Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

[heyvern]

've been pondering some improvements that I think would be 'doable' for a possible last minute addition to the next version of Anime Studio. I came up with these suggestions:

There are 3 ideas that are awesome and I agree with completely:

1. The parent control of a child layer smart bone is definitely needed. That drives me a bit crazy. I had this idea for doing up/down and side to side head turns with smart bones on one layer, and a parent layer controlling the sub layer smart bones but it won't work due to parent layer smart bones not activation the smart bone actions of sub bone layers. Won't go into details describing the setup, but I couldn't finish it due to the sub control of smart bone actions.

2. Stoke/masking inside groups and switches. Definately. This should work the way you describe. If a group layer has vectors and is set as a mask the stroke masking options should not be grayed out. What's happening here is that AS is leaving out those options because the layer isn't a vector layer (sort of logical if a bit frustrating). What should happen is that a group layer MIGHT contain vector layers so those options should ALWAYS be available even if they aren't used or needed. If those options are off in the group mask layer, then the individual sub layers mask options should be available. It seems to me that if a group/switch doesn't have a vector layer those options can still be there and are just ignored. It would simply pass down to ALL vectors in the group.

3. The "FBF" drawing on the ACTIVE switch layer on frame 0 is a BRILLIANT idea. This would be some sort of option/checkbox for the layer or drawing tool? Not sure how this could be implemented. I only think about that because this could be a custom scripted tool and I need to know if it's a special custom tool, or a modification to the existing tool.

I don't even do FBF with switch layers but being able to edit the active layer simply selecting the switch parent would be awesome for any type of switch editing. When I get time I may play with a custom draw tool to get this behavior or to see if it's even possible. There may be some trouble getting the draw tool to "pass" the editing down to the sub vector layer. It would require some sort of "aliasing" or "proxy" transfer of mouse movement to the vector layer. I am pretty sure it could be done but it might be overly complicated.

[dkwroot]

@HeyVern
I think it all depends on whether this can be done from the User end or not. I'm happy that you're interested and willing to give this a shot.

[neon22]

've been pondering some improvements that I think would be 'doable' for a possible last minute addition to the next version of Anime Studio. I came up with these suggestions:

There are 3 ideas that are awesome and I agree with completely: ... .

+1 from me too. great additions

[dkwroot]

I have a new idea for a future update, bone groups. Basically, the user will be able to select a bunch of bones and then assign those bones to a group. When the animator animates any of the bones in a particular group, the grouped bones will animate on their own group bone channel. Furthermore, the user will have the option to select and hide or unhide bone groups, so they can do lots of work from a single layer without having a lot of bone clutter.

An additional feature for bone groups is the idea of bone group properties. Basically, this means that when you create a bone group you can decide how that group animates. For example, they could set some bones to always animate on STEPS and other bones to always animate on LINEAR. Obviously, these bone groups would have to have the ability to be override should the animator need to make an exception from time to time, but they would animate on whatever they've been set to as default.

I talk about all of this and more in this video:

[dkwroot]

Here is a Concept for Bone Repulsion/Attraction constraints.
With bone Repulsion/Attraction, we could set a bone or bone group to have a charge which repels all bones of the same charge and attracts opposite charges, or set bones to repel/attract a specific bone or bone group. The repulsion amount could be setup in a manner similar to the influence level for each bone so that each bone has a field of influence. The more powerful a bone influence, the more it pushes away or attracts.

This would be an awesome way and more organic way of setting up rigs and would make it so that animators don't have to fiddle with angle constraints nearly as much. A really cool way to use this enhancement would be in setting up gravity points and collision points in character rigs.

Perhaps an even more advanced feature for something like this would be shape distortion in which a bone deforms the shapes that it's pushed against by a certain amount.

I made a video going into detail about the idea:





ALSO, here is another idea. Allow us to scrub the x,y,z position for layers to move them in space. This would be great for working in 3d space.

[dkwroot]

Here is another idea that I'm going to throw out there, how about the ability to set individual shapes to be excluded from a mask? For example, lets say that someone draws a mouth with the awesome new blob tool. They use shape fills to create lips and then fill the area between the lips to create the inside of the mouth. Now wouldn't it be awesome if the animator could select the Lip shapes and check them to be excluded from a mask and use that single vector layer to mask teeth and a tongue? It would be even better if the animator were to use smart bones to animate the mouth is various positions.

This kind of improvement would go far beyond mouths. I could see this being used for eyes, faces, clothes, special effects and the list goes on. What really makes this kind of thing efficient is that it allows the user to manipulate points in a single layer and have those points directly effect the over-all effect of the mask.

[wizaerd]

I don't know if this has been suggested yet or not, but temporarily linking and unlinking bones would be a beneficial feature. Bone targets is a step closer, but linking and unlinking of bones could be used for characters picking up and object carrying it and setting it down elsewhere. Currently to do this you'd either need to animate the prop being carried, which would be a lot of keyframes or duplicate objects and controlling their visibility (3 of them; 1 at the source, 1 at the destination, and 1 within the hand switch layers).

[dkwroot]

Add the ability to extrude points on a line. This is in every 3d program and it's extremely useful for making buildings, patterns and all kinds of objects.

EXAMPLE:
http://s30.postimg.org/xt55lht6p/EXTRUDE_IDEA.jpg


Here is another suggestion. I've been practicing with Poser and I really like it, but it's a shame that the shading options in Anime Studio aren't great for working with 3d objects. Would it be possible to create another shading option that would allow the animator to directly tell the program exactly what parts of the rig are shaded at any particular time? I figure this might be possible because poser keeps everything broken into groups. Anyway, this would be fantastic for creating very stylized 2d characters from 3d models.

[dkwroot]

I'm experimenting with Poser and Anime Studio and I love the integration, but noticed a few problems that I'd like to address.

#1: If a layer is set to ignore camera view and then is placed inside of a group, the ignore camera setting for the layer is overridden by the parent group. This makes it difficult to use 3d objects that we want to make look 2d via ignoring the camera, because if we want to animate a depth shift or change of layer order we have to make everything interacting with the 3d object ignore the camera or use switch layers and copies.

#2: Anime Studio doesn't have a way to subdivide a 3d mesh at render time to make a 3d mesh nice and smooth. I think it would be great if this was added in a future release or if they had a path smoothing feature that would convert a 3d image to 2d and then trace it and smooth it.

#3: When using Silhouettes or any kind of toon lining, we can't seem to choose the color of the line. It would be nice if this were improved.

[heyvern]

I have a new idea for a future update, bone groups. Basically, the user will be able to select a bunch of bones and then assign those bones to a group. When the animator animates any of the bones in a particular group, the grouped bones will animate on their own group bone channel. Furthermore, the user will have the option to select and hide or unhide bone groups, so they can do lots of work from a single layer without having a lot of bone clutter.

That was an awesome illustration and solution. I WANT THIS FEATURE!!!! It's elegant and logical. Bone groups just like point groups is a perfect addition to the tool set.

With v10, being able to hide and show groups of selected bones the "hiding" and overlapping of bones is handled. Hidden bones can't be selected. The hide and show bones is fantastic actually... but... as you described in the video it is missing that one important element, being able to create those GROUPS so we can QUICKLY hide and show bones exactly as you described. The functionality you described is mostly already there... it just takes way too long and way too much fiddly work to select the bones by hand each time. Especially when some bones in a group are covered by other bones making them very hard to select.

This idea really gets me excited imagining the power of instantly showing and hiding groups of bones with a simple click, for easier selection and animation. Reducing the clutter. Man... yeehaaa... wow... that would be awesome!

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I created a scripted solution a few years back, probably with v6. It worked almost exactly as you describe in your video. I could create groups of bones with colors (unlimited custom colors! Come on SM, really? only 9 colors? ). Each group could be selected from a drop down, and hidden with a check box. I also added bone labels to the script (of course SM added that feature THANK YOU THANK YOU!).

Many problems with the script which I eventually stopped working on.
1. It required editing EVERY TOOL. This was the worse. Every tool had to have 3 lines of code added to draw the colors and labels. Don't need that anymore now with the built in stuff. (would still have to edit the bone tool to add the group drop down, or create a new tool for group selection and creation.)
2. The bones were "still there" even when hidden so "interference" and overlapping of bones was still a problem that could not be solved with a script. Also not a problem anymore. The script could use the built in hide/show feature.
3. Bone group info had to be stored in an external text file that had to stay with the document. Not required now with the ability to store data in each layer in the document format.

ALL of those issues are mostly gone now.
Since this script "works" already and is mostly done, I really should create a working prototype or "proof of concept" to show how amazing this would be to have this functionality built in.

[dkwroot]

Since this script "works" already and is mostly done, I really should create a working prototype or "proof of concept" to show how amazing this would be to have this functionality built in.

Hopefully you can get the feature to work entirely, that would be ridiculously awesome.

[heyvern]

Since this script "works" already and is mostly done, I really should create a working prototype or "proof of concept" to show how amazing this would be to have this functionality built in.

Hopefully you can get the feature to work entirely, that would be ridiculously awesome.

It really worked great except the main purpose to "hide" bones so they can't be selected was a total fail and no way to script it. Visually it really helped. I could simply turn off the path display completely and could see the bones based on the script colorization.

This was so long ago... I had completely given up on that script. Especially when they added the main features to the program (bone color, labels and bone hiding). Plus it was soooooo hard to keep up to date and manage because of all the tool editing and the external file storage, I had pretty much abandoned it. After the like... tenth time I had to update EVERY SINGLE TOOL SCRIPT which had to be done with every update or reinstallation... blah blah... I lost my enthusiasm.

Working on the beta for 9.5 and 10 it never occurred to me that I could easily update it taking advantage of the new stuff. I even suggested adding in bone colors for hiding and showing. It should be easier than I thought to update the script because all I have to do is select the bones in a group and hide or show them. It's actually going to be a simple "macro" to quickly hide and show the groups. The only thing I have to deal with is creation and storage of bone groups in the file. The current hide selected bones is very very basic. It works great but it's a simplistic toggle. You can hide selected bones or show all the bones. The key to extending that functionality is being able to quickly select bones in groups. Then that new feature could be really awesome.

There is one catch... I have to make sure that hiding/showing of bones can be done via the script interface. If not... ick... it's a no go.

[chucky]

I too have been wanting bone groups for 'years' literally.
So may of your ideas are a bit like Jungian clones conjured from the same primordial soup of questions, which is a great thing, as more people request the same type of stuff, their realisation gets more likely.
I think you make many great suggestions dkroot , I hope your posts get noticed, they are certainly well presented and explained.

I particularly like the idea of coloured groups showing up in their own channels, when visible.
I think the drop down of bone groups should be able to show multiple selections- like the layer comps but with simple check boxes down the list.

Keep up the good thinking dkroot, you have my vote.

[dkwroot]

Here is a list of suggestions for improving the User Interface.

[heyvern]

Here is a list of suggestions for improving the User Interface.

Absolutely brilliant. This really solves a lot of screen space issues. I love those collapsing palettes. It's an elegant solution.

I do have an issue though with changing the style effects "choice" to radio buttons. It doesn't allow you to see if there are two styles applied to a shape. You only see the one that is selected. It also makes it more difficult to access both styles.

I would prefer something similar to Photoshop. A collapsing effects display. You can leave it open if you want even though it takes up space, or close it. When open both styles are visible. You still have ONE extra click to see both styles but with that one extra click you can SEE and access BOTH styles at the same time. With the radio buttons you would have an extra click to see and access both styles. It seems a small issue but this could get quite bothersome. I really need to see both styles at the same time, especially if I am clicking multiple shapes one after the other to quickly determine the styles or effects used. I don't want to have to stop, click the two radio buttons etc.

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One other thing to consider regarding the "tool grid" would be layer specific tools and bone binding tools. Some bone tools can be accessed on vector and bone layers (and also all other layer types for binding). A decision would need to be made whether to "go back" to the old way and have all the tools stay in view all the time but grayed out when not applicable to the selected layer (this was changed in v9 I believe. Selecting a layer would "hide" tools that aren't relevant), or change the grid based on the layer type. There are 7 bone tools. Those could I suppose "slide out" from one tool icon (bone select and bone binding would need to be available for other layers)

Since so much space is being saved with your proposal, the need to hide tools on specific layers is not really needed. All tools could be there all the time just grayed out when not relevant. That way you don't have to "change your brain" when selecting different layer types. The tools are always in the same spot and the tool layout never changes only the availability of the tool.

The grouping of the bone tools grid would actually be similar to how it already works. Currently the tool list has "groups". We don't need that with the set up you proposed. Many applications don't really have that kind of separation. For example Photoshop doesn't group tools based on what they do, they are "just there". After a while you simple memorize where and what the tool is for a specific job.

Instead, the tool list file would have grouping just for the "slide out" tool icons. Create a group, place each tool in the order they are in the grid.

Another thing to remember is that most of those tools will still have key shortcuts. Selecting from the slide out will probably not even be needed most of the time.

Awesome presentation. Wow. I love it.

EDIT:
I don't know a lot about patents or IP law but... er... I do know that someone "patented" those "snapping sliding collapsing" palettes. It was either Adobe or Macromedia. I remember there was a lawsuit about this because one company had identical types of "snapping" or collapsing functionality that was in use in another companies application. They got royally PO'd and sued them over it. I don't recall the outcome of this.