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New App/Implementation: Affinity Animator


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I have downloaded Krita now and it looks like a powerful app for illustrations but if compared to Affinity Designer, it appears not to be that intuitive. In spite of my difficulties getting into vector based illustration earlier (not that I seriously tried, but still...) what was impressive with AD was that I immediately got the hang of it and after just a couple of hours or so, I was able to create illustrations. Almost no learning curve at all. Pure magic, if you ask me. I watched a few tutorial videos and after a day or two I was already using it for my daily illustrations - and please note that I have a deadline for those! No problem at all!

Now, when I am thinking about an animation app, it is something like that I am looking for and I think the people behind AD is just about ready to add some simple animation to it, seeing what they have added as new features in the latest update. 

So far I haven't got the faintest idea as to how I would create animation with Krita. I searched for "animate", "animation" or "timeline" in the online documentation, but saw no such thing. I created a simple shape and tried to move it around but couldn't. 

I know, that is probably something very easy I have overlooked and I am going to look into it more, but that is one criteria I have; you should be able to create a circle and move it around without having to look up how. Next thing is to have some kind of a timeline right there in front of you. Maybe it doesn't exist in the Mac-version so far? So I tried to add a couple of layers but since I couldn't move the circle around it was of no help. 

Again; I am sure it is quite simple as soon as you know how, but what I am looking for is an app which is so obvious that you don't need to look up how. Not until you come to the more advanced features.

As for Hype, yes, I looked at it but it is not the kind of animation I am looking for. I draw and I want to make anymations based on my skills as a draughtsman. 

So far I have tried a great many apps and got some of them to work, but none of them has managed to do the magic which the people behind AD have. So, I am waiting for them to add animation to the list :D I know it will be just The Thing! :D

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Krita and Affinity Designer are very different beasts - I would say Affinity Photo is more comparable, since Krita works with pixels.

 

You will find the animation panels (or "Dockers" as they are called in Krita) in the Settings--->Dockers menu. The ones you want are called "timeline", "animation", and "Onions Skins". Working with the timeline is simple and fast: just right-click or ctrl-click on a frame to insert a new key frame, or duplicate the previous one.

 

The small plus icon on the left allows for control which layers are visible in the animation timeline. Then start drawing and animating!

 

To move and transform layers, use the transform tool - that works very smooth.

 

 

By the way, something incredibly cool is the new deferred rendering, or "instant preview" mode: I can now paint in realtime with NO LAG WHATSOEVER in a A3@600ppi document with a 1000px brush! Mind, this is on Windows at home (a 7~8 year old machine!). Photoshop delivers a horribe painting experience at such resolutions. Quite amazing experience. Still some hiccups, but already the performance improvements in this version are out of this world.

 

I truly hope the mac version will get the attention it deserves. I will test at work as soon as I can.

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Regarding Flash: Flash is giving a new push by Adobe, and is rebranded as "CC Animate". Adobe is attempting to integrate (drastically improved) web animation tools and output in this new version. Perhaps a new lease on life? We will see.

 

I second Anime Studio - great for bones-based tween animation of characters. Less suitable for frame by frame drawn animation, although the newest version now has such tools available as well.

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I stand behind an animation app. Something that does vector morphing animation and exports to mp4 and HTML Canvas, allows JS function triggering and you got an awesome tool.

 

The base tech already exists in Designer, so "all that's missing is a timeline" :)

 

Of course not. It's a big endeavour no matter how you look at it. But if you build it, I'll buy it.

 

Other than Flash, there really isn't much out there that's any good.

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I feel rather confident that Serif will add animation support with keyframing and interpolation to Affinity Designer with a later version eventually, since they had it for their now deprecated DrawPlus (which was replaced with Designer, DrawPlus was Windows-only and now they are going with a suite to span across both platforms).

 

They indicated that these products will definitely be growing down the road, and animation is one of the killer features for me and a lot of other people, so I'm looking forward to following their development!  Right now, though, they're pretty busy with continuing to grow their Affinity line (Publisher's coming and some other stuff), so it may be awhile before we see it.

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  • Staff

Charoum,
 
Welcome to the Serif affinity forums.
  
Affinity Designer is not meant to be everything that DrawPlus was and more.

We have said fairly clearly that this feature doesn't really belong in our vision of Affinity Designer, certainly not for now. It may be another product as this thread suggests.
 
This feature was added to DrawPlus when flash was all the rage, and frankly it made the codebase almost unmanageable from that point onwards. Animation needs a different approach altogether.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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Other than Flash, there really isn't much out there that's any good.

 

Sorry, but, respectfully, I quite would disagree with that  :). The area is indeed overcrowded, hard to compete zone and make a buck out of it...

 

You can have a look at a post I just wrote about it (even while it was about gif animation, but they're great animating tools).

And I am leaving out -unintentionally, just forgot- CC Animate(old Flash, and yep it has solid development yet), Anime Debut (cheap) or the professional quite more expensive pro version, and a bunch others.

If anything, being a 2d/3d animator myself, there's quite more options than there ever were.  Specially, lately 2D bones (even if imo that's not real pure animation) and some other great helpers have been added, so is easier for even very amateur people to produce an ok looking animation. To make something to compete, you would have to make a monster of features and great UX/performance.

 

IMO, a graphic design tool, quite focused in professional DTP (thankfully !!) and general design like AD doesn't need at all animation, is a lot out of scope. Just look how even CC makes a total different application for the matter. 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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Sorry, but, respectfully, I quite would disagree with that   :). The area is indeed overcrowded, hard to compete zone and make a buck out of it...

 

Good post, you mention some good tools there.

 

I agree there are many options but they're too specific. Moho and ToonBoom are the ones that impress me most, but they're too geared towards cartoons. 

 

Flash struck a sweet spot that allowed professional animators make Happy Tree Friends, amateurs do stickmen fight animations, ui designers do animated mockups and micro-interactions for websites. The UI, features, supported import and export formats, and the fact that it's not a hardcore tool that requires years of learning is what made Flash explode in popularity the way it did.

 

There's nothing out there that's polished, easy to use, flexible and that feels at home with the rest of our tools. It's like where we were with Adobe Illustrator before AD. There are loads of vector drawing tools out there, but until Serif came along with AD you didn't see anyone considering dropping their CC subscription.

 

I did drop Adobe for AD, but now I have this gap to fill. I tried just about everything I could find, and I'm yet to find something convincing. I'm getting by with Apple Motion, which is far from what I need but enough to get some UI demos rolling. And every now and then I google "vector animation" hoping someday a great new tool pops up.

 

Now of course I wouldn't want to see this as part of Designer. It should be a different app. I see this as the difference between Designer and Photo. They share the same base, but each does its own thing.

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Thanks  :)

 

Actually, the UI general idea they are handling is quite good and seems people gets to use it very fast (I am comparing it mentally with some other new apps that did hit the market, and there's a much pronounced UI learning curve with those.) So, an anim app done with that feel would be nice, specially at an affordable price. IMO, though, there's way a lot of food in the plate of Affinity now for the size of the company, in my opinion... I wouldn't be surprised if something like that wouldn't be possible until at least Publisher is released , polished and consolidated.. .but that's a shot in the dark, I don't know.

 

Vector based, yep, there's less stuff. The best of the ones I mentioned are raster based, indeed. There was Expression (kind of an illustration software, vectors) and that Cell something or however was called, an animation software made by Creature House, which I didn't got to test fully, but was purchased by Microsoft, and then the project got its stall and development ended. Then there is, or was, as have not checked for a while, Synfig, and open source animator, vector based. But i didn't find my way the several times I tried.. .yet though didn't try hard, to be honest.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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