Help Shape the Future of Anime Studio

[synthsin75]

Every professional software is unintuitive to new users. Period. Does that alone make them not professional software? Of course not, because that exact same software is being used daily in professional environments. And most of the competitors to AS are much more unintuitive, plus you pay a premium price.

[braj]

Hey, I'm not beating up on ASP11, just saying, there is a good reason software continually evolves. This is true with all apps, pro and otherwise.

[synthsin75]

I'm just saying that what a professional deems intuitive is going to vastly differ from the opinion of a new user...in any software.

[braj]

Funny thing is I have been using the software for years now, and some stuff can still be confusing. Anyhow, this likely isn't the place to have this discussion.

[dkwroot]

Along with a sketch layer, I think better switch layer interpolation would greatly improve FBF animation. We need a way to interpolate lines that have different point numbers. These improvements would allow an animator to sketch out keyframes and then ink them with the pencil. The FBF layer would then interpolate between the drawn keyframes.

[dkwroot]

-- Add the ability to show switch layer contents as thumbnails in the switch layer dropdown. In flash, there are add-ons like keyframe caddy and TrickOrScript that do this and it's EXTREMELY useful for digging through switch layers with lots of content.

EXAMPLE: http://s16.postimg.org/mh0rbl38l/thumbnail_switch.png
KEYFRAME CADDY: https://youtu.be/NLDHZQEuF0g?t=7s
TrickOrScript: https://youtu.be/sA3CZwxfoE0?t=1m2s

-- Make it so that the bounding box for groups is always around the contents of the group.
EXAMPLE: http://s22.postimg.org/bd9k47jkh/design.png

[braj]

-- Add the ability to show switch layer contents as thumbnails in the switch layer dropdown. In flash, there are add-ons like keyframe caddy and TrickOrScript that do this and it's EXTREMELY useful for digging through switch layers with lots of content.

EXAMPLE: http://s16.postimg.org/mh0rbl38l/thumbnail_switch.png
KEYFRAME CADDY: https://youtu.be/NLDHZQEuF0g?t=7s
TrickOrScript: https://youtu.be/sA3CZwxfoE0?t=1m2s

That would be very helpful.

[braj]

How about some sort of 'static' interpolation curve, for instance, ease out 4 frames before a change, so you can set a consistent interpolation event every time a key is changed, but without it occurring relative to the two keys, just to the next key. So for mouth shapes, say you have a switch layer that goes from closed to open mouth with interpolated layers, instead of having to set a new key right before the switch to open to keep the mouth from slowly opening, you just have the interpolation set so it starts 2 frames before the upcoming key. I think you could get more consistent animation for some styles that way.

[ErikAtMapache]

-- Add the ability to show switch layer contents as thumbnails in the switch layer dropdown. In flash, there are add-ons like keyframe caddy and TrickOrScript that do this and it's EXTREMELY useful for digging through switch layers with lots of content.

EXAMPLE: http://s16.postimg.org/mh0rbl38l/thumbnail_switch.png
KEYFRAME CADDY: https://youtu.be/NLDHZQEuF0g?t=7s
TrickOrScript: https://youtu.be/sA3CZwxfoE0?t=1m2s

That would be very helpful.

That's a nifty idea although it'd be nice to have the thumbnails popup next to the switching object, maybe when you click it.

[dkwroot]

I've said this over and over, but I'm going to remind you guys again. We need nested z-depth control. Basically this means that every layer within a group is organized by z-depth regardless of nesting. When you combine this with layer referencing, you'll quickly find that you can build characters in segments and easily combine the segments to create characters. This is hands down the most important update, I just can't emphasis this enough. With this feature, we can build full 360 degree turn-arounds with ease.

[braj]

I've said this over and over, but I'm going to remind you guys again. We need nested z-depth control. Basically this means that every layer within a group is organized by z-depth regardless of nesting. When you combine this with layer referencing, you'll quickly find that you can build characters in segments and easily combine the segments to create characters. This is hands down the most important update, I just can't emphasis this enough. With this feature, we can build full 360 degree turn-arounds with ease.

I don't really understand this, can you explain it a bit more?

[dkwroot]

I've said this over and over, but I'm going to remind you guys again. We need nested z-depth control. Basically this means that every layer within a group is organized by z-depth regardless of nesting. When you combine this with layer referencing, you'll quickly find that you can build characters in segments and easily combine the segments to create characters. This is hands down the most important update, I just can't emphasis this enough. With this feature, we can build full 360 degree turn-arounds with ease.

I don't really understand this, can you explain it a bit more?

Example:
Suppose you have an Anime Studio file called "Human_Male_Jackets" and inside of that file you have lots and lots of jackets. Each Jacket group would be a switch layer containing Front View, 3Q View, Side View, etc. You rig each of the jacket views up perfectly with smartbones and everything.

Now suppose you loaded one of these jackets into a character file to be used with one of your models. You'll quickly discover that there is a problem. You need the forearm of your jacket to sometimes be in front of the head or legs and sometimes you need them behind the head or legs. The problem is that the forearm is part of the jacket group, so you can't depth shift them without moving the entire group. You could create a bunch of group references, but this quickly starts to clutter your layer organization and it becomes more and more difficult to manage the more complex your character designs get.

With nested z-depth sorting, you could just choose a parent file and set it to depth-sort with nested sorting checked on. This would then place ALL child layers in that group into a single draw order. This would allow nested layers to be depth shifted up and down as needed without having to break apart groups, which is extremely convenient for building characters in a modular way.

When the AS team add this, you will be able to build characters in segments, such as HEAD/UPPER BODY/LOWER BODY/PROPS and then assemble full characters from these files. Since all smartbones were built in the nested sections, you wouldn't even need to remake new smartbone actions, they would just be there and ready to go. You could imagine some of these pieces having actions that would depth shift their nested parts, allowing an animator to easily create 360 degree turn-arounds.

I think this is going to be the first step in completely revamping the character wizard.

[braj]

Ah, I get it. If that would enable a better character wizard, I'm all for it. I would like to see a character wizard that allowed you to create your own rigs to generate characters based on your own needs and designs. I know a lot of people may think the character wizard is a beginner concept, but IMO for real production work it could be a very attractive pro feature if done right.

[dkwroot]

I made another video going over important feature requests as well as demonstrating why these features are needed. I hope this clears up any confusion. I also demonstrate a new layer selector tool that I made. I think a lot of you will find this very enlightening. If we were to combine these idea with a new character wizard, the result would be amazing.



TOOL LINK: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=26221

[dkwroot]

It would be extremely useful if the layer selector script that I demonstrated in the video above could be applied universally to the right click button. At the moment, when we do Alt+Right click, it jumps to the selected vector layer bypassing all groups. I think it should work like this:

Alt+Right Click = Go into a file by one level

Ctrl+Right Click = Go back one level

Shift+Right Click = Go to the nearest color layer

There should also be a checkbox in the options area that will allow the user to decide if the layer selection causes the layers panel to expand or not. This will integrate layer selection into all tools and avoid forcing the user to twitch to a specific tool designated to this.