Going from Flash to Anime Studio

[Fenkoto]

Hi there everyone!

I have been working with flashanimation for almost 7 years now and I have been pushing Flash very hard. It has been a long love affair, but now I have reached a point where I have to realise that Flash just can not do it. Besides from having a catastrophic shapetween engine (compared to AS), it also can not really handle huge bitmaps and is also crappy at handling zooming into ant out of bitmaps. (Sorry Flash, but I have to do this). Since 2004 I have had my eyes on Moho, and now the time is ripe to take the great leap.

Since 2004 I have been working on my feature film project called "Nim´s Journey" www.nimsjourney.com (The website has not been updatet for some time). My main intention was to animate the film in Flash, but as time passed, I have came to understand that I need a program that can give me the help I ask for. I believe Anime Studio will do the job.

Unfortunately I have come to realise that the amount of tutorials for this program is alarmingly few. It is a pain to learn a new program from the beginning without having any official guidence. (I am too waiting patiently for THE Greykid book) Fortunately I have also realised that this forum be crawling with inspiring and knowledgeable people. So I will be in your safe hands for some time

Right now I have a handful of questions, but I will first scan the forum.

So who am I? For anyone interested you can read something about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ola_Schubert

Thank you for your time!

[slice11217]

Hi there everyone!

I have been working with flashanimation for almost 7 years now and I have been pushing Flash very hard. It has been a long love affair, but now I have reached a point where I have to realise that Flash just can not do it. Besides from having a catastrophic shapetween engine (compared to AS), it also can not really handle huge bitmaps and is also crappy at handling zooming into ant out of bitmaps. (Sorry Flash, but I have to do this). Since 2004 I have had my eyes on Moho, and now the time is ripe to take the great leap.

Since 2004 I have been working on my feature film project called "Nim´s Journey" www.nimsjourney.com (The website has not been updatet for some time). My main intention was to animate the film in Flash, but as time passed, I have came to understand that I need a program that can give me the help I ask for. I believe Anime Studio will do the job.

Unfortunately I have come to realise that the amount of tutorials for this program is alarmingly few. It is a pain to learn a new program from the beginning without having any official guidence. (I am too waiting patiently for THE Greykid book) Fortunately I have also realised that this forum be crawling with inspiring and knowledgeable people. So I will be in your safe hands for some time

Right now I have a handful of questions, but I will first scan the forum.

So who am I? For anyone interested you can read something about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ola_Schubert

Thank you for your time!

HEY! I know you! I watched your 'Gooberstory' years ago! Great stuff! I've been wondering what happened to 'Nim's Journey' since I haven't seen anything new in a while. You also had a chapter in one of the 'Masters Of Flash' books.

Yeah, I was disillusioned with Flash maybe about 2 weeks after first trying it out. It could do some cool stuff but the one thing that I wanted it to do, character animation, it just wasn't going to do with any kind of ease or elegance. I was also put off by the fact that most of the upgrades for Flash rarely upgraded anything having to do with graphics or animation.

Enter Moho: suddenly everything fit together. I could use Moho for all my character animation needs. It's fantastic.

Yeah, there is a really great group of people here on this forum. I've gotten a lot of help and support from them and you should feel at ease asking questions here. Usually, someone has an answer for you.

Welcome Ola

[Gnaws]

Hi Ola! I remember "Nim's Winter Tale"! I was the moron who emailed telling you how much I liked the story, production, etc. then asked how Nim got back UP the hill.

Anyway, welcome to Anime Studio. I was like you until about a year ago. Until then I used Flash for animation for about 8 years and I haven't looked back.

Good luck in your ASP endeavors. Can't wait to see what you create.

Best!

[Fenkoto]

slice11217
Nim's Journey is slowly shaping up, I have not had the proper time updating the project website, but I am giving away information on my forum.

April update:
http://olabergner.proboards42.com/index ... 1176823571
May update:
http://olabergner.proboards42.com/index ... 1179924898

I am looking forward to learn Moho (I rather call it that). It just feels like starting all over again, which is a pain.


Gnaws
I accually remember that comment! But I am not sure it was posted by a moron. Anyway, great to see some "familiar" people around. Also nice to see people who have gone from longtime use of Flash to Moho. I will need your help and advice, I am sure. Right now I am a bit frustrated over small bits and pieces in Moho, but that would be because I don´t know the program that well yet.

[Fenkoto]

Hi there, here is my first question for the day.

In Flash, I am used to put every single shape on seperate layers so that I can best control them.

1.
What is the best way to work in AS, for example if you are working with a detailed face with shadows and wrinkles etc. Which is the best way to build this. Is it to draw everything on the same layer, or everything on seperate layers, or is it a mixture of both? I can imagine it being the latter. I also understand that it might depend on if you are doing head turns where the graphics overlap. It might even depend on if you are using bones or doing point animation for the face.

2.
I have made this character in Flash.



Could anyone give me some hints on how to best structure and rig it in AS?
I know the very basic guidlines in rigging, I am just curious in how I should structure the workflow.
Anyone?

I am aware this might be a couple of general and fuzzy questions.

Thanks in advance!

[slowtiger]

Maybe my old post here gives you some hints: viewtopic.php?t=7967.

1. IMO, a clever folder structure helps a lot with detailed characters. This way, you'll have a "head" folder (or, in Moho, a bone layer) which contains a level for the face, another for the hat, and a group layer or bone layer or switch layer for mouth and eyes. respectively. Somewhing like wrinkles I'd put on the same layer with the basic shape, but it's possible to have it on two separate layers, but then you have tot take great care to connect the identical points to the same bone in each layer.

2. The rigging always depends from the kind of movement you're going to create. As long as this character is just walking and talking, rigging is easy. If you want to have him gesticulate with the hands a lot, it gets complicated.

[Fenkoto]

Thanks for your tips slowtiger.

So there is a easy way to link bones in a Group layer to bones outside a grouplayer? I have not found a good tutorial on bone linkage yet. I have looked through the instructions and tutorials that comes with ASP, but it seems to be quite basic rigging tutorials.

I might find something on the forum about this, the problem is that there is too much information(:

[heyvern]

Search for "Bone slave" or "Bone Master" in the forum.

I wrote a set of scripts that allow for "linking" bones to other bone folders anywhere in the file.

The scripts work well with pretty simple files. If you have a ton of bones it slows down. I really need to redo the scripts now that my skills have improved.

The only thing that absolutely can not be slaved is the "Lock" attribute of a bone. There is no way to copy this attribute with a script.

-vern

[Fenkoto]

Thanks Vern, I will do that!

Another thing that came up, I have made a walkcycle of a guy. I have animated scaling to the bones to make them fit into the walk. But for some reason the scaling of the bones are not applied to the rest of the cycle, only to the original one.

Why is this?

You can look at the file here:

http://www.goober.nu/Moho/Walk.anme


I have exaggerated his left foot with scaling, just so you can see the result.

Thanks a lot!

[Víctor Paredes]

But for some reason the scaling of the bones are not applied to the rest of the cycle, only to the original one.
Why is this?

this is because you have cycled only the angle keyframes in the timeline. you must cycle the scale keyframes too.

[Gnaws]

good stuff already, Ola! Great style.

[Fenkoto]

Selgin
Thanks, the "scale bone" icon was not selected to show up. Now it is.

Gnaws
Thanks for that!

[Fenkoto]

Hi there, I have run inte a new problem. During the years I have developed a way of applying texture in flash so that it looks a little like 3D though the animation is true 2D I am using a kind of masking technique.
No 3D what so ever has been used.
See
http://www.goober.nu/downloads/H35787.html

Now I am trying to achieve the same result in ASP. But I have run into a problem with layer depth.
This robot has 2 layers of hair, one for each side of her head. When she turns her head to the left, the left part of the hair shoul go behind her head. Using the Z depth. I have checked the Sort by depth thing in the project settings and it all worked fine.

But when I put the parts i a group folder to animate the whole folder, the Sort by depth stopped working.

Have a look:
http://www.goober.nu/Moho/Working.anme
In this file the LHair is outside of the Head layer

http://www.goober.nu/Moho/Not_Working.anme
In this file the LHair is inside of the Head layer

Thanks!

[Genete]

But when I put the parts i a group folder to animate the whole folder, the Sort by depth stopped working.

Inside group layers the option "Sort layers by depth" in the layer options window mut be cheked on also and not only the Projet Settings option.
-G

[Fenkoto]

Thank you Genete, this worked very well!