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rayek.elfin
rayek.elfin
Braniac
September 24, 2017
Answered

Animator questions about Animate CC

  • September 24, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 4067 views

So, after Asymetrical​ demonstrating his workflow in Animate CC, I decided to test drive Animate CC once more after years of absence, and I've used other animation software in the past ~10 years, or so. It's part of my CC sub anyway.

Couple of questions after an evening of testing:

  1. is it possible to turn off the odd lines while drawing with the Paint Brush Tool? The squiggly lines pattern is very distracting, and doesn't provide a good preview while drawing at all. (the Brush tool generates shapes, which renders it useless for the thickness tool, and is too awkward to edit afterwards). I haven't seen this in any other animation software, and it is a showstopper for me.
  2. I am used to selecting a new frame, and begin drawing to create a new keyframe with a new drawing. I could not find a way to convince Animate CC to create a new drawing/cel automatically after selecting a frame in the timeline. It seems I first need to select a frame, then add a blank keyframe first before I am allowed to draw. Can this behaviour be altered? This is a workflow breaker.
  3. The onion skinning seems awfully basic to me. After all these years, I would have expected to be able to at least set specific frames - for example, every second frame, and the ability to fix specific frames in the animation (displayed as onion skin at all times, no matter where I am in the timeline). Compared to other animation software, it's rather limiting.
  4. Still no X-sheet option? Or timeline printing (pdf)?
  5. Bitmap painting tools. Vector drawing tools are great and all, yet certain effects are impossible to pull off without proper bitmap painting tools. After all these years, still missing in action?
  6. Sometimes I prefer to work on paper, and scan the drawing, then convert to vector for further adjustments and colouring. Also for quick line tests. Not possible in Animate CC? Any option to scan and/or use a camera/webcam for quick importing of drawings is missing.
  7. Timeline control seems limited. No options to work on 2's, 3's, 4's? Or convert existing frames to 2s, etc.? (I saw someone use a script for this?)
  8. I noticed no z-index control to control an object's layering relative to other layers and objects?
  9. I couldn't find any templates for 4K. Or many other TV/Film standards, for that matter. Can these be downloaded somewhere?
  10. No version control?
  11. Working with external assets, when updated, can those be automatically updated in Animate CC? Is it possible to work with external assets without the need for the library, or an external library?
  12. Any way to add visible notes to the timeline?
  13. No effects? No particles? Complete reliance on external compositing and effects software?

So far, not so good. What am I missing here? I am aware AnimateCC/Flash is still used a lot in Western broadcast animation, yet I start wondering why? Because animators have grown so used to it?

I researched plugins for animators as well, but most are paid-for, and it seems strange to me that some very basic functionality is clearly missing for animators. Asymetrical seemed to have a number of plugins installed as well.

Perhaps I am just spoiled by the competition.

Having said all this, it's not all bad: the new frame picker is nice, and the camera can be easily panned now. 3d rotation is nice. And library assets and standardized colour control are good.

Am I alone in saying I hope Adobe will improve Animate CC for animators? Sorry for my complaining. To be fair, I am used to other animation software, and Flash seems to missing very basic features compared. Please view these as constructive pointers for the Animate CC devs.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer RandomlyFish

    1. I don't think so, but I could be wrong.

    2. You can press F7 to insert a blank keyframe after your last one. F5 extends the keyframe and F6 duplicates it.

    3. While I get it isn't an ideal solution, you could create a new layer and paste some of the keyframes that you want.

    4. Not a thing in Animate as far as I know.

    5. Animate does only have tools for vector drawing.

    6. You can if you select a bitmap and go to Modify > Bitmap > Trace Bitmap. However the results aren't always the best. For scanning, there's Adobe Capture for iOS and Android.

    7. If you want your entire animation to run on 2's, you can drop the frame rate from 24 to 12.

    8. Not sure what you mean. If you want to change the order of the layers, you can drag and drop them.

    9. You can just create the animation at the aspect ratio that you want and then export a 4K version, that's the nice thing about vectors.

    10. This may be what you're looking for: Flash Professional Help | Working with uncompressed XFL files and source control

    11. I don't think that's possible aside from loading assets through code at run time.

    12. You can turn a layer into a guide layer making things on the layer only visible to you while working on it.

    13. There are effects that you can apply to symbols and if you're working in an Actionscript project, they can also be applied to texts without converting them to symbols. To convert something to a symbol, select any drawing, right click on it and select convert to symbol, or press F8. The filters can then be found in the properties panel, if you have the symbol selected.

    It may seem very primitive, but being able to create nested animations inside nested animations using symbols, is something I feel makes it very powerful.

    3 replies

    Colin Holgate
    Colin Holgate
    Inspiring
    September 24, 2017

    I can't tell you which numbers they are, but a few of your list of features are already working internally, and the world will see them in the near future.

    The general case is that currently Adobe are doing a lot in Animate to help animators.

      C
      ClayUUID
      Braniac
      September 24, 2017

      Well, cartoonists. They seem to have their own quaint pre-digital ways of doing things.

      rayek.elfin
      rayek.elfinAuthor
      Braniac
      September 27, 2017

      ClayUUID  wrote

      Well, cartoonists. They seem to have their own quaint pre-digital ways of doing things.

      ClayUUID​ I apologize for my rather harsh response earlier. Based on Mike's answer I may have misread your intent, and taken your answer too seriously. And I am definitely a 'quaint' personality.

      Text is so limiting and the intent often hard to measure without someone's body language and facial expressions.

      Asymetrical​ Thank you for your answer. I sent you an email. Very curious now!

      Versioning for me goes a little deeper than an autosave with auto-incrementing. I guess it is related to how Animate CC saves all assets and the animation in one file (well, libraries are an option): in another animation app all assets are kept separate, and the animation files themselves are pretty much just text files, which makes it easy to use SVN (directly supported) or just Git/Github. Change one asset, and it updates in all animation timelines. I am aware that libraries in Animate CC can update assets, although it is not as quick or flexible.

        C
        ClayUUID
        Braniac
        September 24, 2017

        rayek.elfin  wrote

        I am used to selecting a new frame, and begin drawing to create a new keyframe with a new drawing. I could not find a way to convince Animate CC to create a new drawing/cel automatically after selecting a frame in the timeline. It seems I first need to select a frame, then add a blank keyframe first before I am allowed to draw. Can this behaviour be altered? This is a workflow breaker.

        Your complaint seems to be that Animate can't read your mind. If you want a new keyframe, of course you have to tell it that.

        If you know in advance that you're going to be drawing a sequence of images, just select that span of the timeline and hit F6 or F7 to turn them all into keyframes at once.

        R
        RandomlyFishCorrect answer
        Inspiring
        September 24, 2017

        1. I don't think so, but I could be wrong.

        2. You can press F7 to insert a blank keyframe after your last one. F5 extends the keyframe and F6 duplicates it.

        3. While I get it isn't an ideal solution, you could create a new layer and paste some of the keyframes that you want.

        4. Not a thing in Animate as far as I know.

        5. Animate does only have tools for vector drawing.

        6. You can if you select a bitmap and go to Modify > Bitmap > Trace Bitmap. However the results aren't always the best. For scanning, there's Adobe Capture for iOS and Android.

        7. If you want your entire animation to run on 2's, you can drop the frame rate from 24 to 12.

        8. Not sure what you mean. If you want to change the order of the layers, you can drag and drop them.

        9. You can just create the animation at the aspect ratio that you want and then export a 4K version, that's the nice thing about vectors.

        10. This may be what you're looking for: Flash Professional Help | Working with uncompressed XFL files and source control

        11. I don't think that's possible aside from loading assets through code at run time.

        12. You can turn a layer into a guide layer making things on the layer only visible to you while working on it.

        13. There are effects that you can apply to symbols and if you're working in an Actionscript project, they can also be applied to texts without converting them to symbols. To convert something to a symbol, select any drawing, right click on it and select convert to symbol, or press F8. The filters can then be found in the properties panel, if you have the symbol selected.

        It may seem very primitive, but being able to create nested animations inside nested animations using symbols, is something I feel makes it very powerful.

          rayek.elfin
          rayek.elfinAuthor
          Braniac
          September 25, 2017

          Thanks, RandomlyFish​. Helpful answers. I was aware of some of the answers based on an older version of Flash, but was hoping that certain things would have been improved by now. The paint brush tool behaviour is plain silly. Let's hope that will be resolved in an upcoming version - it makes me wonder how animators have put with that throughout the years.

          Dropping the framerate to 12 to work on 2s is not quite a solution. Suppose a camera pan is done on 24fps, and the character is animated on 2s? I did see a script a while ago that took care of this in Animate CC, as far as I can recall.

          Found it: Flash Extensions I don't have time to test this now, but will this week.

          The trace bitmap option is useless for real work. In the competition scanned drawings and bitmap line art can be converted to single curves with a custom thickness setting.

          Colin Holgate​ Interesting development! Looking at the current version Adobe really lags behind the competition in as far as functionality for animators goes. I did notice a slight improvement, so it is good to hear they are finally going to address this. Thanks for the heads-up. While the current release can't cater to my needs, I am keeping an eye out for the next versions.

          ClayUUID​ Well, your derogatory comments aren't very helpful at all, and it seems you lack any knowledge of how traditional animators (not "cartoonists") work. In other animation software I can just click on a frame, and start drawing; which sets an automatic keyframe. No magic there, me thinks. Just a quicker and more flexible workflow option. "Quaint pre-digital ways"? I and my colleagues work in all sorts of animation, VFX, 3D animation, etc. software, and drawing on paper still is, and will always be, the best way to communicate visual ideas and do quick sequences of line tests. Other animation software supports a paper workflow that recognizes that need. Animate CC doesn't. Simple as that.

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