Recommendations for Animate Rigging tool extensions

[Tgibs2]

The character rigging tools in Animate are just garbage. They havent been changed or updated to a workable tool for several years. I teach animation but I'm teaching the advanced class this year. I know about the EDAP tools, but our district has blocked the site because it's in "Bulgaria," lol. I have them downloaded but have not been given support to have student upload them... Are their any tools from a company that are purchaseable that anyone highly recommends? These will be higher level thinking students, 10-12 graders. Thank you. 

[n. tilcheff]

EDAP Tools' Smart Magnet Rigs are the only pro-grade FK/IK rigging and posing system for Flash and Animate.

If EDAP Tools are good for tens of thousands of users all over the world, including many studios, schools and universities,  they should be good for your keen high-school students too.

The policy you describe is ridiculous and shameful.

For the benefit of your students and the practical usefulness of your classes you should work on reversing this baseless policy.

[Tgibs2]

Thanks for responding Nick. Nothing to do with Bulgaria, but rather a bit of not understanding fully the set of tools I believe and also just a safety precaution for any possible anything snuck into things like free apps, etc. Again, this is a tool extension so I don't see how that would be possible, but that's the fear from technology. Trying to get policies changed in public education is always a fight. I'm good at what I do so I never mind attempting multiple times to get things changed to benefit the students. That's why I'm asking for other possible options if there are any so I can pitch those as alternatives. If you have any hard number data showing how many use it that I can use to support my stance that it's a safe tool, by all means, pass it over. Thanks Nick. 

[n. tilcheff]

Hi @Tgibs2 ,

We have had our first public release in 2011 and since then have been pushing the boundaries of what is possible to achieve in Flash, not only as software developers, but also by making solid contributions in establishing a theoretical framework for a well-structured approach toward organizing and maintaining Flash-based animation productions.

Our work is highly-regarded as pioneering among the Flash Animation community.

Personally, I am a veteran animator, animation lecturer, author and UX professional with more than 30 years in the industry. The same applies to my friend and colleague Vlad - @Vladin M. Mitov - who is the software architect of EDAP Tools.

Our site is not blacklisted anywhere and has а perfectly clean track record. Checks with Virus Total always run green.

We wish you good luck in navigating this paranoid environment, so that you as a teacher and your students can make the most out of the unique resources that https://flash-powertools.com/ provides!

Best regards

[Tgibs2]

Nick, I know you said it scans green with Virus Total. Is this public knowledge, as in their evidence out their for this, or is this something where I would have to have the virus total software and would have to run it myself? Thank you. 

[n. tilcheff]

Hi @Tgibs2 ,

Virus Total is a public service where you can check files or sites:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload

[designer_shrink]

Hi Nick! 

I am DELIGHTED to have found you! We met on an Adobe form - maybe this one - in Feb 22 when I had an Animate file that got TOTALLY corrupted and you offered to help me. You told me it was a problem with that particular version of Animate and that you thought you knew how to fis it. You asked me to send you my entire fla file and offered to fix it! I did and you did and I was STUNNED because it had been a massive amount of work on your part. You told me to download an earlier version of Animate, use the fixed file you sent me and finish it that way. It worked! I published the copy I needed and made a private copy for you - as a thank you.

Anyway, I'm still making similar types of videos in Animate. I started one a couple of weeks ago and decided to try Modern Rigging - I remembered how you had told me about your product and rigging sounded cool but I never tried it. I've had NOTHING but problems with Modern Rigging - for over a week! NO one has been able to help me except that eventually, people started suggesting Flanimate. At first, I didn't want to try it - felt like starting all over and I was exhausted trying to work my way out of all the bugs. HOWEVER, by this time, I was hooked on wanting to add rigging to my PSYBark character, so I finally decided to at least LOOK at Flanimate and . . . I began seeing things that reminded me of your program - same examples and characters, etc. I did some MORE digging and found out that Flanimate was built on YOUR product!!!! I was now not only sold but super excited to learn Flanimate.     🙂

I installed it this afternoon, but that's all I've done so far. I have a question, and you're the PERFECT one to answer it. The video tutorials I've found for Flanimate all show how to animate shapes. PSYBark is an .ai file. I'm assuming I can still do rigging on that - if I have each element on a separate layer. Anything special I need to know about using ai components? 

Thanks so much - hope you're doing well. Sure seems like it!

Susan Litton, a.k.a. designer_shrink      🙂

[n. tilcheff]

@designer_shrink 

Hi Susan!

Yes, I remember the peculiar case of your FLA which had the internal Advanced Layers file structure exposed.

Our rigging and posing system - Smart Magnet Rigs (SMR) - is symbol-based and at this stage does not offer deformers.

You can rig and animate any type of source material as long as the character body parts are themselves symbols and each symbol occupies its own layer. These symbols can contain vector shapes or bitmaps, but with bitmaps you will probably need to mask them internally.

There is a lot of information, tutorials, sample files to download and play with, and more in-depth theoretical articles on our website.

A good place to start getting acquainted with SMR would be https://flash-powertools.com/smart-magnet-rigs-where-to-start/ and then progress through various other resources in the Tutorials and Workflow sections.

Good luck with your projects!

[designer_shrink]

Thanks so much, Nick! If I have additional questions, should I ask here or start new threads? I sort of hijacked this thread because I got so excited to have found you! But I'm sure I'll have additional questions about Flanimate.

[n. tilcheff]

Hi again, Susan!

If  the questions are about Animate itself, it would be best to start new threads here, on the forum.

If they are about EDAP Tools, best would be to post in the comments under the relevant article / tool entry on our website or in the Q & A section there.