Moho Forum

What's up AS community! I've been playing with anime studio for quite a few months and I honestly think it's the best vector based animation software out. I do have some suggestions though, as many of you do, to make it comparable to none. One is to have a function that distributes multiple objects from one layer to there own independent layers. I realize vern has made a script to do this so I'm sure that will be in the next version of AS..(I hope and pray)

Also, it would be great to have an auto select layer button i.e. photoshop. It's very time consuming to have to go to the layers palette when working with tons of layers. It would be nice to just be able to click on an object I want to move instantly, regardless of what layer it's on!

A slicing tool would be awesome for destructible objects. Since the physics were introduced to AS, all I can think about is making walls burst from impacts or animated glass braking, things like that. With a slice tool you could take a closed object, slice it, set the layer to start asleep, then when another physics object collides with it, BOOM! Come on you know that would be cool!

And last, I'm sure this has been asked hundreds if not thousands of times but if anime studio was able to create vector based games like flash....OH SNAPPLE!!! My world would be complete. Especially with the physics engine.....wow how great that would be. Sorry about rambling, I just love AS like no other.

There is a script for doing the layer selecting by clicking on the layer. It works pretty well. I wish I could remember who created it and where the link is. If I come up with that I can let you know. It's a modification of the standard tools as I recall.

Mike Clifton the Anime Studio developer, encouraged me to work on that "explode object" script for physics. It's proving to be WAY harder for my experience level than I anticipated. It uses like, every single point/vector/shape script interface in the book . It's tricky finding points to "connect" to create new shapes. For this to work properly I can't add points to the outside edge or it will deform the original shape that you want to explode. Then I have to create new internal shapes from the outside points.

-vern

I did use that tool for a while, and when drawing it is very handy - however it can get quite frustrating when you ahve overlapping shapes as it constantly flips to other layer even if they're hidden! if there was a hot key to make it act like that it would be perfect - but it was causeing chaos, especially when trying to create an action as flipping to another layer without traversing the parent layer would kick you out of action mode and often you wouldn't notice.

Game is a bad idea - its a totally different direction - although i've often wanted to be able to export 'toys' of boned characters with the IK so you can drag them around for fun often when I bone stuff i just sit there on a single frame playing with it for no reason but at the end of the day, i'd rather the energy was put into improving what is already a great program in the direction it was originally intended.