??? animation software best for me
hello, i would like to ask which animation softwares are recomandable for a begginer? Im interested in 2d animation and i heard that flash will no longer be used so im not sure it's good to start with it. And still, I created some frames in photoshop because ps allows me to draw in my own style, so im really interested in an animation program which would allow me to import files from photoshop. thanks!
Re: ??? animation software best for me
Hi I've used the animation facility in WD6. I had never done any before and managed to get used to it quite quickle so it's well worth a try. To find the programme go to File > New > animation. Good luck
Re: ??? animation software best for me
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lygia
i heard that flash will no longer be used
This is nonsense. It's not going to be developed further for mobile platforms, but as an animator it remains an excellent choice - not only can you use it to produce flash output, you can also use it to produce video and gif animation. It also has direct support for kinematics and 2.5D.
For animation, it is far superior to the animation capabilities of the Xara products, but also far more expensive.
There are many alternatives out there, such as ToonBoom Studio.
I should add that, unlike Xara, Flash and products like ToonBoom Studio will have a lot of resources (many free), for beginners to learn animation techniques using the product.
Re: ??? animation software best for me
Hi Lygia—
Let me add to this that Xara Designer Pro can not only build vector animations, but you can also export them to AVI, not just Shockwave file format.
Now, because of the nature of swf (okay, everyone calls them Flash, so I will, too), the animation is vector and the resulting animation not only scales to any size, but it's quite small. But there's a price here: "actors", your animated things or characters need to be vector, not bitmaps as you'd draw in Photoshop because actions you perform on actors need to be keyed so Xara can perform the tweening. Bitmaps can't really be keyed in any program efficiently, not in Adobe products, and not in Xara. Yep, you can animate a bitmap you import to Xara, however, every frame then becomes a keyframe and the saved animation is larger than it needs to be.
Xara is a pretty darned inexpensive program to begin animation as a hobby before you decide to make it a career or anything. Both the Standard and Pro editions support animation.
Here's an example; the darned thing is less than 15K
sample Flash animation created with Xara
My Best,
Gary
Re: ??? animation software best for me
Try to use Blender 3D open source animation tool. It is Truly amazing modeling, animation and rendering.
Re: ??? animation software best for me
Blender is fine for 3D, but as an introduction to 2D animation, not a great place to start.
Re: ??? animation software best for me
Since this is an Adobe Flash topic board I feel that someone should mention Flash Pro. as a solution. With the tool kit available with this software you can author across the full range of platforms and that includes smartphones using the Flash player, Air and java script frame work. This is an expensive piece of software that can export movies, animations, integrate to html 5, do 3D stage rendering and also integrate with XML to all other Adobe products like Dreamweaver and InDesign.
Flash does much more than make animations and would be overkill for your application and in my opinion have a look at a suggestion made earlier that of Toon Boom Studio for about $200 still expensive but very good quality product. If that product is also overkill why not look at Anime Studio Debut 8 as this is a lot cheaper and is more suited to a hobbyist.
Re: ??? animation software best for me
Hi lygia,
I wholeheartedly support what Gare said. Give one of the Xara series a try, such as Xara Xtreme one of the Xara Designer series. They are amazing, and you can get all the help you need right here. If you want to try it out you can get a trial at http://www.xara.com
Re: ??? animation software best for me
Yes correct, for 2D animation I think Flash is better.