Anime Studio 6 Info

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 7:08 pm

synthsin75 wrote:Is there going to be an updated script documentation?

I'm going to be releasing something soon. But fair warning: it's going to be pretty geeky and technical. Not an easy bedtime read.

synthsin75 wrote:What happened to the ctrl+F5 to reload scripts? This is absolutely needed for script development.

It's been changed to Alt+F5. There was a conflict on Mac, I believe. Anyway, it's Alt+F5.

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 7:15 pm

Dodgy wrote:My biggest annoyance currently in AS is that you can't multiply select layers and edit their properties as one.

You can now in version 6, in a limited way. You can shift-select multiple layers in the Layers palette. However, only a few tools can operate on those layers at once. The Translate, Scale, and Rotate Layers tools can operate on multiple selected layers.

Not all tools can do this because 1) it doesn't make sense for all tools, and 2) the multi-layer select was added late in the cycle and re-doing all the tools was not practical. In the future, we'll likely add multi-layer capability to more and more tools.

Theoretically, a tool could be written that turns on shadows, adjusts colors, etc. across multiple selected layers. This could be a good scripting opportunity if someone is interested - take a look at the Translate Layer tool to see how multiple layers are handles (including multi-layer undo).

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 7:21 pm

Rudiger wrote:
synthsin75 wrote:Could anyone explain the intended use of "Hide shape"?

You can only unhide all shapes, so no toggling. But it doesn't even render. Is there some need for this?
Are you kidding me? This feature is an absolute godsend as far as I'm concerned. What I've been doing in the past is enabling transparency in the quality settings and turning the alpha right down on the shapes I wanted to temporarily hide. Some of my characters have 500+ overlapping shapes so it often gets quite difficult to see what's going on and to select the shape you want. Also, the program gets extremely slow when you have this many shapes on 1 layer. I just hope they take it even further and let you hide/lock both selected points and shapes.

This is the kind of thing that I was talking about in another thread - about serving different users. Everyone is going to have their one feature that would be "so simple to implement" and would "save them hours" that other people will just look at and say, "why would I want that?"

So if we didn't implement *your* feature, it's not because we don't care about you personally. The fact is we just don't care about any of you.

Er, uh, that's not right, we love you all

Anyway, it's a never-ending game of balancing priorities.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 7:21 pm

Lost Marble wrote:
synthsin75 wrote:Is there going to be an updated script documentation?
I'm going to be releasing something soon. But fair warning: it's going to be pretty geeky and technical. Not an easy bedtime read.

As long as it documents outside functions and properties I'll be happy (doesn't have to be elaborate, just enough to list properties for each object as well as parameters for each moho/lm function I'd be thrilled).

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 7:24 pm

synthsin75 wrote:Damn it, damn it, damn it!!!!!

WTF?!! ASD6 registered will not export or import AVI. I've uninstalled and reinstalled several times. 5.6 AVI works fine.

Just to double-check: Is this the WalMart copy or the one you downloaded from Smith Micro? I don't know if there was an issue with the WalMart build and AVIs, but it's always safer to be up-to-date. Can you post this AVI file online somewhere for me to try? I'm able to open AVI files fine, so I'm sure there must be codec issue or something.

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 7:27 pm

mkelley wrote:As long as it documents outside functions and properties I'll be happy (doesn't have to be elaborate, just enough to list properties for each object as well as parameters for each moho/lm function I'd be thrilled).

That's pretty much it exactly.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 7:43 pm

Lost Marble wrote:
...The fact is we just don't care about any of you...

Now I'm sad. And you let me know through a post on the Interwebs? How could you? After all we've been through

All my illusions have been shattered. Sigh. Moho, I mean, uh, AS, will never be the same again.

Jokes. Haven't tried AS6 yet but look forward to getting into it. Thanks Mike, for an absolutely fantastic program that I use almost for ALL my animation.

b15fliptop · Post by **b15fliptop** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 8:07 pm

b15fliptop wrote:Okay, after playing with ASP 6 for a while, a few impressions:

1) Sluggish. My animations are all done with PNG's brought in from PhotoShop. Many of them have like 75 layers, when you count up all of the characters, the backgrounds, props, etc. Re-ordering layers in the stack responds very slowly, whereas in 5/6 it is instantaneous. Scrubbing the timeline is much more sluggish as well, to the point that I'm seriously questioning whether I will be able to use 6 at all.

2) Something strange... when I move the camera behind my characters and pan it around to see them from behind, the layers aren't in the same order. Some things are behind other layers, when they were in front of them before. The really strange part is that returning the camera to it's original starting point doesn't make the layer stacking correct again. In fact, they're now in a different order than either previous view. In order to get the layers to display properly, you have to move them to a different location in the layer stack, and then back to where they just were, and then they display properly. Really, really weird.

So far, I am disappointed.

An addendum to the above: I've been messing with ASP6 a bit more. It seems that the above issues only occur with files created in 5.6. I recreated the same files in ASP6 and the sluggishness is gone, as is the weird layer stacking issue. I don't know if this matters to anyone, as I assume most of you do your work in vectors rather than bitmaps, but it might help someone, and I thought it only fair to update my initial findings.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 10:26 pm

Lost Marble wrote:
synthsin75 wrote:Damn it, damn it, damn it!!!!!

WTF?!! ASD6 registered will not export or import AVI. I've uninstalled and reinstalled several times. 5.6 AVI works fine.
Just to double-check: Is this the WalMart copy or the one you downloaded from Smith Micro? I don't know if there was an issue with the WalMart build and AVIs, but it's always safer to be up-to-date. Can you post this AVI file online somewhere for me to try? I'm able to open AVI files fine, so I'm sure there must be codec issue or something.

This happens on the Walmart build, the trial download registered with that serial number, and the ASP6 demo. I posted the AVI file a few post ago, and I think PM'd it to Steve. Here's all that info again:

What's not working (that works in 5.6) is:

AVI format
DivX video codec
MP3 audio codec
2500kbps video bitrate
224kbps audio bitrate
720 x 576 resolution
24 fps
5 secs

You can get the AVI file here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?nnydkymmoaw

I also tried ones with much lower bitrates to no avail.

Post by **Lost Marble** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 12:44 am

OK, I'm seeing it now. It's not that we can't import or export AVI files, it's that we're having a problem importing DivX-encoded AVI files. I'll look into it.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 1:28 am

Thank you so much, Mike. I really appreciate your attention.

DarthFurby · Post by **DarthFurby** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 1:43 am

slice11217 wrote:Yeah, NYers are paradoxically resistant to Anime Studio. I found this out at Animation Collective. Unfortunately, the big(ger) studios in NY are slowly going down in this recession, and since the smaller ones seem to be pretty attached to the old style of animation (albeit they substitute lightboxes with Adobe Flash), there seems to be a lot more convincing to do in order to get them to convert over to ASP.

It really is bizarre. Still, if I have a chance to demo Anime Studio at some point, particularly for those Adobe Flash users, I'm certain opinions will change.

Also, great to see Lost Marble's back in action!

AniPierre · Post by **AniPierre** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 2:20 am

Hey Slice and Darth,

I'm wondering how many "professional" AS users there are here in the New York City area. I'm up in Westchester County but worked many years in Manhattan. I'm intrigued by your story about the Animation Collective. I'd be interested in hearing any "war stories" you'd be happy to share.

I myself have done my time in the New York area animation scene, though I go back to the mid-1980's through late 1990's. I'm pretty much out of the professional animation circles now but I'd love to hear what the scene is like nowadays (though sadly the commercial animation scene seems to have died off, while the independent animation scene seems to continue apace).

Perhaps I should start a new thread so as not to monopolize this thread. I'll do that now!

Pierre

DarthFurby · Post by **DarthFurby** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 2:48 am

Hi AniPierre, I used to live in Westchester County, not far from the Cross County Shopping center. I've done the odd freelance gig, but I'm not a professional animator. I do bookkeeping type work for a mid-sized company in NY, but I'm a member of ASIFA-EAST and have been mingling with animators, directors and producers at various functions around the city this year.

Nickelodeon closed down their NY studios about 6 months ago, flooding the city with about 800 unemployed animation production people. The global financial crisis has not been kind to the industry here. Each year advertisers spend less and less money on network television. People working insane overtime without compensation, studios relying heavily on interns(aka free labor) to finish productions, mass unemployment, it's the Gobi desert and the last puddle of water is drying up.

People say it will spring back but I'm really wondering where 2d is headed.

chucky · Post by **chucky** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 3:19 pm

Hey Wes, I'm surprised you would only test avi's with a divx encoding.
I'm also I'm surprised that you would use that as your benchmark for a working import. Pretty harsh judgement there bud (respect

)
divx although being fairly common I guess,

, is not a format I would recommend for any creative video endeavour until it came to ENcoding; and even then.....pooh