These are a few things I have found helpful to use when creating in Anime Studio and might not be intuitive to new users (like me!)
Make the Shift key your friend - I use Shift with the bounding box to select more than one point at a time. Hold Shift down when you are selecting a line to select the whole connected shape. (FYI - If you are filling that shape and don't see the fill tool fill the whole thing then you created an extra point somewhere. Use the hand panning and zoom in tools to really see where the extra point is and delete it)
Use videos you create to shorten render times. It takes a lot less time for AS to render a frame from a movie than draw a vector shape. Create an animated object over a plain background and export the animation to MOV - Select PNG as the type and only when you do will it show a selection of Codecs - Select the one for millions of colors+ (the + sign means alpha channel) and render the animation. (I usually go to the project setting first and choose a color for my background that is not in my animated object, since the background color is what is transparent in your video.)
Select File Import Movie to import your movie into your scene. and then make a copy of that layer for however many of the object you want in your scene. - Example I created a twinkling star for on top of a fir tree and imported the movie of it back into a scene and multiplied it a dozen times. Changed the size of the movie layer to fit the size of the fir tree it was sitting on and was able to render a dozens matching twinkling stars in a matter of seconds. I t tried copying the vector layer for the star with it's animation and copying that vector layer to all the trees and it took 10 times longer to render the same scene.
More tips to follow......
A few more Newbie tips
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
The one problem with using images in any form as opposed to vector graphics is they won't "scale" properly. As long as you aren't zooming in or out of the scene that won't be an issue, but often times you create a scene that you think you'll never need to get closer or further only to find that isn't true.
The other issue is rendering -- if you render smaller or larger vector graphics will correctly scale, whereas images won't. So if someday that web animation you made you now want to make a HD video of, you could be in big trouble.
Choosing to use something other than vector graphics else should always be done with the drawbacks in mind -- there are times it's perfectly safe and desirable to do so.
(And I like the idea of this thread -- so I'm not trying to become a downer here, just to point out both sides).
The other issue is rendering -- if you render smaller or larger vector graphics will correctly scale, whereas images won't. So if someday that web animation you made you now want to make a HD video of, you could be in big trouble.
Choosing to use something other than vector graphics else should always be done with the drawbacks in mind -- there are times it's perfectly safe and desirable to do so.
(And I like the idea of this thread -- so I'm not trying to become a downer here, just to point out both sides).
Let me first say I do agree with there being a possiblity of scaling issues so it's always a trial an error basis but if it looks good and you don't have processing power for quick renders, it can be a plus... That said, I did notice that if I created a movie outside of AS and tried scaling it in a scene it didn't scale well. But when I created things inside of AS and saved them that way as a movie and brought the movie in to a new AS scene and looked carefully I really didn't seeing a scaling issue. The movie I save is usually as large a version of that image I want in a scene and reducing the size has not produced noticable "ugliness" for what I've tried so far. I look for pixilization and anti aliasing artifacts. (I am still working on where to post my animations as files for people to see the real quality of what I'm getting. Unfortuantely I no longer have the tree star twinkle to post. Once I have an example I'll post for you to take a look at and see what you think).
As for the change in direction for image size (going to HD for example). I save the object I made the png movie of as a separate anime file anyway so I can always go back and re-record the transparent movie in a new resolution or change the object size. Then in the anim that I have multiple copies of the movie I just point each of the old layers to the new movie that I re-recorded and then make any adjustments in positioning the layers to fit the new movie size or accomodate the new object size.
FYI - those PNG transparent movies not only make your background transparent but will save your opacity for the object so that your object can be partly see through in your png movie.
As for the change in direction for image size (going to HD for example). I save the object I made the png movie of as a separate anime file anyway so I can always go back and re-record the transparent movie in a new resolution or change the object size. Then in the anim that I have multiple copies of the movie I just point each of the old layers to the new movie that I re-recorded and then make any adjustments in positioning the layers to fit the new movie size or accomodate the new object size.
FYI - those PNG transparent movies not only make your background transparent but will save your opacity for the object so that your object can be partly see through in your png movie.