Moho Forum

I'm a newbie here and bought Anime Studio Pro due to its 'ability' to import Adobe Illustrator files. I'm sure anyone who has actually tried this feature knows why I put the word 'ability' in quotes. Illustrator files import less than perfect to say the least and my problem is that I NEED this feature. I'm trying to make animated versions of a series of fairly simple children's books and I receive these books as Illustrator files. So my question is what is the best thing for me to do? Are there other animation programs or methods out there for helping me accomplish animating characters that are already in drawn in Illustrator? Any input is GREATLY appreciated! I feel no matter what I do, I spend more time cleaning up these pictures then actually animating them. Please help me!

This is an old topic. It has been discussed over and over. You may want to do a search in the forum for Adobe Illustrator.

Many people are frustrated by the less than perfect AI import feature. Others don't have that big a problem with it. Some, like me, would suggest learning the drawing tools in AS. That obviously isn't an option for you in this specific situation.

You may want to consider using image animation instead (export png format from Illustrator or Photoshop). If that isn't an option and you are locked in to using AI files as your source for animating and the clean up process is proving problematic, you may want to consider getting a refund and purchasing Flash or some other application that supports that type of file format.

AS does a pretty good job importing in general especially considering how completely different the vector math is with each program.

There is no tricks or short cuts to improve AI import in AS using existing files. Mabye modifying the files in AI would make some improvement but it wouldn't save much more time.

-vern

Without knowing any example of the style of illustration you have to work with, this is a shot in the dark:

Re-drawing in AS might be better. It's not faster, but it enables you to re-create the characters in order to fit the needs for animation, which are quite different from the way an illustrator builds them in AI.

Here's an example of the type of artwork I'm dealing with



I know this topic has been discussed ad nauseum on these boards, but I guess I was hoping maybe someone had some secret trick up their sleeve.

Also, I've downloaded a demo version ToonBoom which seems to import much better! Does anyone have any experience with this product?[/img]

To be perfectly honest... that artwork is well suited to AS's capabilities and I could redraw that image with AS in about an hour I think. Faster if I had the original AI art... tracing in AS would still go faster in my opinion. That style is as basic as it gets. That style would also be simple enough to use with image animation.

Also, I've downloaded a demo version ToonBoom which seems to import much better! Does anyone have any experience with this product?

You might want to check the ToonBoom forum. Technically... AS and ToonBoom are competitors and the users here at the Anime Studio forum bought Anime Studio not ToonBoom.

-vern

I've got ToonBoom and AS -- they ARE competitors, but that doesn't stop me having both! The question you have to ask yourself is -- what kind of animation do I intend to produce? ToonBoom is much more suited to traditional animation techniques; AS is much more suited to "keyframe" or "cutout" animation. They are very different.

In the past, I too have bitched away about Illustrator import. I found one way of getting round it (to some extent) is to import the Illustrator file into Flash and then re-export it -- that can often reduce the "node hell" effect. You could also try removing all the interior colour and just import the line art. But from an animation point of view, the most elegant solution is to re-draw in AS. PITA, but that's life...

Thx for the example. Yes, this is definitely easy to re-draw in AS and, at the same time, prepare for animation.

I agree that redrawing it in AS will cause you a lot less headaches than trying to import it vector from Illustrator.

Or, you could use an imagin program to cut out the shapes in raster format (PNG's) and import them in, so that the characters could be animated like cardboard cut-out puppets. That'd also work.

Let me add my voice to the many that suggest a redraw.

Even if you think it will be too much work I think it would be a mistake not to at least try it. As Vern says, it wouldn't take him more than an hour and I suspect I could do it in at least two (I'm not as skilled as he is). But after those hours I'd have a fully AS rigged setup.

Even if you had 10 or 20 of those to do you're not talking about more than a couple of days work to get your rigs, and then you're set (less time if the characters are the same because all you need is one or two basic rigs per character).

I have ToonBoom and AS is definitely the way to go here (TB is great at many things, but simple animation is not one of them).

I worked on a project where the characters were drawn by someone else.

I didn't even get AI files. I had to scan and trace hand drawn artwork. To add to the work I started the project in Illustrator before I even purchased Moho. I also thought the AI import would be a great way to streamline the workflow.

I had no problems with the AI import. Yes, there were a few too many points in the wrong place and I found I was doing a lot of clean up but I didn't blame that on Moho (AS). I could see that the vector math was different.

I was too impressed with all the other features of AS to abandon it for Flash or something else. It was WORTH all the extra effort to redraw in AS just to gain its other benefits. You only have to redraw them once.

You could of course buy Flash and wait to see if the next version does have bones and they are as good as AS. I tend to follow the idiom that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

-vern

Hey everyone. Thanks for all your suggestions and help. I'll be testing them out and working on my ability to redraw things in AS. If I discover any new tricks, I'll make sure to post them!

Good luck with your project. Don't forget to ask for help here when you get stuck.



-vern