Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

[braj]

I would love to be able to sketch something in AS and have it be converted to bitmap in one step and in place, possibly a script for this would be possible. It could make the original invisible so it is still there in case you want to edit it further. If something is already out there please let me know. In some cases it is much easier to animate a bitmap (like stripes on an arm) not to mention saving processing power by reducing complex masking to one layer. It seems like a no-brainer to me and I wouldn't have to isolate the shape, save as png and import into AS, or draw it in another app.

[braj]

It would also be nice if 'minimize frame to frame randomness' in brushes could be set as default.

[dkwroot]

Another thing I'd like to add to my wishlist is the ability to set shapes to be included or excluded from a mask. This way we can create more complex masks within a single vector which would cool.

[dkwroot]

Here is the biggest improvement that I forgot to mention. We need the ability to control switch layers that have interpolation enabled with a smartbone. This is hands down the most important feature of my list. When you combine smartbone actions with switch layer interpolation, you can truly create rigs that astonish people.

Another really useful improvement would be adding a Z-Axis value to bones. We could then have the ability to attach any layer's Z-Axis amount to that of a particular bone. This would be awesome for storing actions for bone rigs that can be easily exported to other rigs.

Yet another nice improvement would be adding in relative keyframing for bones. This is a long over-due improvement.

Mirroring bone movements across a rig would also be useful. Basically, we would just mirror right movements to the left side and left movements to the right size. Blender has had this feature for years and it's about time Anime Studio caught up.

Finally, adding a sketch layer to Anime Studio would make everyone happy. A sketch layer would just store our raster sketch doodles and greatly help us design characters and draw animatics.

[dkwroot]

Here are a list of UI improvements that need to be addressed:

- There needs to be an eyedropper in the color picker popup window.

- Real Swatches

- The ability to drag and dock our different windows. This would help with window organization.

- The ability to collapse the tool bar down to one line of icons. We would then access tools in the icons by clicking and holding or just using hotkeys.

- Ability to set icon size to Extra Large. This is great for people using touch devices and windows 8 tablets.

- Divide up the windows better and start using tabs for all the windows. Swatches should be in it own tab, so should styles. Fill and Stroke should have their own area as well.

- Condense redundant tools to save space and simplify the interface. Example: Do we really need four camera tools? A lot of tools can be easily combined together to make everything nice and tidy.

- Pencil Tool should have a slider to easily control stroke width.

- Make certain actions context aware so that you don't have an over-flow of hotkeys. For example, pressing "Shift+A" selects all points when the vector layer is selected. You could easily add in code to make it so that pressing "Shift+A" when all points are already selected, deselect all points. Furthermore, if a bone layer is selected, "Shift+A" would select all bones. Using the idea of context aware actions, you can cut down on the hotkeys and make the program more streamlined and easy to learn.

- Give the user the ability to Save/Export/Import GUI color themes.

- Break the Background color of the canvas into two parts. The Active Part (the part of the canvas rendered) and the Outside Space (everywhere outside the camera). This way we can do stuff like make the background for the active space really bright and the shoulder space dark (easier on the eyes). Photoshop and Manga Studio already do this.

- Give the ability to disable Optimization for Flash in the preferences menu. Flash Optimization is still bugged as mentioned in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=25673

[braj]

This may be sort of peripheral, but it would be great to have a iOS/Android app that allowed you to create AS-supported vector and bitmap artwork that transferred to the desktop apps perfectly. Just multi-layered drawing only (including masking) saving rigging and animation for the desktop. It would lay the groundwork for possible future full ports of the whole application (or a simplified version) but it would allow people to use tablets with easier drawing capabilities and mobile convenience from smart devices. it could also draw new users to the full versions, as well as being a dedicated art app in its own right.

[mermer]

I'm new to Anime Studio - but would immediately vouch for the earlier suggestion of mirroring smart bones, so turns and actions can be done to both the right and the left.

[dkwroot]

Here is a neat idea. Create a checkbox in bone constraints so that when it's checked it will cause the bound layers to rotate on their layer origin INSTEAD of the bone origin. This will making working with turn-arounds even easier as we can directly attach nested layers to bones and not have to worry how they'll be effected when the rig is altered with smartbone actions.


@braj
Cool idea! I'm personally getting a lightweight windows tablet and would also like to see a cutdown version of Anime Studio for it. I'd be content with just the modeling and drawing tools. They could probably market it as "Anime Studio: GO!" or "Anime Studio: CREATE". Regardless of the name, it would be a super lightweight design tool for mobile work.

[KuzKuz]

1. Freezing selected layers (temporarily disable and replace with video draft preview) for big scenes.
2. Zoom viewport in % of render size. Wery need see 100% original size in viewport for game animation.

[lwaxana]

I would love to see some new features for shadows and highlights. This is incredibly important because if you have a volumetric character design, any shadows used have to support the illusion of form -- the shape is critical. Masking would be a good solution, but when I've tried to use masking in this application, it was too buggy to use (some of the outlines would disappear). I would love to have improved masking where one shadow shape can cover the fills of numerous other layers, without impacting the outlines/brush strokes negatively.

Taking it a step further, how about a "shadow color" attribute added to each style, then when a special "shadow mask" is used, the shadow will mask each shape according to that shape's shadow color. It would be way more efficient than needing to mask each shape individually, especially in the animation process. This feature would be a huge improvement to shading in AS, which is quite difficult in my opinion, but also make it more efficient than other software packages.

Example of existing masking problems:

[dkwroot]

When the user creates a "Cycle" keyframe, it'd be great if there were an option to set the cycle to reverse. This would make the cycle reverse it's direction and play backward to its starting point and then play forward back to the cycle keyframe. You could use this feature to make something move back and forth smoothly without having to add a bunch of new keyframe data.

Also, in Layer Settings>Shadows ... It'd be fantastic if we had blending modes for our shadows. ALSO, it would be great if there were a "Layer Lighting" feature as well. Shadows and Highlights go hand in hand.

Since we're talking about shading, it'd be awesome if you guys made it so that we can shade nested layers individually from a parent group. When you use shading from a parent group layer, the group layer takes the over-all shape of its nested layers and applies shading to that combined shape. It would be pretty darn cool if we had a checkbox that would set it so that the parent shading layer would add shading to the nested layers on an individual basis and then combine all of those shadings together. This would make it much easier to control shading for lots of nested layers and maintain all of the small shading details that you get when you shade layers individually.

[dkwroot]

It's nice that we have a "GetPercentLocation" function for curves, but it would be better if there were an option to return the segment ID for the vector. This way we can add points more easily. It's insane that we can get a vector point on a curve, but don't have a simple way to determine what segment that vector lays on.

[synthsin75]

It's nice that we have a "GetPercentLocation" function for curves, but it would be better if there were an option to return the segment ID for the vector. This way we can add points more easily. It's insane that we can get a vector point on a curve, but don't have a simple way to determine what segment that vector lays on.

We do have the IsPointOnSegment function. Just have to loop through the segments.

[GCharb]

Hello everyone!

Lately I had a look at Manga Studio, and it has a tool that I really like, that is the 3D drawing doll, it helps tremendously when you get stuck on a certain pose. In my opinion Anime Studio would certainly grow in usability with a similar tool. And I am talking about something integrated, not a Poser add-on here.
Here is the video tutorial for it.

[dkwroot]

It's nice that we have a "GetPercentLocation" function for curves, but it would be better if there were an option to return the segment ID for the vector. This way we can add points more easily. It's insane that we can get a vector point on a curve, but don't have a simple way to determine what segment that vector lays on.

We do have the IsPointOnSegment function. Just have to loop through the segments.

That's what I initially thought, but the IsPointOnSegment function works for checking if a point is on a segment, not a vector location. GetPercentLocation only returns a vector location. I thought about using the vector location to add a lone point and then do the IsPointOnSegment function in a loop, but I've never used the IsPointOnSegment function and assumed that it was for checking if a point that was already a part of a curve was part of a given segment on that curve. In other words, it wouldn't identify lone points in a vector location on the curve since the lone point isn't part of that curve.

I'll give this a whirl and see what happens though.