Moho Forum

I spent all my money on a lovely new tablet, and just realised I have no good software for it. I have good paint programs, but nothing for traditional animation. I've never tried traditional before, but I'm better at tablet-drawing than mouse-drawing...

If anyone knows any good software for traditional animation that is free or VERY cheap, plz tell me .

Hey there Sacrejacques!

here is a list of some free software

http://www.bakhter.com/html/freeware/in ... tools.html

i think the last link does not exist now, i think his software has been licensed

http://www.bakhter.com/html/anima/ink&paint_tools.html

not so free software, a few links are not working now

Oh and there are a few i can think of as well

Project dogwaffle has Trad Anim tools in it www.thebest3d.com

Plastic animation paper http://www.plasticanimationpaper.dk/

there are more..cant remember them at the moment
please look through the other listed "other software" in this particular forum

Oh, by the way.

What kind of Tablet did you get? i got a Wacom Graphire 4

have you tried using it in Moho / Anime Studio?

its a WACOM Graphire 6x8 Graphics Tablet. I've tried a tablet in moho before, and it didn't work so swell... But maybe in Anime Studio they made the tablet compatibility a little better. thx for the links

I think mine must be the same model

With trad anim software, i own ToonBoom Studio and dogwaffle pro.

I have many ideas in my thick head and would love to combine trad and tween and even 3d to the projects i have in mind, but.. i am think how i will do this!

Patmals wrote:Oh and there are a few i can think of as well

Project dogwaffle has Trad Anim tools in it www.thebest3d.com

Plastic animation paper http://www.plasticanimationpaper.dk/

there are more..cant remember them at the moment
please look through the other listed "other software" in this particular forum

There are a few others to look for, depending on your budget.

Bauhaus Mirage (http://www.bauhaussoftware.com) perhaps, and I say perhaps, because it's questionable as to whether they'll be offering it much longer since there seems to be a litigation between them and the original developer, TV paint (http://www.tvpaint.com) which created Mirage and also an earlier version, Aura. Or so they say, anyway. Just do some research and ask questions before you buy into one or the other. You want to make sure you'll see updates for a while

Of course, you could also check what LostMarble says... in their Links page . In the Image editors section you'll find 4, Project Dogwaffle is one. There's not only one version to consider, depending on your budget: PD Pro is $97, version 3.7 is the latest. Project Dogwaffle 2 (2.1b) is $59.

PD Artist is mostly aimed at entry level painting but still also has a basic animation module. That's $39
http://www.thebest3d.com/pda

And if youre looking to complement Moho with some Dogwaffle-style drawing tools, check PD Particles, at $19
http://www.thebest3d.com/pdp

That one is really aimed to be a companion. Some developers have already created a plugin for it, that connects directly to PD Particles (or PD Pro), such as Artweaver at http://www.artweaver.de with a plugin named Dogweaver. Would be pretty spiffy to see Moho add a connection to Dogwaffle's active X server the same way.

There's a set of plugins for video transition effects under development.

See some here:
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/3rdpartyplugins



Some examples of animations done in Project Dogwaffle 2 or 3:

http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/art/animations

there's a mix of postwork on 3D anims or video, and some traditional hand-drawn animations

Nobody seems to be worried about Bauhaus over at the Bauhaus forums. As a Bauhaus user it seems that you're entitled to an upgrade version of TVPaint, so I don't think you lose by being a Bauhaus owner. (at least from what I understand)

And Bauhaus/TVPaint/Aura or whatever you want to call it is pretty cool for traditional animation - especially if you are used to and like working with a tablet.

Sequent wrote:Nobody seems to be worried about Bauhaus over at the Bauhaus forums. As a Bauhaus user it seems that you're entitled to an upgrade version of TVPaint, so I don't think you lose by being a Bauhaus owner. (at least from what I understand)

And Bauhaus/TVPaint/Aura or whatever you want to call it is pretty cool for traditional animation - especially if you are used to and like working with a tablet.

oh, good, that's good to hear.

Yeah, they also offer a tablet PC with Mirage, the Nomad.
sweet.

Mirage is a bit of a different approach to animation compared to Moho/Anime Studio. My understanding of it, is that you use it to import hand-drawn keyframes, then use it to ink/paint and generate tweening based on that. Basically, it's designed more for traditional animators rather than for newer flash animators.

Of course, some of the tools it offers could still be useful.

An alternative to it you might consider is Apple's Shake, which was recently reduced in price to $499 from $3000. There are a few similarities between the two apps.

Bones3D wrote:Mirage is a bit of a different approach to animation compared to Moho/Anime Studio. My understanding of it, is that you use it to import hand-drawn keyframes, then use it to ink/paint and generate tweening based on that. Basically, it's designed more for traditional animators rather than for newer flash animators.

yes that's correct. The same basic ideas as PD Pro (Project Dogwaffle 3) though in some ways more sophisticated I suppose and hence more pricey. For example, is the alpha channel animated? layers animated?

I think of Mirage as kind of a hybrid between Painter (in some ways) and After Effects. It's bitmap - based. You can import things you scanned, but also draw directly within the program - especially if you have a tablet.

Which I think is what the original poster was looking for.

So, it's nice that you can do animation and also compositing, etc.

The pricing on Mirage itself is a lot cheaper now than when it was first introduced. I think the basic version is something like $395 as opposed to being something like $795. There is also Mirage Studio, which is $595 I think, and that includes the Animator's Toolbar and Board-o-matic (for storyboards). Note too: this might be temporary promotional pricing.

You can always get the basic version and then get Animator's Toolbar and Board-o-matic separately later. Or upgrade to Studio. All depending on your budget and what you need.

I don't know that much about TVPaint.

Sequent wrote:I think of Mirage as kind of a hybrid between Painter (in some ways) and After Effects. It's bitmap - based. You can import things you scanned, but also draw directly within the program - especially if you have a tablet.

Correct. In fact ironically I have used this comparison a lot for Dogwaffle too, when people ask if it's an alternative to Painter, it's really more a mix of Painter and Photoshop and After Effects, given the animation features, the filters that can be applied across the frame sequence of an animation, with keyframed changes of their parameters, and with the ability to load an animation (image sequence or Avi file for example) into the brush and paint that over another animation.

And there are more video-editing style effects and filters coming.

Which I think is what the original poster was looking for.

So, it's nice that you can do animation and also compositing, etc.

here are samples of traditional anims and post work, compositing etc...

http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/art/animations

The pricing on Mirage itself is a lot cheaper now than when it was first introduced. I think the basic version is something like $395 as opposed to being something like $795. There is also Mirage Studio, which is $595 I think, and that includes the Animator's Toolbar and Board-o-matic (for storyboards). Note too: this might be temporary promotional pricing.

You can always get the basic version and then get Animator's Toolbar and Board-o-matic separately later. Or upgrade to Studio. All depending on your budget and what you need.

I don't know that much about TVPaint.

you might want to read up on it then. TV Paint is where it all started for Aura and eventually Mirage, which are both derivatives (also known as oem versions, rebranded and sold under a different name by a 3rd party) of TV paint.

Bauhaus has added great additional toolbars and helper tools of their own.

Not sure what's with Aura, if its still being marketed and developed. My gutt feeling is that tvpaint is the place to be if you want the latest from the original creator, but I don't know fer sure. Perhaps it's a bit like comparison shopping with various distrros of Linux - all started by Linus Torwalds, but nowadays you can choose from Ubuntu to RedHat and other 'flavors' or distributions of the same original concept.

Talking about origins, the inspiration for Dogwaffle goes back 20+ years to the Amiga OS with DeluxePaint. There is another application similarly focused on some tools found back then, it's better known in 256-color dev systems for game developers, it's called ProMotion by Cosmigo,
http://cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php

If you look in Wikipedia you'll find other raster paint programs, some of which may also have animation capabilities. These may do just fine if you need mostly a tool for traditional drawing frame by frame.


and yes in most cases you can (and should be able to) scan a hand sketch e.g. pencil on paper, and another, and another etc... to scan a sequence into an animation. Then comes the tedious stuff, like cleaning up the light and noisy lines, and also doing a removal of blue shades if there were some. PD Pro has dedicated tools for that. (Photo blue removal tool, 'batch' scanning...). And then you're on to colorizing and texturing. You'll want a light table feature to see through the previous and following frames.

One of my favorite wafflers who does a log of stills by starting a pencil sketch and then scanning it and finishing that way is Martin Duerr in Germany, http://www.cybersign.de or http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/dotm/Cybersign

Mirage is the best for traditional animation and I have the exact size tablet that you specify and its perfect for it. Both it and Aura are based on the TV Paint Engine which was popular on the Amiga back in it's day.

Alternatively you can download TV Paint for the Amiga for free @:

http://www.amigau.com/c-graphics/tvpaint.htm

If you use an Amiga emulator it should be no hassle to get the program running on your PC.

BTW make sure you get this book, I attended his lectures at when I was with Dreamworks and they were invaluable, I cannot stress it enough to anyone in the biz:

http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com/

Have fun!