Animation in Xara

[dcahall]

First name is Dave.........

I am not (and do not pretend to be) an artist. I have retired and am tyrin to learn to draw. I have posted on the TalkGraphics forum a couple of times. A couple of times I go not responses at all (or the latest one just a couple) so that probably tells you how bad I am :-)

I am now doing this stuff just for fun but sometimes get a little discouraged by the reslts. I do enjoy playing with this stuff though. I would like to find a tool that would allow me to do some animations in a format that could then be converted for use in a dvd movie/slide show. I did one last year for my wife's high school renuion that turned out pretty good but also left me wanting some more features/capabilitles that I could not accomplish the way I wanted to.

Perhaps we should take this discussion some place else because this is not the right place for it :-)

[Gare]

Dave—

This might the wrong thread, but it's decidedly not the wrong forum, friend!

In fact, there's a different thread on the main video tutorial this month where I asked for suggestions and so far, at least one member has agreed that I "dial it back" a little next month and do some stuff for the beginner, and not intermediate or advanced.

I promise you this: you come to the Xara Xone area of TalkGraphics with a legit question, you'll get an answer. Our Moderators are exceptional with their help. Last time you posted must have been a national holiday or something .

We're all here to learn.

There's a lot you can do with animation; I wrote a good part of a chapter on it in the Xtreme Official Guide and no, I'm not begging you to buy a copy because it's out of print and I don't make a penny off it!

Animating in a 2D workspace can be a little harder than working in a 3D modeling program, but there are a lot of possibilities if you first conceive of the animation with the right mindset and understanding what can and what cannot be done in Xara vis a vis animation.

@Handrawn, you have experience with 2D animation? Care to jump in here?

My Best,

Gary

[Big Frank]

First I created the flag object and gave it a name (which you must do to animate something in Xara)

actually there's no need to give objects a name if you're creating frame by frame animation exporting to gif

i've been using xara for years to create simple animations, it's great fun but you're limited to what you can do

combined with x3d you can do even more, but it would be nice to be able to achieve even more with greater animation tools

flash is fast going out of fashion so export to avi is a formats i would like to see developed

here's a couple i did a looong time ago (at least as far back as 2006) using much earlier versions of xara



(you need to click on them to see them full size and animated)

[dcahall]

Gare: my comment about no response was in relation to some posts on the ArtRage Community forum. Not Talk Graphics which is great.

Big Frank: I thought you had to name an object to animate. I will have to try again and see what happens While I love the x3d program, I find it kind of limited. I would like to see its capabilities combined with PGD to give me more of the capabilities of something like Flash. Think of how powerful that could be

BTW: Can .avi files be used when you are creating DVDs?

Both: I only have PGD. Should I look at upgrading? I really am not interested in the web development features and wish Xara would put them in a separate product and not mix the two. IMHO they are totally separated environments and should not be mixed (again IMHO - and I used to design web applications before I retired). IMHO combining them weakens/strains both products by trying to do too much in a single product.

[Gare]

Hi Dave—

If animation is your primary or sole concern, I have to be honest and say:

1. There are new drawing tools, but no new animation features I know of in the current version of Designer Pro.

2. The Xara Group would really appreciate it if you upgraded, at least once in a while, because they'll go broke if you don't and there goes this forum.

The re-thinking of future versions of Xara to keep the web features discrete from The World's Fastest Drawing Programme™ is a pipe dream, Mr. Holmes. We, the end users, don't get to influence the future versions significantly more than writing into the "Dear Xara" thread and griping out loud, which soothes the soul but hasn't affected change as far as I can recall.

TIP: Yes, you can use Xara animations on authored DVDs. I have for years. It depends on your authoring software for DVDs, and the file format that you export to. Hint: Export to AVI with no compression and then use AnyVideo Convertor to transcode your animation to the file format your authoring software can accept. I'm guessing, but MPEG-4 using the h264 codec, or windows WMV might work for you, but again, I can't tell without knowing your gear.

My Best,

Gary

[Soquili]

Gif animations are similar to the old fliping page animations some of the kids I went to first and second grade with would make. Each frame of the animation is like a different page in a note pad, draw what object or objects you want on a page. Use your thumb to flip between the pages of the note pad and the new page replaces the previous image.

Naming objects is required if you are using flash animation in a Xara product. The software uses the name for an object to create steps between the objects previous location within a frame and the new location with a new frame.

My first post to the forums about 12 years ago was an animated gif. Click the attached thumbnail to see the animation.

[Gare]

On the other hand, when you do use SWF as the export, and you've named shapes before animating them, you can produce something like this. I deliberately didn't use colors.



Now, this isn't important if you're authoring a DVD , but this guy can be scaled to any size without coming out of focus (because SWFs are vectors), but this file is only 39K!

-g

[dcahall]

Wow Gare, that is pretty neat but again, it is SWF........

As for the others, yes you can create some animation without naming object but if you want the object to change (in particular change color) you must name them.

I have started a new thread under the Dear Xara thread entitled: "Separate Web functions from graphic functions into different products" to explore some enahncements like separating the web and photo/graphic functions and beefing up the animation tools (maybe even combining x3d with PGD).

I for one really appreciate the conversation that has gone on here today. I have never been this envolved in any discussion here but you guys have inspired me to participate.

[Gare]

Well, stay inspired, Dave—

Attached is the source file for a simple animation of a fish swimming in a fishbowl. No keyframes. I was very successful at porting it to video

go to about :40

Any Video Convertor is your key, and I do believe that Xara's capability to animate stuff merits a better place than in "Dear Xara", so if you'd like to continue to solicite advice and share here, Dave, you just keep on keepin' on. The Bouncing Ball thread might be the best place to discuss animation more.

I personally find animation totally captivating to watch and a marvelous process as a content creator.

I'm strecthed pretty thin these days, which is odd because only this morning I got on the scales and they said, "Ouch!".

Ba dah-bum. Seriously, I'll try to help Moderate if anyone who is interested in this public dialog wants to help take it farther.

My Best,

Gary

[Big Frank]

I for one really appreciate the conversation that has gone on here today. I have never been this envolved in any discussion here but you guys have inspired me to participate.

nice one