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FEBRUARY 19, 2004 Synthetik Studio Artist 3.0
Animation For animation, it's a similar story. All of the tool available for painting are also available for animating, including the automated tools, which you might want to use to paint a unique background for each frame. However, there are several additional tools for animating that you will enjoy using. [an error occurred while processing this directive]Studio Artist isn't primarily an animation program. You won't find many of the features that you find in a dedicated 2D package, such as phonemes, sequence grouping, scene planning and the like. But you will find a seriously robust set of painting tools that, in the hands of a skilled animator, will make most commercial animations look like they were spewed from the reject pile at Hanna-Barbera. (And just how bad does a cartoon have to be to make it into that pile?) Studio Artist allows for several kinds of animation. In previous versions, as with the current version, you could draw figures and keyframe their paths to create path-based animations. But that method, while quick, has always been limited by the fact that the animations were limited to a single brush type. (This is still something I'd like to see expanded in a future release.) Also, the volume of paths used to create a character, let alone an entire scene, can be a bit overwhelming to deal with. Still, the option is there for simple animations. The next type is traditional cel-style animation. Studio Artist provides the ability to generate movies directly within the canvas window and write frames to QuickTime files any time you choose to record a new frame. It also provides onionskinning, scrubbing, the ability to insert frames, the ability to create morph tweens and other features along those lines. This is nothing new. But in 3.0, first of all, the handling of layers with animations is dramatically improved. Manual animation was almost an afterthought in the 2.0 release, and there were problems with it. Now it seems that any troubles that were present in 2.0 are gone in 3.0. It just works more smoothly now, and it doesn't introduce problems when working with multiple layers, even though it's writing directly to the QuickTime format. It's a bit better at morphing. And, importantly, it now allows entire sessions to be saved, including multi-layer QuickTime canvas movies, which was previously impossible in this program. (We'll get more into the session saving capability down in the workflow section of this review.) The example below shows an animation in progress loaded into the canvas area.  But the breakthrough in version 3.0 is an extraordinary new capability called "Sequential Keyframing." What this technology allows you to do is to go in and record any of Studio Artist's tools in a Paint Action Sequence, skip to a new frame, draw a new image and let Studio Artist do the in between work. Now, previously, you could go in with a Paint Action Sequence and keyframe the animation by manipulating Beziers. But, again, the volume of paths can be daunting, and Studio Artist isn't yet geared toward fine path manipulation. But now you don't have to worry about it because Studio Artist handles the work for you automatically.  It'll take a little getting used to, and there are still many refinements that can go into the process, but Sequential Keyframing is a great timesaver for those who don't want to edit with Beziers. It remembers which brush you used, so you don't have to go back and load any special settings that you might have used on a portion of your animation; it remembers your color selections; it will clear out your animation when you click on a new frame, if desired; it allows for onionskinning from your previous keyframe; it inserts keyframes automatically and advances automatically to the next step so you don't have to spend time messing around with buttons and frames; and it provides very smooth morphing in between keyframes. We'll have some tutorials on Sequential Keyframing in the near future. If you download the demo, be sure to check this one out. (And also submit any suggestions to the developer; Synthetik has always been quite responsive to fulfilling feature requests.) Finally, Studio Artist 3.0 also includes improved capabilities for creating paint-on and write-on effects. Previously you could record your strokes with a limited number of brushes. Now everything can be recorded and output directly from the canvas to a QuickTime movie as you draw. You can, of course, output your write-on effects with an alpha channel, so you can create the animation in Studio Artist and then bring it into your motion graphics or editing package for further compositing. Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next Related sites: • Animation Artist • AV Video • Creative Mac • Digital Animators • Digital Media Designer • Digital Post Production • Digital Producer • Digital Video Editing • DV Format • Film and Video Magazine • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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