Assets Vs. Layers

[aleXean]

Hello!

I had a thought for Anime Studio while watching some Flash tutorials. Now it may be a longshot but I figured I'd post it on here anyway just in case someone sees it and thinks it may be doable! (Yes I know I am posting it in the Feature Request because I feel it would be too much for a .LUA script).

Right so my idea is this. The current "Layers" available in ASP that we already have are ("Vector", "Image", "Group", Etc.) would instead be called Assets and that becomes our library of content. Then, something similar to the Sequence Editor and the Timeline combined become a more universal "Layers" such as in Flash, ToonBoom and After Effects.

My reasoning for this would be to create a central "MovieClip" so to speak. Not to differ from ASP'S already awesome give each ("Vector", "Image", "Group", Etc.) it's own timeline, because I love that! But a place where you can edit your movie all together by dragging assets INTO layers, and then placing the sequence of the layers!

Maybe this is kind of what Layer Comps already do? I'm not sure because I haven't messed with them at all - but just a thought - would love to hear anyone else's ideas or opinions

Thanks!
- Jeremy

[dkwroot]

Anime Studio has a pretty awesome way of animating which is similar to Flash in some ways. Flash uses symbols which have their own timelines. These symbols get placed in layers on the scene and the main scene focuses on layer ordering of the individual symbols.

You can do something similar to this system if you just organize your vectors into groups. If you wanted to do frame-by-frame animation for example, just make a switch layer and then make sure that each frame plays on that switch layer with a timing of your choosing (like on 1's,2's,3's). You can then move your switch layer into another group which you can imagine is a Flash layer. Just like how you put symbols into a flash layer, just place switch layers into a group. When you want to change layer organization, you can just move the entire group up or down or you can shift the switch layers within the group to control organization within.

Anime Studio doesn't use the symbol system with nested timelines because we have switch layers which allow us the same kind of flexibility (even more in some cases). Actions and Smart Bone Actions are also available which just make anime studios animation even more efficient.


The real issue that Anime Studio has isn't the problem with nested timelines, it's the issue of "Instancing" and "Referencing" which flash has and anime studio does not. The AS team is aware of this and a lot of folks are hopeful that it'll be a major feature in Anime Studio 10.

[aleXean]

Erm, yeah?

I think I followed you - not entirely what I was trying to say but nonetheless! I am of course aware of doing FBF work with switch layers (it's how I storyboard in ASP ) but what I meant more-so was having in addition to Channels, Sequence Editor and Motion Graph was to add a Layers tab that was more of a scene organizer and have better scene breakdowns within ASP. This would (hopefully) make it easier to compile the entire movie without having to always make new files.