Moho Forum

Hi fahim,
thanks for opening this discussion!

I'm a television professional since 20 years, been working primarily with live action television shows, directing, writing, producing....
Now I'm about to take a new step in my carrier and get into animation on a professional level. (Only been a hobbyist so far, but now I recently have got some serious training under my belt as well)
My animation background is mostly 3D-based, so my workflow has a lot of influences from that style of going about it.

I'm a long time AS user (and eager 2D wanna-be), been around since Moho days and waited and waited for all those serious improvements that collaborative use (in a small studio setting) would require.


Some of them would be:

- file referencing support

- project handling system with foolproof functions when it comes to absolute/relative paths and everything else that concerns moving projects and files between systems and stations...

- a global color reference system.


these would also be important feature additions, I think:

- addition of aim constraint in the bone control menu, to make proper FKIK handling possible. (bone lock is not sufficient, AS needs to get rid of the bad reputation of the "sliding feet-problem".)

- basic raster draw layer (for sketching and thumbnailing purposes primarily)

- addition of the AS community's most favoured scripts into the default script package.

- scripting access to even more parts of the AS system (styles palette, access to all UI controls etc....) Everything that makes it easier for the user to customize AS is good! (Shortcuts to scripts! Customizable menus!)

- much improved motion graph editor (I'll come back to this one...)





I haven't myself put AS to any kind of heavy use or stress-test yet, but if this is true:

synthsin75 wrote:Above all else, I think AS needs much better performance. Whether this means 64 bit or not, a handful of point heavy layers shouldn't effect performance.

....then fixing it would of course be absolute top priority!




I'd also like to show support for some of the points that Rudiger mentioned.

Rudiger wrote: 1. Ability to change layer properties and animation keys for multiple selected layers at a time.
2. Be able to create an instance of a layer from either the current or a separate document.
3. Same style options for 3D objects as there are for 2D objects, ie masking, scale compensation, alpha, gradients, brushes, etc. Also have the option to apply the gradient as a diffuse or specular shader, so you could have complete control over the toon shading (similar to jonbo's request).

6. Extend brush system to support natural media simulation. In particular, allow pen pressure to control opacity as well as line thickness. Also, add anti-aliasing to improve quality when brushes are used with small line widths.
7. Switch to construction mode using button instead of moving to frame 0 (as per Genete's request).
8. Bitmap drawing, plus onion-skin support.
9. Boolean operations for shapes and shape-based painting.
10. Change style for multiple selected shapes at a time

Rudiger also said this:

Rudiger wrote: 4. Use bezier handles to control animation curves. Would prefer them to be integrated with the main timeline window rather than the graph window, which I have never found at all useful.

YES, we need better animation curves controls, and my vote is on bezier handles too !!!

And NO, I completely disagree with the opinion that the "motion graph isn't useful". That is where you can (or should be able to) really finetune all subtleties of the animation and do fast tracking of all kinds of "uneveness" and polish your work. Every pro's most important tool for finetuning, in my opinion!
However, it needs some important development, though, before it can be used to its fullest potential.

This is is my wishlist when it comes to motion graph:

- Most important; possibility to select multiple curves for any channel from any object or layer! (Wouldn't hurt with customizable coloring to keep the curves as readable as possible.)

- improved UI control of zooming/panning/navigating in the motion graph window... the zoom and pan values should be accessible to control from mouse or pen movement, after some shortcut key press on keyboard. Simple and UI-intuitive moving and scaling of keys and groups of keys should also be implemented.

- bezier handles (or similar type of control), as already mentioned. The ease-out / in controls don't function as they should and even if they would they are not sufficient.

- full scripting interface for the timeline / motion graph windows and controls overall.


That's my list.
I'll add more stuff to it if I come to think of anything.

cheers!

mkelley wrote:Workflow is very important, so let me show you mine (it's lengthy but contains some important concepts I hope you'll find worth your time):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqvFDYww0bo

Thanks for the workflow video.

Rudiger wrote:once we have taken the time to inform you of what we would like to see improved about the software, it would be nice if we could be given some idea of which features are actually going to be worked on, perhaps in the form of a development road-map or even the occasional preview video. I know of other software companies that do this and it seems to be a great way to build anticipation for the next version of their software.

I definitely think, we can share some information and I am planning to organize a few webinars where we can chat with folks such as yourself. I am thinking sometime in late September/ early October 2011 for a webinar. We'll get a good discussion going. I will make sure that we have Mike (Engineer) and Jason (QA lead) on the call as well. I will also be soliciting feedback from you guys through surveys pretty soon too.

By the way, thanks for the feedback everyone. Looking forward to receiving more info from you. As well, as an FYI, Mike and Jason are also reading this thread.

I agree with Rudiger here, in the Softimage community we get many peeks into what is coming and you can feel the users salivating at the prospects of updates.

+1

Fahim,

I would like to see manipulators for moving objects on the screen (ESPECIALLY in the 3d view plane) with the addition to snap seperate objects together.

Fahim wrote:

Rudiger wrote:once we have taken the time to inform you of what we would like to see improved about the software, it would be nice if we could be given some idea of which features are actually going to be worked on, perhaps in the form of a development road-map or even the occasional preview video. I know of other software companies that do this and it seems to be a great way to build anticipation for the next version of their software.

I definitely think, we can share some information and I am planning to organize a few webinars where we can chat with folks such as yourself. I am thinking sometime in late September/ early October 2011 for a webinar. We'll get a good discussion going. I will make sure that we have Mike (Engineer) and Jason (QA lead) on the call as well. I will also be soliciting feedback from you guys through surveys pretty soon too.

By the way, thanks for the feedback everyone. Looking forward to receiving more info from you. As well, as an FYI, Mike and Jason are also reading this thread.

That sounds awesome, Fahim. Only thing is, I live in Australia, so it'll probably be at 3:00 in the morning my time . Hehe, I might have to go to bed early and set the alarm so I can participate.

BUY OTHER PEOPLES SCRIPTS

I was using a script that imported the whole file, Obj, pictures etc. IF it could be imported as a layer the script did it. Now it gone, doesn't work with 7 or 8. Buy the scripts and maintain them. It should be cheaper than hiring programer to make stuff up and seeing what sticks.

The other thing is to have a dialog button on the time line to turn a key from visible to invisible.

It the small things that make a difference.

Dale

Great post. Thanks for setting this up..

I agree 100% with capricorn33.

The biggest thing lacking in Anime Studio Pro is editable velocity curves (finer easing in/out control). The current model for easing in/out that Anime Studio Pro uses is inaccurate and useless. Once this is fixed, I'll be very happy. Have a look how After Effects handles this for reference.

I would also like to see Bezier drawing tools added as well. Would make it so much easier to draw things like a semi-circle for example. This would also improve importing files from Illustrator.

I'm not too keen on the new 3d direction that Anime Studio is going in. I'd prefer it if it just stuck to 2d animation and did it really well.

Others already made valuable points I will not repeat.

My main concern about AS is its future usefulness for professional animators. The main criteria for this are, IMO:

- reliability. AS must be stable, fast, and bug-free. Issues like "the cycle bug" are not acceptable. And it wouldn't hurt to have meaningful error messages if something happens (no software can be perfect), something in the line of "frame N causes trouble" or "this layer contains more than 10.000 points, please reduce".

- documentation. This works on many levels.

One would be a better manual. Notice the re-occurance of several questions here in the forum, that's a sure sign that the manual isn't complete. (The old Aldus Freehand 4.0 manual was one of the best ever done, half of it covers everyday tasks in a "how to achieve this result" fashion.)

Another would be a better overview of what's actually happening in the program. Naming shapes and bones is a good start already, but the whole fill/colour/styles segment is a mess. Maybe a Node view, as some suggested, would be able to help here. But it also would be fine to get some information about the file in summary view: how many layers do I use, how many (and which) files are linked, how many points per layer - stuff which might be useful in bugtracking.

A useful example would be "how many shapes use this vertice" or "how many hidden shapes do clog up my scene - and can I select them all and erase them?". Also it would be nice to select a shape and have, like a tool tip, its style name(s) displayed.

- speed. I'm not talking about rendering or playback in work view (although this of course should be as fast as possible. - Idea: have an additional "real fps" mode which, if selected, automatically reduces/switches off viewing features in work mode in order to give realtime playback.)

I'm talking about interface speed. How much time does it take to perform an edit, a scroll, a selection, anything? How many clicks are necessary to perform something? Where are things located? Can I select stuff easily because it's big enough? Are there keyboard shortcuts? Can I select multiple items and edit them all in one? (Edit properties on N layers in one, be able to lasso-select N bones, put the "default interpolation" pulldown back into the timeline title bar...)

It should be mandatory to avoid repeated actions. This includes all our workarounds with copying animated layers just for masking purposes (the old outline-fill-problem). It may be helpful to include some user's scripts (or the concept behind it) into AS tools. One big area would be "motion tracking", not in the sense of tracking video footage, but to transfer AS' own motion data from one object to another. (Think of animating a character's arm holding something, then select one point of his hand, select some parent layer, and press button "normalise this movement and apply to this layer". Just an idea.)

But this also applies to all input boxes etc. It's a shame that everytime I open the cycle settings it has forgotten everything I put in before. Also it wouldn't hurt to have something important like "allow animated layer effects" on top of the layer palette to apply to all alyers at once. (Or maybe skip that thing entirely? I mean, what's it for? If I don't use a layer effect, AS should recognise anyway.)

This also includes changes of timing. Right now we have re-calculation of keys and the sequencer view. But still we suffer from the need to select one layer at once and shift it in time, then select the next ... and the same selection problem lurks inside the re-calculation. (This was discussed in deep detail quite some time ago.)


My ideas for a future AS mostly cater the "power user" as I see myself. I don't mind additions for newbies like the CW or 3D support, as long as they don't get in the way of what I use every day.

Some really new features I may dream of:
- Frame-by-frame. I imagine it working like this: I have a character in multiple layers. At one point in time I want to draw a frame. I select the top layer of the body part I want to change, right-click and select "draw frame". AS creates a copy of all vector layers inside my selected layer and makes it 1 "FbF" layer, which behaves like one switch inside a switch layer. Now I can tweak, delete or add inside this layer. If I procede 1 frame, I can either start with a fresh copy, or copy the previous frame and tweak it further. Once my fbf-part is finished, it automatically switches back to my normal layer hierarchy. (Should elaborate on this and make sketches.) This is no trivial task since AS needs to not only copy all shapes but also normalise each of them. And I haven't even mentioned onion skin ...

- Video playback control. In v5.6 a video file would start playing at the first frame it was visible (was that ever documented?) and loop automatically, which suits my workflow. In v6 I have to go deep into the video layer properties to switch on looping. This is one of the properties which should be much easier to access. And maybe we could have keys on a video layer timeline for playback, so it would be possible to have a video start with the first frame as a still, then start normal playback somewhere in time, with automatically set keys at every re-occurance of video's first frame (= automatic repeat), and me being able to set a key at any moment to stop playback there. All this should be possible as often as I like, maybe with a key pulldown (similar to interpolation) containing start, stop, start at N.

Since I use AS as a fast and reliable compositing tool (and because camera movements are much faster to do than in TVPaint) these would really enhance and speed up my workflow.

More ideas to come, but right now I need to earn some money ...

I also agree with many if not most of the things said so far!

Speed, 5.6 was blazing fast, speed gone down immensely in later versions and I meant interface speed.

Styles, damn, the only way I use style is by making a style, copy then paste it to shapes, I never rely on Style 1 and Style 2 dropdowns.

One addition that would make it tons more useful in my opinion, is the ability to do point motion on top of a stack of layers.

That is something i still struggle with on ASP.. I expected to be able to select a group in the layers and hold down a key modifier to select/work with points/shapes etc..... To be honest.. if its a group why even need the modifier..surely thats what people expect to happen..

GCharb wrote:I also agree with many if not most of the things said so far!

Speed, 5.6 was blazing fast, speed gone down immensely in later versions and I meant interface speed.

Styles, damn, the only way I use style is by making a style, copy then paste it to shapes, I never rely on Style 1 and Style 2 dropdowns.

One addition that would make it tons more useful in my opinion, is the ability to do point motion on top of a stack of layers.

@slowtiger I am curious as to what the "cycle bug" is and whether it has been fixed in the latest version. Also, what is "the old outline-fill-problem" in relation to masking? I know t became possible a while back to make lines exempt from masking, but not sure if that's what you meant. However, with regards to the request to "be able to lasso-select N bones", that has definitely been added in AS8.

Rudiger: please keep in mind that I can't run v8 here, I might not have caught all improvements.

If the cycle bug refers to the cycle going to the wrong frame that was also fixed a version or two ago.