Anime Studio 8 Already?

jonbo · Post by **jonbo** » Fri May 27, 2011 12:41 am

It's been almost one year since AS7 came out and now SMITH MICRO is soon releasing V8.0. I think alot of people will wait and see what the new version will include. I found this site, don't know if it's accurate, but a couple of new features might be interesting but sadly, I don't see any new FBF addition. Check it out if you want.

http://www.navarre.com/nds/catalog/item ... 84247.aspx

DarthFurby · Post by **DarthFurby** » Fri May 27, 2011 1:36 am

Nice find Jonbo!

I'm sure the vendor violated some agreement by posting information about AS 8 so early, including a RELEASE DATE(June 14th, 2011), but now the rest of us can ponder about the new features, which seem mostly geared towards helping the newbie, with one notable exception: Advanced Scripting Support.

At a glance, not excited, but I'll reserve judgement until we have more details.

sbtamu · Post by **sbtamu** » Fri May 27, 2011 1:48 am

I wonder how well this will actually work...

NEW! Automatic Image Tracing converts your artwork to fully editable, ready-to-animate vector drawings.

Fulkster · Post by **Fulkster** » Fri May 27, 2011 1:51 am

Thanks for the find, Jonbo!

I'm almost a little bummed! I just in the last month bought ver 7... how good a price can I expect for the upgrade?

sbtamu · Post by **sbtamu** » Fri May 27, 2011 1:57 am

Fulkster wrote:Thanks for the find, Jonbo!

I'm almost a little bummed! I just in the last month bought ver 7... how good a price can I expect for the upgrade?

They will have an overlap period where you can upgrade for free. I am not sure the time period but it has been posted before.

jonbo · Post by **jonbo** » Fri May 27, 2011 2:03 am

DARTH: as soon as i saw SARINA'S announcement, i just googled ANIME STUDIO 8 features and found the site. Maybe the release notice was late.

SBTAMU: that's the feature that caught my eye too

Fulkster: don't sweat it, smith micro always seems to have sales right after you buy it. so just wait and get at a good price. upgrade from AS7 to AS8 probaly will be on sale at least by christmas

Diana Kennedy · Post by **Diana Kennedy** » Fri May 27, 2011 6:01 am

Yep, that tracing feature interests me, too.
Wheew! For one; I'm looking forward for a new AS Version, in the other hand I'm not even trough with learning ASP7...

chucky · Post by **chucky** » Fri May 27, 2011 9:13 am

Very excited, these features are just the ticket.
It sounds like the users have been listened to , I have a renewed respect for the dev' team.
Bravo, Mike , Sarina et al.
Of course this is all in theory until the demo is released.

crsP · Post by **crsP** » Fri May 27, 2011 11:44 am

The most interesting thing to me is that only one bug fix for 7 was released - and that only dealt with the cycling bug. Doesn't bode well for any upgrade.

If the auto trace is like the background removal tool in ASP, then I have no hopes for it's usefulness - even the promo vids didn't show good results.

The character generator and walk libraries etc. sounds like a direct response to Crazy Talk Animator's approach of having the creative process done for you. I guess CTA was successful enough to provide a threat.

This advance scripting sort of lets me know that any new scripts created in 8 will not work for me. Oh well.

No talk of improvements to drawing\construction or frame by frame. WHO are they listening to Chucky, WHO?! heh

ponysmasher · Post by **ponysmasher** » Fri May 27, 2011 11:58 am

NEW! Additional 3D video rendering options with full support for YouTube 3D formats.

I'm excited about this. Patch layers sound interesting as well.

NEW! Advanced scripting support.

This sound very interesting but I'm afraid that the 'NEW' will turn out to be just a typo. But having even more advanced scripting features would be very nice...

Diana Kennedy · Post by **Diana Kennedy** » Fri May 27, 2011 11:59 am

What I would like to know is if ASP 8 allows you to see every tool, even if not yet used, on the timeline, as it was in earlier Versions. Because that was a big headache.

crsP · Post by **crsP** » Fri May 27, 2011 12:04 pm

ponysmasher wrote:Patch layers sound interesting as well.

I don't know what a patch layer is - never heard of such a thing. Could you please elaborate on what this is?

AmigaMan · Post by **AmigaMan** » Fri May 27, 2011 12:34 pm

If the Auto Image Tracing works how I imagine then that's something that would be very useful. At the moment I'm tracing lots of images rendered out of 3D software for a frame by frame animation done in Anime Studio and it's quite tedious!

I imagine the patch layers could be useful for easily masking the features of a face as they rotate off the side in a head turn for instance??

ponysmasher · Post by **ponysmasher** » Fri May 27, 2011 1:03 pm

crsP wrote: I don't know what a patch layer is - never heard of such a thing. Could you please elaborate on what this is?

I only know what that webpage said:

NEW! Use patch layers to create masks for overlapping layer elements.

But more/better masking options sounds good to me.

crsP · Post by **crsP** » Fri May 27, 2011 1:33 pm

Ah, okay. I thought it was something that was more commonly known from other apps, but I had not heard of.