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Affinity Animate


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The Affinity programs are the best out there. This is not really a question but a comment. Can Affinity make and affinity animate program? This would be really helpful and would be great. They could add a timeline, frames, onion skin, and other parts of any animating software to the already created affinity designer.

Edited by Alex Bridges
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The animation software market is already a heavily saturated one. Very professional and heavy-duty free/open source options exist, so Serif would probably be burning their hands on this.

Try OpenToonz, which is free and open source, and extremely powerful. It is in use by several animation houses in Japan, for example.

Blender introduced Grease Pencil animation a few versions ago, and the upcoming 2.83 version will really take this to the next level. Also free and open source. And completely integrated with its 3d animation tools.

Although it would be nice to have basic animation tools in Designer/Photo. Krita works well for frame-by-frame, and I think a similar animation timeline would be very welcome.

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On 3/6/2020 at 4:04 AM, Medical Officer Bones said:

The animation software market is already a heavily saturated one. Very professional and heavy-duty free/open source options exist, so Serif would probably be burning their hands on this.

Try OpenToonz, which is free and open source, and extremely powerful. It is in use by several animation houses in Japan, for example.

Blender introduced Grease Pencil animation a few versions ago, and the upcoming 2.83 version will really take this to the next level. Also free and open source. And completely integrated with its 3d animation tools.

Although it would be nice to have basic animation tools in Designer/Photo. Krita works well for frame-by-frame, and I think a similar animation timeline would be very welcome.

Sure, but what I would want from a potential Affinity Animate is more akin to After Effects styled animations of vector art, which I think would be quite useful to have supported. It's just very useful when creating prototypes of websites, user interfaces, video banners, and more. The collaborative power between Illustrator and After Effects makes it hard to find a good alternative in that department since After Effects has a lot of great tools for handling Illustrator files.

Also, just having a proper timeline that can be supported in both Designer and Photo would leave open opportunities to do things like animating pixel art, cleaning and colouring of unfinished animations, and just general animation stuff. It doesn't have to be anything revolutionary, just a solid system that provides animation capability with all the tools that Designer and Photo provide. It would fill a solid niche for UI/UX designers and artists who rely on Photoshop when working in the animation industry.

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I do not think there is room for actual animation software, and also bettering AAE would take considerable effort and finances. Also there are some video animation/fx packages which are OK though not quite with AAE feature set.

That said, if Designer aims to compete in UX field it should offer some way to do prototyping, either with built in animation tools, or with connection/export to some other prototyping package.

Also, there really is no simple gif animation tool in he market at the moment that can take layered file and animate it.

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22 hours ago, Alex Bridges said:

They could add a timeline, frames, onion skin, and other parts of any animating software to the already created affinity designer.

Sure, but that would require an enormous amount of development work. Besides, we don't yet even have things like vector warping, which would be essential to support tweening, or a lot of other features users have requested like auto-tracing, better import/export support for more file types, CAD-like dimensional tools, &  so on.

They have suspended development of the often requested DAM app, apparently because they feel (quite rightly, I think) they need to focus on further development of the 3 apps in the current Affinity suite before taking on any new projects. Diverting any of their limited resources to developing an animation app would be just as bad & more likely worse, delaying the improvements to the existing 3 apps so many people want for even longer.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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On 3/6/2020 at 3:47 AM, Fixx said:

Also, there really is no simple gif animation tool in he market at the moment that can take layered file and animate it.

Actually, there is. Strangely enough PhotoLine includes a very simple "Dynamic Animation" tool that is pretty simple to use and takes its layers to animate with. It supports keying of layer positioning, rotation, etc. Works for very simple GIF animations, and the interface is rather... strange. But it works. It exports the result to an animated GIF (or movie file). It's a rather strange tool, though, because the timeline works similar to Photoshop, but it is entirely separated from the rest of the application. Tracks have to be created separately from the layers, and layers assigned to tracks. Almost like a mini animation tool slapped on top, and a 'unique' approach. Never seen it done before in that way. The animation data is saved separately in the file, so if you wouldn't know about the animation tool, you'd never know there was an animation embedded.

But I prefer openToonz for Gif animations nowadays. OpenToonz imports a layered PSD file, and will convert the layers to animatable layers, as well offers an option during import to convert groups to keyframes in those layers. Just make sure to match the new scene size with the original PSD file, drag it into the view, and select the options you need. Done. Start animating with the Animate tool.

While OpenToonz seems like overkill, it is easy, efficient, and very straightforward to animate with. Just make sure to point OT to FFmpeg, and it will happily render your animation to an animated Gif. The interface is actually very easy to get into if you've ever worked with animation software before.

Best of all, OpenToonz is free, open source, and all that.

Latest nightly releases here: https://github.com/opentoonz/opentoonz_nightlies/releases

Anyway, two simple* to use options which will take a layered file, animate it, and export to a Gif animation.

* simple is relative ;-)

 

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  • 1 year later...

Adding a dedicated animation application to the Affinity Studio would attract more users to Affinity who currently pay for a monthly plan with Adobe. Would be more work for them, but look at the audience out there using it. They could follow the example of other companies and buy ownership of some current software and edit it to work as Affinity software. Apple, Google and Adobe all do that.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 3/6/2020 at 11:21 AM, Medical Officer Bones said:

Oh, I would love to see a proper modernized After Effects alternative. I am surprised no-one has developed it yet, because nothing really comparable to After Effects exists on the market; it would be a successful product if someone would.

I know this is an old thread. But, maybe you can check out the new Cavalry app which aims to be an alternative to AE for motion design. Also check Natron, which is free & open source, for VFX.

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Serif hasn't even been on track for finishing their first three desktop layout/illustration apps. Maybe we let them do their work here first. Forum is full of complaints and clever ideas to improve all apps, but not much really happens. I would not want to see anything from serif in video or animation space, as they could not add anything better, I believe. By the way - if you are on a Mac, there is Apple Motion. 50 EUR and better than anything serif could put together in ten years. And there is an (awkward) way to export Affinity elements to it (another two little apps and extra 30 EUR needed, though). Just used it today and it works, but direct export to Motion is still on my wish list..

 

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9 hours ago, Catshill said:

I wonder whatever happened to Serif?

With the grain of salt for trusting the information on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif_Europe#History

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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This looks really great! As far as I can see, it's not supporting Designer files directly, but SVG. But this works quite good as export from Designer. I'm using it to go from Designer to Pixelmator Pro (and from there sometimes directly to Motion as it exports Motion project files).

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