More stupid questions: characters premade and importing

joe52 · Post by **joe52** » Tue Mar 16, 2010 7:23 pm

Some of the premade content is provided as an Anime Studio file. Other premade content provides besides the Anime Studio file the individual parts of the character seen in the layers window as separate files and also a single one layer file that has multiple views of the complete character and their individual parts. What is the purpose for this single file?

I would like to be able to make a character in an external vector draw package with each individual part placed in layers (such as a variety of eyes placed in their own separate layers). Then import the finished character to rig. Is there a way to import the file so Anime Studio extracts the parts, places them in their respective folders in the Library folder and associates them in their own layer in the Anime Studio Layer window?

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Mon Mar 22, 2010 6:22 am

There is no easy way of doing this since Anime Studio uses it's own brand of vector drawing which is not really compatible with most vector drawing programs.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Mon Mar 22, 2010 8:06 am

You can do this in Photoshop. Put all the layers in the groups you want to, make sure they're all visible, go to FILE, SCRIPT, then in the Anime Studio directory in Extra Files there's an 'Export Photoshop layers to Anime Studio' script. Run that. Name the file like character.anme (make sure to put the .anme extension at the end) and Photoshop will export all the individual image layers and their group into an AS file. You then need to go and add any bones you want to add and center layers' origins in AS, etc...

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Mon Mar 22, 2010 8:29 pm

Mikdog wrote:You can do this in Photoshop.

But, Photoshop is not a vector drawing program. You can draw vectors in Photoshop, but they don't get exported in that process.

You can import from other vector drawing programs, but they come in with many more points than are needed or desirable.

It's better just to learn to draw in AS. It takes some getting used to, and I admit it may be a bit more difficult, but you can get some really nice effects in AS that aren't even possible in Illustrator or Freehand.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Mon Mar 22, 2010 10:24 pm

If its vectors you want you're probably better off creating them in AS as the previous poster said.