Image layer transparency bug

[Richard Ellingworth]

I'm using Anime Studio Pro 9 on a PC running Windows 7 64-bit.

I thought I had this working, but no. If I do this:

1. Start a new animation.
2. Add a new image layer and load a PNG file into it.
3. Change the length of the animation to 100 frames.
4. Double click on the image layer and turn on allow animated layer effects.
5. Click on "Display Quality" and tick everything.
6. Now go to frame 50. Double click the image layer and change the opacity to 99.
7. Now go to frame 75. Double click the image layer and change the opacity to 0.
8. Go back to frame 50. Double click the image layer and this time change the opacity to 100.
9. On the "Channels" tab you now have three dots on the layer opacity line. One at frame 0, one at frame 50 and one at frame 75.
10. Go back to frame 0 and play the animation. The layer opacity stays at 100% all the way up to frame 75 when it suddenly jumps to zero (the layer vanishes). THIS IS WRONG. It should start fading away starting at frame 50.
11. Stop the animation.
12. Go to frame 40.
13. Hold down the right cursor key to step through the animation. This time the layer DOES start to fade away at frame 50.

To summarise: If you play through your animation with the play button image layer transparency changes don't seem to behave as expected. If you step through the animation frame by frame it does work.

Is this a bug or have I missed something?

Interestingly enough, if you export this animation to a series of PNG files you can see that the image layer transparency DOES start to fade starting at frame 50 but the weird thing is that after frame 75 (when the opacity level reaches 0) the remaining frames of the animation are all black. When running the animation in Anime Studio they are all white.

Is this also a bug?

I played around a bit more and found I could cure the black frames problem simply by drawing something to cover the whole of the visible area of the other (vector) layer (Layer 1) that is created automatically when you start a new animation. This lies below the image layer. Now when I export the animation the results show that when the image layer opacity reaches zero the remaining frames now show the contents of Layer 1.

[synthsin75]

This is expected, as AS tries to limit intensive effects in order to maintain as close to real-time playback as possible. When playing the timeline, it is more important to be able to judge animation timing than effects.