still trying to find the most efficient (and cost effective) way of working I am suspecting it is going to mean using the best bits of all the apps and working around the incompatibilities.
heyvern wrote:I agree motion graph editing would be cool as heck, but... uh... the bouncing ball??? Really? You guys can't figure that out?
I suspect this is not a call for a Bezier interface so much as a request to fix the bug in the ease-in and ease-out functions - there is a ectopic frame at the start of the move which renders that function useless. In effect, both are slow-in/slow out when it should just be a slow in or a slow out.
Since a correct ease-in curve gives a nice snappy movement, its not unreasonable to ask for a version 5 bug to be fixed if not in 6 but 7.
I agree that there are issues with the ease interpolations and they should be fixed.
What I find more annoying are these TOTALLY FALSE over the top statements like "Anime Studio's inability to animate a bouncing ball properly".
The bouncing ball is easy to do with just a few key frames. It took me minutes to figure it out. No, it's not done exactly like other applications and, no it doesn't use motion curves but it can be done in minutes without hair pulling or risk of angina.
So some of you WANT or NEED to have this key interpolation fixed. You are PISSED OFF that it hasn't been fixed since version 5. Fine. Stick to what is the actual issue. Don't make up stuff. I seriously don't think anyone complaining the loudest about this, showing crap examples of bouncing balls in Anime Studio even TRIED to find the correct solution. 5 minutes it took me to have what I consider a perfect bouncing ball. Even looking at the motion curves in the graph editor it looks right.
The issue is NOT that Anime Studio CAN'T animate a bouncing ball, or do the job. The issue is it doesn't do it the way you want it to or the way you think it should.
Most "pro" studios don't use motion curves. They key nearly every frame regardless of what motion curve editing is available.
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I have a confession. I mostly only use the smooth interpolation for all of my animations. 99.999% of the time the only key frame interpolation I use is smooth. That's it. I key everything I need.
heyvern wrote:...99.999% of the time the only key frame interpolation I use is smooth. That's it. I key everything I need.
-vern
Ditto. Also I have never even looked at the motion graph until yesterday. I just use my own judgment if the animation looks good or not. I don't need some curve to tell me otherwise. But everyone has their own preference.
hehehe, I use the motion graphic ALL the time. I feel a little blind when not.
Actually, all the tutorials I have in mind (not many, actually) use this feature.
selgin wrote:hehehe, I use the motion graphic ALL the time. I feel a little blind when not.
Actually, all the tutorials I have in mind (not many, actually) use this feature.
This is why I say everyone has their own preference. Now if it was editable. I may use it from time to time to simplify things. But I'm not going to complain about it. I think these topics can get too heated sometimes.
I don't get what you guys are talking about, I just go by what I was taught in physics, and I applied it to a dropping ball, I take the givings of -9.8 meters^2/^2 and just put the ball at 1 meter in the air and just used my calculator to adjust 3/4 meter and at 0 meter. seems to come out OK'
I did see yours but was concerned because of the level of the discussion that the bit of "softness" at the hit point wasn't "perfect" and wouldn't make everyone "happy".
What I did was to key the top to bottom to top first, 3 keys. At this point if you had motion curves you would change the curves at the highest point to slow down the motion and adjust curves at the bottom point to speed it up.
I placed a key exactly in the middle of the bounce extremes (between top to bottom and bottom to top). Those keys are between the extremes so basically you have constant motion. Half way point of the bounce is keyed.
I slid those keys in towards the "floor hit" key to speed it up on either side. This accelerated the dowward motion and the upward motion but decelerated at the top. The "smooth" interpolation smooths the transition.
Perhaps I could have worded the title of this post differently and I apologise for that. I was just trying to use the simplest example of a bouncing ball to emphasise my point. Lack of functional ease in/out or editable velocity curves affects so many kinds of movement, not just a bouncing ball.
Truth is, I can animate a bouncing ball in Anime Studio pretty darn well and realistically. The problem is that I have to use extra keyframes to do so. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you are animating a longer scene with multiple things going on at once, it can be alot of extra work and keyframes. From my experience using Anime Studio, I would say that close to twice the amount of keyframes would be needed to achieve similar results to what can be done in other software. This results in a much more cluttered timeline which is difficult to work with. However, Anime Studio does so many other things great that it is still worthwhile to use. I just wish they'd fix the ease in/out and add editable velocity curves. That's all.
Vern, I also stick with smooth interpolation most of the time. However, if ease in/out actually worked, I would use that a heck of alot more.
I did see yours but was concerned because of the level of the discussion that the bit of "softness" at the hit point wasn't "perfect" and wouldn't make everyone "happy".
What I did was to key the top to bottom to top first, 3 keys. At this point if you had motion curves you would change the curves at the highest point to slow down the motion and adjust curves at the bottom point to speed it up.
I placed a key exactly in the middle of the bounce extremes (between top to bottom and bottom to top). Those keys are between the extremes so basically you have constant motion. Half way point of the bounce is keyed.
I slid those keys in towards the "floor hit" key to speed it up on either side. This accelerated the dowward motion and the upward motion but decelerated at the top. The "smooth" interpolation smooths the transition.
-vern
vern I am going to look close at that and I thank you and the rest of the AS family for all your input tonight, BTW please feel open to rip my new AS7 vids I released premature (please be nice to the flowers as my granddaughter made me do it)
AmigaMan wrote:CelAction is great but, animation wise, there is nothing in CelAction you can't do in Anime Studio as far as I remember. In fact you are limited to cut-out style and (unless it's changed) you can't animate the layer order and no nice smooth bending joints. If you just want to do basic cut-out animation it's ideal but you can do that very well in AS surely?
@AmigaMan
Your information is 3 years out of date.
CelAction2D has always been able to animate the Layer Order (maybe you're thinking of the other program you were evaluating around the same time), and we do have some point animation capabilities now. If you look at productions like Humf by King Rollo Films, I think you'll find we've gone way beyond "basic cut-out animation".
Coincidentally, we released a new module for CelAction2D called PlusOne last Wednesday at the Annecy festival (the same day AS7 was released - it was a good day for animation software!), so if you are interested in our latest developments, check out our website. I believe it might have some things that would interest Rhoel and GCharb too, by the looks of it...
heyvern wrote:Okay guys, let's stay on topic. YOu want to talk about CelAction move it to the other software forum or to their forum.
Apologies, Vern, I was just correcting someone else's false assumption. If anyone wants to continue to talk about CelAction in the Other Software section, I'll be happy to meet them there.