Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

[Pierre Gombaud]

Hey everyone!
I've read a lot of good suggestions here, unfortunately I didn't had the will to read the whole topic.

So, excuse me if it already has been told but, I would like to see a way to save/load presets for the bones dynamic.
For instance a list of premade sets, that fits for the physics of hair, or of a rope, etc. and be able to create our owns.
In other words, not having to manually set torque/spring/dumping forces each time, especially by trying and testing a dozen times to get the good settings

A little something like that:

[chucky]

Hey everyone!
I've read a lot of good suggestions here, unfortunately I didn't had the will to read the whole topic.

So, excuse me if it already has been told but, I would like to see a way to save/load presets for the bones dynamic.
For instance a list of premade sets, that fits for the physics of hair, or of a rope, etc. and be able to create our owns.
In other words, not having to manually set torque/spring/dumping forces each time, especially by trying and testing a dozen times to get the good settings

A little something like that:

It has been said but thanks for chiming in , great post, good example!

[strider2000]

I've thought about this a couple of times, but I don't think I've mentioned it. I can't find any note from me or anyone else on it.

2D interpolation control.

This would be really helpful for things like head turns with left/right and up/down.

I envision something like a bone or ball that you can move within a square. Like smart bones you click on something to bring up the timeline editor (could be in the action window). It would be just like a normal timeline editor, except you actually have N timelines associated with the control (just like you pick the number of frames for smart bones, you'd have something that allows you to select how many timelines you have.

Moving left and right in the timeline would move the marker left and right in the square. You'd have to have another control, perhaps a wheel or just a text box that would control which timeline your on. (Maybe you could just designate a second control bone, and rotate it in the workspace to run through the different timelines). That is the vertical dimension is associated with the individual timelines and in each timeline the horizontal dimension is associated with the frames.

So, the idea is I could create 8 views of the head (around the center, making 9) and at animation time you interpolate in 2 dimensions.

Theoretically you could expand that to N dimensions, with multiple sliders/controls selecting the timelines (for programmers an N dimensional array). (If you use control bones you just need to associate each control bone with a different layer and that would take care of editing and animation for N dimensions.

[wizaerd]

I'll probably be in the minority here because a lot of long time users/fans will be resistant to such a mass change, but I would love to see an updated and more standardized UI. Right now the UI is strictly proprietary with poor functionality as far as docking panels, windows, even the layer structure feels old, outdated, and clumsy. I'll even go so far as to say what many are thinking, but won't say. It's plain ugly. And it certainly does not look like a Professional level application.

[Greenlaw]

I agree on the docking issues. The docking is a little clunky and it's not consistently implemented. I'm sure that's a major overhaul so I wouldn't expect to see a change there soon. But then again, the ASP devs continue to amaze me with each new release.

I'm mostly fine with the Layers Panel but it does need a user definable filter system. Most of the time, I don't need or want access every layer in the panel when I'm animating, and in very complicated scenes it gets tedious to have to drill down through many groups to find a specific element.

For example, wouldn't it be great to set up a filter preset to display only a character's Switch Layers when you're focused on lipsync or hand posing, or maybe a filter preset to hide layers that shouldn't ever be animated and otherwise just get in the way of finding the layers you do need to animate? I can think of a number of times when I've accidentally animated a reference layer when I really meant to animate the original--very frustrating. If such reference layers could be hidden with a filter, I wouldn't have to worry about that. Layers Panel filters could be like using Comp Layers but for isolating items in the Layers Panel list itself.

[Pierre Gombaud]

Unlike what Wizaerd says, I don't think the UI is "ugly", but it kind of feel outdated for sure.
Don't get me wrong, I'm aware of how complicated and hard it is to make an inteface simple but yet powerful.
But with just a refreshed design, it would look more attractive and pleasant to use, nope?

A little something like that, removing the shades and rounded corners here and there:
(On the left: actual UI - On the right: edited UI)

[eric1223]

I think what would be a great addition is to have the freehand tool to have to option to more or less transparent/opaque based off of the pressure that you are using. It would be just another check box you would have to click to get this option. I can do this with change color point color tool to get the same results, but this way would be much easier. I draw whenever I can in this program.

Another idea to have the tracing image (ctrl +y) to be more flexible. Can we have an option to scale and move it around a little like you would a regular layer? I could use a image layer (with transparency) to do this, but the image layer would always have to be on top to get the same affects of the trace image option. Also, the image would be clickable. I know I could put the image layer on bottom, but I always would want the tracing to be on top.

[RichardU]

My top priority would be a way to save and reload bone animations. I know it can be done, because Mike Kelly has a script that does exactly that. It would be great to see it built in.

[Hellyar]

Moveable guidelines, please.

[hayasidist]

Moveable guidelines, please.

you mean like "grid" (view / enable grid) but you can place the "origin"?

[lehtiniemi]

I've seen this come up earlier in the thread but I'd really like support for touch screen and pen (like Microsoft Surface). strider2000 posted about it among others.

He mentioned vertical timeline and pop-up menu with bigger buttons to get room for working. Maybe some radial menu that appears around the pen tip? The biggest problem is to solve the lack of keyboard. The touch GUI has to work easily with just pen and touch, no relying on shortcuts because in most cases keyboard isn't present. Another issue is changing values of text fields (maybe click+drag up/down on field to change value?). The should also be a fast way to change the pencil size (currently alt+scroll or something) but without alt-key available.

Switching tools quickly could be implemented with some radial menu around pen position (summoned by some gesture or similar). Or swipe from some edge and bring up big tool buttons. Then another thing that would need focus is changing numeric value fields. ASPRO is full of them. This could easily be fixed by implementing click+drag up/down with pen on a numerical field.

Whatever the solution is, the key thing to working with touch is being able to work full without the need of keyboard shortcuts. Otherwise it's just harder than with normal screen.

[Greenlaw]

I use ASP on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. The program works well for me on this Windows 10 tablet computer except when I try to use Multi-touch. With the feature enabled, I can pan and scale using my fingers but when I try to rotate, the whole work space flips 180 degrees and behaves erratically. If I disable Multi-touch, I can still pan and scale using my fingers but not rotate.

At least ASP's touch support is much better than Photoshop's on this computer, which only recognizes touch when it feels like it, and even then the interactivity is very spotty.

Manga Studio/Clip Studio Paint on the other hand, responds to Multi-touch very well. The program allows me to pan, scale and rotate very smoothly and accurately. If ASP's touch support could behave more like that, it would be fantastic. As for radial menus and such, I use the tablet's Expresskeys to open button panels and radials which can be customized for each program.

Of course, that doesn't help for the Surface tablet but, before I got the Companion tablet, I used an HP tm2 Windows tablet PC computer with ASP and other drawing programs. (Scareplane was drawn and animated on this tablet using ASP 9.5.) Even though the tm2 had a Wacom-based touch screen, it did not have the equivalent of Wacom's Expresskeys on the bezel so I used a widget called Modlock for virtual modifier keys and a gesture-command program called Gmote to access useful many commands. Gmote doesn't work very well with x64 programs but I found another gesture-command program that worked about as well with a stylus and it seemed to work fine with x64 programs. (I'll have to look up what I was using and post the info later.) I think these tools should work well on the Surface tablet too.

G.

[Hellyar]

Moveable guidelines, please.

you mean like "grid" (view / enable grid) but you can place the "origin"?

Hello,
No.
I mean like the guidelines in, say, Photoshop that can be dragged into position (X and Y axes) and repositioned as needed.

[hayasidist]

I mean like the guidelines in, say, Photoshop that can be dragged into position (X and Y axes) and repositioned as needed.

ok - understood.

a workable approach for you might be to put your guidelines in a layer with the "don't render this layer" option checked? (you have translate, rotate, vis on/off for the guidelines layer). With this approach you can also have not just lines, but also guide shapes - e.g. squares / perspective / ....

[Hellyar]

Thank you, hayasidist.

I shall do as you suggest.