Which is the best software for animating in 2D?

[melviso]

Okay..I am trying out ToonBoom Animate Pro 2.Just some questions:

When u add an effect module why doesn't the effect show on the camera view(not perspective).It has to be rendered out with Toon play.

Is there a way you can delete the stroke tool lines or pencil tool lines with 0 size after filling with the paint tool?Cause when I use the select tool and I try to double click the lines like flash and every line gets selected,doesn't work that way in Toonboom.the fill colours get selected too.
How can this be done?

Thanks.

[DanHarolds]

Okay..I am trying out ToonBoom Animate Pro 2.Just some questions:

When u add an effect module why doesn't the effect show on the camera view(not perspective).It has to be rendered out with Toon play.

Is there a way you can delete the stroke tool lines or pencil tool lines with 0 size after filling with the paint tool?Cause when I use the select tool and I try to double click the lines like flash and every line gets selected,doesn't work that way in Toonboom.the fill colours get selected too.
How can this be done?

Thanks.

In the camera view you need to turn on "Render view" button in the bottom left.

If I'm understanding you right you cant have a fill without a stroke line. In flash terms it doesn't have a pencil line around it

[califfguzman]

Flip book for traditional 2D animation.
And of course flash!

[loldisrox]

I have found success with a synergy of Photoshop and Flash. (for highly animated assets - characters etc.) Then composed, effects, putting it all together in After Effects and Premiere.

[MAtius Kesar, S.Sn]

Folks,

does anyone know what software that disney uses in their motion pictures as their standard?

[Odayga]

All of these are very helpful! Thank goodness for this thread! Even though my emphasis is in character design, visual development and storyboard.. its always a plus to have some traditional animation in the portfolio.. I've played with it a lot in the past but I'm eager to jump back into bringing my work to life again :3

[Inkthinker]

Photoshop has never been used for tv animations.I am no longer using Photshop.It takes time and makes animations difficult.I know that now.

I used Photoshop to animate several works in this gallery, and they look just fine on television.

http://inkthinker.deviantart.com/gallery/2544484

Photoshop CS2 and beyond is a perfectly functional platform for producing traditional frame work. It's not designed for it, but it's very versatile... size your frames to 1920x1080 and build each cut as a separate PSD. Build your own Actions for onionskinning. Organize by cut, and try to keep your framecounts in the low 100's at most.

In the end, it's not about the software, it's about your techniques. Traditional technique is well established, and almost all the usual tricks translate to digital drawing (layering, cycling, looping, staggering, etc). Don't get hung up on making the computer do the job for you, just treat it as another drawing platform and do the hard work.

[PLeon]

So I dont want to be "that guy", that bumps up threads, but since we are on the subject of animating in Photoshop, I do have a few questions, and they probably have simple solutions, but I'm an idiot so...

1. What's a good way to make an onion-skin? I was turning on the last frame and lowering the opacity, but I dont know if there's a more efficient way to work with that.

2. How big does the file size get? In Flash if you keep adding more layers/frames, eventually your file size gets huge. But since the layers are frames in PS, and each frame is not that saturated with stuff, would it save me more space or would it be bigger than a Flash file?

[Inkthinker]

1. Create an Action that duplicates your current frame, changes the color to blue or red or whatever you prefer, and lowers the opacity. Bind the Action to a hotkey for easy use (I like f10 or f11). This creates a duplicate frame you can use as your onionskin Layer and dispose of after you don't need it.

2. They can get pretty big. Separate your animation by cuts, and assemble the final composition in AfterEffects or something like it.

[BlightedArt]

One of the better applications of traditional animation + After Effects assistance:

[spaceman]

I used Photoshop to animate several works in this gallery, and they look just fine on television.

http://inkthinker.deviantart.com/gallery/2544484

Photoshop CS2 and beyond is a perfectly functional platform for producing traditional frame work. It's not designed for it, but it's very versatile... size your frames to 1920x1080 and build each cut as a separate PSD. Build your own Actions for onionskinning. Organize by cut, and try to keep your framecounts in the low 100's at most.

In the end, it's not about the software, it's about your techniques. Traditional technique is well established, and almost all the usual tricks translate to digital drawing (layering, cycling, looping, staggering, etc). Don't get hung up on making the computer do the job for you, just treat it as another drawing platform and do the hard work.

How do you do pans on a background say 1920 x 6480?


BTW for those wanting to do flash like animations here's a link to a free program (also imports pngs with transparencies I think) - Giotto
http://vectorian.com/

[melviso]

So I dont want to be "that guy", that bumps up threads, but since we are on the subject of animating in Photoshop, I do have a few questions, and they probably have simple solutions, but I'm an idiot so...

1. What's a good way to make an onion-skin? I was turning on the last frame and lowering the opacity, but I dont know if there's a more efficient way to work with that.

2. How big does the file size get? In Flash if you keep adding more layers/frames, eventually your file size gets huge. But since the layers are frames in PS, and each frame is not that saturated with stuff, would it save me more space or would it be bigger than a Flash file?

A frame in Photoshop can display more than 1 layer depending on what you want in each frame.There are tutorials on youtube.Look up this guy's channel;
www.youtube.com/user/klfiretears.
He has awesome tutorials for animating in Photoshop.

The file size gets really large especially when you add effects like blur,glow e.t.c.Its advisable to do a camera cut scene per file or export movie and view the animation.What I loved bout Photoshop is the freedom especially drawing and graphics capabilities.

@Inkthinker

Yeahh..Photoshop is good graphicswise though but it isn't meant for animation.If they could just include the timeline and symbols like it is in Flash,it would be sweet.

[traptsoul]

One of the better applications of traditional animation + After Effects assistance:

What do you think was used along with After Effects? Flash?

[melviso]

Starting something in 3d..Hopefully the animation turns out well.I am gonna do a Dead Fantasy fan animation.

Screenshot:


Done with Maya(modeling) and Photoshop for texturing.

[melviso]

Okay..questions about ToonBoom.
Is anyone having lag issues when using the bucket tool?Also,my animation doesn't play smoothly after I finished painting a background with opacity brushes.It is worse than flash when it comes to filling colors and the color palette becomes too many especially when painting a background.

I am thinking of going back to Photoshop.It is the best graphicwise and the effects you can create is awesome and repeated use of this software improves your drawing and painting skills.Just hoping they add Flash timeline,pegging from ToonBoom,and scale tweening in Photoshop CS6.

Flash is cool but in terms of coloring and painting,effects,not so good.

Anyone here used Reitas Pro?

[melviso]

Trying out the demo of Retas Pro.This software is awesome.

[melviso]

Whenever I try to use the Ram preview in CoreRetas HD.I get this":
"the amount of storage is not enough to process this command"

What is wrong?BTW,is Photoshop CS6 out yet?

[DanHarolds]

Okay..questions about ToonBoom.
Is anyone having lag issues when using the bucket tool?Also,my animation doesn't play smoothly after I finished painting a background with opacity brushes.It is worse than flash when it comes to filling colors and the color palette becomes too many especially when painting a background.

Cant say I have theses issues. Are you doing this in "Open GL view" or "Render View"? Doing it in the latter slows it down for obvious reasons.
Realtime antialiasis might also be enabled. You can disable it in Edit > Preferences > Real-time Antialiasis.

Other than that I'd say it's a hardware/memory issue

[egerie]

Whenever I try to use the Ram preview in CoreRetas HD.I get this":
"the amount of storage is not enough to process this command"

What is wrong?BTW,is Photoshop CS6 out yet?

How much free disk space you have?

[melviso]

@DanHarolds
Thanks for the reply but I am no longer using ToonBoom,switched to Retas.

@egerie
97GB left on my disk space which is more than enough.I did some research and found out its a windows problem,not the software.

[charlestinney]

I think the best animation software is one that has a relatively low learning curve, thus increasing how fast you become comfortable with the program; gives you the results you want with zero to little headache. For me, that program is ToonBoom Animate Pro 2. It's built with an animator in mind. All art created in the program is vector (every line, every painted fill in), making it easy to manipulate your drawing and to adjust your project resolution on the fly. Once you've painted with a color, if you choose to change that color, you don't have to repaint everything; just change your color and every drawing that was painted using that color will automatically update. Animated FX; e.g., glow; motion blur; transparency. That's just a little of what the program has to offer. It's great to draw directly in the program with cintiq; the brush options are powerful; you can rotate the scene with a hotkey so you don't have to rotate your monitor. For me, ToonBoom Animate is a joy using!

[melviso]

I agree ToonBoom has its advantages like the 3d camera,pegging and the network panel for effects.I think Flash is better than ToonBoom in some respects.You can paint your backgrounds with the paint tool and it doesn't lag and you can select your colors with the eyedropper tool,pick a different shade and paint away.The color pallete in ToonBoom has its advantage and disadvantage.It is useful when coloring a character but when creating backgrounds its a chore as your color pallete builds up very quickly and a lot of artist who paint backgrounds are not used to creating a different shade of color on a pallete digitally,they select the color,chose a darker/brighter one and paint and TB has this you must flatten or else u can't fill color.Then if you use the brush tool too much for painting,the view is gonna drag.I think it is more like illustrator where you work with lines and fill with the bucket tool.It takes more time to render out videos even for preview.

If u take a look at Adam Philips work,you will notice since he switched to ToonBoom,the level of details in his backgrounds has reduced compared to his previous flash animations.
I am not saying TB is bad,it has its flaws and so does Flash.

[melviso]

@charlestinney

Okay..I take what I said about ToonBoom Animate Pro back.Every bit of it.I tried what DanHarolds said and it works fine now.I kinda torn between TB and Retas at the moment.ToonBoom has a lot of powerful effects like the morphing tool,you have the option of using Timeline like Flash or the xsheet,awesome effects with the network panel,its resolution independent yet looks like raster graphics.It has been used for animations like Lion King,Fantastic Four.

Retas,popularly used in Japan for animes like Bleach,Naruto,High school of the dead.Its heavily limited to tradigital animation(Xsheet only,no timeline like Flash).Has an awesome stylo pen that makes lines very smooth and precise.It has more effects than toonboom.Can work in raster or vector format.Using the Xsheet in CoreRetas for compositing is kinda timeconsuming but the effects are powerful.

Which do you think is better?

@egerie
I fixed the problem in Retas,all I had to do was increase the virtual memory allocation in the preferences.

[melviso]

Help guys..

I am currently familiarizing myself with the Morphing tool properties in ToonBoom Animate Pro.Whenever I create a new layer in the morphing tool properties window,and input numbers in the From and To section and click on those numbers,in the camera view/window,only the number 1 and 2 shows for the main layer,the numbers for the new layer doesn't show unless I go to the Drawing window,thats where the numbers say 11 and 12 for the new layer shows.Why are they not showing on the lower tab in the camera view/window?or one can't make new drawings in the camera view when using the morphing tool properties?
Thanks.

[glenna73]

Hi guys,

FlipBook is the only 2D animation software that was designed completely from scratch to do 2D animation the way professional animators are used to. That's why the professional animators at every major animation studio and the teachers of the best animation schools demand FlipBook. Other programs may be fine if you want to do is ink & paint but animators use FlipBook.

top infographics

[fritzthefox]

I've been using Flash, along with Photoshop and Illustrator, to animate for many years. I'm about to jump ship for Toon Boom Animate, as I've become increasingly dissatisfied with the direction Adobe has taken Flash. I also find myself increasingly limited by some of the quirks of the software in regards to exporting to video.

If I were interesting in making stuff for the web, Flash would be adequate. For online gaming, it would be a must. But for video, it is limiting: you cannot make use of many features, because they can only be applied to movie clips, and movie clips cannot be exported to video. It cannot seem to tween a large bitmap (like a background) without stuttering, and it exports that same stutter to video. It has grown increasingly unreliable as it has evolved into bloatware (a fate also suffered by its predecessor, Director, which eventually became so buggy they put it down). Overall, it is a tool intended for developers, not artists. I would rather have a tool dedicated to animators, so I'm making the move to Toon Boom.

I am sure that I will continue to use Flash for some time, but I am looking forward to using a more artist-centric tool, as well as distancing myself from Adobe a little bit. I don't like the future they are trying to build.

[AnimAnt]

I used After Effects for this animation,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04wFG...2&feature=plcp

but will be doing a lot more in the coming months so would like to know if anyone recommends using Flash more. Are there any obvious benefits in doing this?

Regards,

Ant

[bagissimo]

it depends on what you want your work to look like. after effects fits perfectly for puppet animation for exemple, flash is usually used for vector animation, etc.

i use "Motion" in the moment, i think it could be good for you after having watched your animations, it's like After Effects, with less possibilities (i bielieve), but the basics and the camera movements are easy to understand. you can buy it at a low price but i think it works only on macs -_-

[nhokmaru]

if you want to make frame by frame in animation...I think flash adobe is a good way...You can do some small part with smooth movement and combine it in after effect

[melviso]

After trying a variety of softwares,I have to say flash is the best for now.The timeline,symbols are very good.Toonboom is still vector and crashes more often.Kinda unstable for me,the last time I used it.For backgrounds and soft brushes,effects,photoshop could be used.Just wished photoshop had flash's timeline as animation window instead of the frame by frame one.