Affinity Animator - 2D Animation Program or Feature for the Affinity Suite

[michacassola]

Hey guys, what's up?

I just did a quick search and noticed that an animation feature of some kind has been requested many times before and I have an idea, although I am not convinced it is the best idea here it is:

When researching for an SVG animator I came across an app that has been highly praised by people on some site I landed on and I would like you to consider buying that company and then building a Windows version of it. It fits as you guys also started out with your MAC verions and then the feedback was overwhelming and the user base of Windows is overwhelming and so you built the Win versions also. So you have experience in that and the program is already finished in so many ways, meaning you don't have to start from scratch and you would gain a developer who obviously knows what they are doing. Keyshape - Create animated vector graphics (keyshapeapp.com)

If you don't like this idea, please make a program or a Persona in Designer to add this functionality, so this here is the plan B sentence, so that people who don't like my idea above can still vote on this gerneal feature request.
And it fits into your whole stealing earning Adobe customers thing as you would offer a replacement for an app that is a huge USP for Adobe right now: Adobe Animate (and AE).
So what do you think Serif Code Makers?

[michacassola]

This post has no relevance to the actual subject matter, skip please.
 

 

[Alfred]

35 minutes ago, michacassola said:

So what do you think @Andy Somerfield and you other Serif Code Makers?

I think we already have Andy’s answer!

 

[michacassola]

@Alfred He also said: "... Not saying there won't be an Affinity product which does animation one day..." and it was 2014 that that was posted. Please vote and give the first post a like if you as a customer would like this feature or program. Thank you very much!

[Patrick Connor]

2 hours ago, michacassola said:

Please forgive the spam....

 I have removed/edited out all the people you have named as this question has been answered by the developer.

[michacassola]

@Patrick Connor I have found more interesting software being made that you guys could absorb:

VGC Animation: https://www.vgc.io/ | vgc/vgc: Next-Gen Graphic Design and 2D Animation (github.com)

enve: enve | Open-source 2D animation software (maurycyliebner.github.io) | MaurycyLiebner/enve: Flexible, user expandable 2D animation software for Linux and Windows. (github.com)

 

[Ad-Man-Gamer]

@michacassolaI mean this completely in an informative manor, and I want to be clear that if it comes off as condescending, I do apologize, but i don't think you quite understand affinity and some of the aspects in the development of Software, and just absorbing another separate application is not the way to do it.

One of the things they are aiming for is fluid work flow. Given the work done on StudioLink, i would say they are doing this through the development of GUI and function modules that work together on a universal canvas core.

It would be a lot harder to pick apart and Frankenstein together code from an application that was made completely outside of the affinity dev environment, then it would be to glue all the internal tools together to get 90% there, with the last 10% being the development of the animation only tooling.

Modularity is a tangle of a beast in software development when it comes to high performant applications, and you can't just slap any old code together. I mean, you could, but maintaining and optimizing such a codebase would be a nightmare.

It would be like trying to assemble clockwork from multiple manufactures of clocks. It could be done, but each creator would have been working off different tolerances, core components available and personal preference, and the end result would be something that ticks, but not very efficient or accurate.

If they did develop an animation application (Affinity Cel. Just putting that name idea out there :P) It would have to build on and work with the prier core canvas and tooling modules. There would also have to be a lot of work done on getting all the prier modules ready for on-the-fly rapid rendering, especially if they want to stick to StudioLinks fluid and interchangeable workflow philosophy.

I will say, however, looking at the performance of affinity at the moment on complex files, I would say animation grade performance is very much in their grasp already.

Edited March 30, 2021 by Ad-Man-Gamer
Added @tag and added clarification

[Grauzorn]

An 2D Animation app would be pretty dope. I do not know if it would make sense though since it seems that there are way fewer motion graphics animators than the standard graphic designers. I do not know if the market for it would be big enough to sustain the dev costs with a 55 buck app (probably).

Though, I would not complaint if such a piece of software was for sale by Serif.

I really do hate to use Adobe After Effects and tend to stick to Blender and DaVinci Fusion. These are 2 "free" alternatives that can be used for that. On the Professional Site you got the Behemoth that is After Effects. That not only does 2D Motion Graphics but also a ton more.

[wonderings]

I think this might be the first thread I have read not simply asking for software to be created but to actually buy another company and then make a windows version of that companies product. I think it is a bit strange asking them to create software you want and even more so asking them to buy a company. I have my own crazy ideas, why don't you (the OP) become a large investor in the company, bring in the funds and capital to buy another company, staff it and create and support a brand new product. Sounds like a great idea to me!

[dotails]

Some of us petition signers are talking about helping the Affinity team with a third part macro plugin to tween and render images to then render again into video files. This would preserve effects and many other features from affinity that all other software destroys. If the affinity team finds time for integrating an animation studio, we won't need to do this, but in the mean time we are happy to try and help out.

[rodsal23]

Affinity team is lazy.

[michacassola]

Forum communication, welcome to the best way to loose hope in humanity.
 

Lets work backwards:

rodsal23: No, the affinity team is not lazy. They made 3 good apps.

dotails: Sounds interesting.

wonderings: Go Troll somewhere else please. If I had the money I would do that.

Grauzorn: Who said it has to be 55 bucks? Blender and Resolve have Raster output only (Freestyle is one vectorgraphic per frame so not really viable).

Ad-Man-Gamer: Just signed up to troll on my humble post? I am flattered. You are like one of these people who say: „I’m not a racist, buuuuuuut all this foreigners...“, just with condescension and not racism.

 

[wonderings]

22 hours ago, michacassola said:

Forum communication, welcome to the best way to loose hope in humanity.
 

Lets work backwards:

rodsal23: No, the affinity team is not lazy. They made 3 good apps.

dotails: Sounds interesting.

wonderings: Go Troll somewhere else please. If I had the money I would do that.

Grauzorn: Who said it has to be 55 bucks? Blender and Resolve have Raster output only (Freestyle is one vectorgraphic per frame so not really viable).

Ad-Man-Gamer: Just signed up to troll on my humble post? I am flattered. You are like one of these people who say: „I’m not a racist, buuuuuuut all this foreigners...“, just with condescension and not racism.

 

Think you are on the sensitive side if you "lose hope in humanity" because of some posts on a forum. You have made a poll that would only support what you ask, vote yes to get a new app or vote yes to have that built into an existing app. How about a "no don't do that" option as well? Sorry you think I am trolling. I think that term is generally thrown around to insult someone you disagree with by trying to make them look sinister. I think what you said and requested is way out there. It is easy to coach a team from your couch, everyone knows what plays should be made and done. Of course this is just you on a couch with no skin in the game. You are certainly free to put your thoughts out there, I would not deny that of anyone or say you should not, but don't expect people to agree with you and then get upset when people disagree with you. 

[michacassola]

Rather be sensitive than jaded. Rather do other stuff than write in internet forums... Oh my, the contradictions...

Also there are hyperboles.

The lack of the option of "no" means that the thread is not for people like you who thrive on "no".

Trolling is that "no I disagree and like diminishing stuff and am so smart" attitude. You have contributed nothing, just given your opinion that my idea is bad. Wow, how hard it is to find other people's ideas bad and criticize... That was meant sarcastically or ironically, just to make sure...

Neither am I coaching a team nor do I not have skin in the game. You know nothing about me, do you?

[Kartooniz]

So you are not interested to have an animation feature in affinity?

[WillBellJr]

Currently I use Moho v13(.5) if you need a reference as to how I'm currently doing my 2D anims.

I've been reading up on Spriter and Spine 2D as well; I love Moho for its vector based creation tools - I always prefer vector over pixel where possible.

 

For games development, I've been using Unity and Unreal Engine for years, I'm currently learning Godot v3.x .

I'd be appreciative of ANYTHING Affinity offers in this realm of graphics development!

-Will

PS - I selected a separate tool for 2D anims, because animation is not something trivial; especially w/bone anims and image warping (again I reference the tools listed above). 

 

I would however, absolutely LOVE if Affinity supported GIF animation the way (Adobe ugh!) Fireworks did in the past!

Fireworks was THE BEST GIF animation and optimization tool available!  Till this day I miss FW and at times I'm tempted to reinstall my Fireworks CS3 package, but that tool had bugs that was never fixed and the UI is way dated.

Today I find myself using Camtasia to render out GIFs when I'm that desperate, but I'd LOVE if Affinity had GIF anim editing on par with what Fireworks offered back in the day, when it came to the color and file size optimizations it offered.

I would take GIF editing / optimization features NOW, over everything else related to animation, that may be under consideration...

...Let me, ahem, restate that - I would take any kind of anim offerings from Affinity (thank you kindly), as long as it also supports GIF OUTPUT as well!..

[Medical Officer Bones]

On 6/6/2021 at 6:54 PM, WillBellJr said:

Currently I use Moho v13(.5) if you need a reference as to how I'm currently doing my 2D anims.

Moho is awesome for 2d animated cut-out vector based 'puppets'! When the original developer decided to take over Moho's development again and acquired it back from Smith Micro, I jumped a hole in the air. Best news in ages for the app.

On 6/6/2021 at 6:54 PM, WillBellJr said:

I've been reading up on Spriter and Spine 2D as well; I love Moho for its vector based creation tools - I always prefer vector over pixel where possible.

As you are aware, Moho isn't that great at frame-by-frame. I use OpenToonz for this, and it supports a fully vector-based workflow, with very good colouring automation tools. ClipStudio outputs directly to OpenToonz, btw.

On 6/6/2021 at 6:54 PM, WillBellJr said:

Fireworks was THE BEST GIF animation and optimization tool available!  Till this day I miss FW and at times I'm tempted to reinstall my Fireworks CS3 package, but that tool had bugs that was never fixed and the UI is way dated.

Today I find myself using Camtasia to render out GIFs when I'm that desperate, but I'd LOVE if Affinity had GIF anim editing on par with what Fireworks offered back in the day, when it came to the color and file size optimizations it offered.

I would take GIF editing / optimization features NOW, over everything else related to animation, that may be under consideration...

Ah, I remember Fireworks. I still have FW CS6 running on my machine for the odd file conversion.

Camtasia for rendering GIFs? You are a brave man. Wow.

If you are interested, either OpenToonz or PhotoLine will provide much more control. In fact, PhotoLine uses very much the same layer-based approach as Fireworks did: animate using layers, and export to a gif animation. There's even an animate layers control panel.

Each layer may be separately optimized and have its own colour palette. But this isn't really necessary anymore, because...

The latest beta of PhotoLine added animated PNG and WebP support, which vastly expand the possibilities for animation on the web with full colour and transparency support! Something sorely missing in GIF based animations, as you probably know (only 1bit transparency and a limit of 256 colours).

As far as I am aware, PhotoLine is now the only image editor in the world with support for the newer web animation file formats.

It works pretty much the same as Fireworks, barring some things, of course.

Also, OpenToonz imports and export GIF animations without any issue either. Just make sure to point it to FFMPEG in the preferences, and work with GIF animations and a true frame-by-frame timeline.

[WillBellJr]

Hi, Medical Officer Bones, in my graphics software travels (oh the money I've thrown away in my day[/i], I have an old license of Photoline, which I hardly ever used, and hence, never updated - interesting to hear, the feature set has parity with Firework's abilities!  I'll take a peek at it again, though now, I honestly, enjoy my Affinity tools way too much, and would prefer them to remain my goto apps for all my 2D graphics work...

I believe I also took a quick look at OpenToonz back in the day, when I first heard about it - I forget why I didn't take a liking to it; perhaps the UI, don't remember now - I'll take a look at that again as well (you can never have too many graphics tools LOL!)

Yep, I have an old license of ClipStudio Paint EX, I have yet to reinstall that software since I rebuilt my computer.

Thanks for your suggestions - I WISH I, had FW CS6, I'd mostly likely still have it installed (I have AfterFX CS6, my last purchase right before Adobe switched to the dark side...)

 

-Will

[Ad-Man-Gamer]

On 5/27/2021 at 7:51 PM, michacassola said:

Forum communication, welcome to the best way to loose hope in humanity.
 

Lets work backwards:

rodsal23: No, the affinity team is not lazy. They made 3 good apps.

dotails: Sounds interesting.

wonderings: Go Troll somewhere else please. If I had the money I would do that.

Grauzorn: Who said it has to be 55 bucks? Blender and Resolve have Raster output only (Freestyle is one vectorgraphic per frame so not really viable).

Ad-Man-Gamer: Just signed up to troll on my humble post? I am flattered. You are like one of these people who say: „I’m not a racist, buuuuuuut all this foreigners...“, just with condescension and not racism.

 

Ah, Yes. Imply your critics are racist trolls. That will discredit their points without question.
Your constructive rebuttal is appreciated.

[Tormy]

Ah great there was already a post about this feature. I have made a FR recently over the animation stuff.

Krita is a great tool but I know better Affinity so if I can have the animation workbench or even an app Affinity Animator, it will be very great.

On top of this, if include the possibility to have a separate timeline for each layer insync with the other timelines, as for Fresco, it will be really  great.

However from 2021 till today I don't see Serif moving toward this goal.

[cookepuss]

Keeping a dead thread alive. 😆

I think that the reason why its omission is most frustrating is that Affinity products are informally positioned as 1:1 Adobe alternatives. So, for many users, it hurts to see these apps succeed in that respect on SO many levels, yet falter on a few of the most critical. And if the goal to outright replace Adobe and leave their subscriptions, shenanigans behind... mission failed.

I've read these threads where Serif says that such a feature is not a priority, how timeline animation is not a critical feature, how investing in its development takes away from the goal of the app, and how what's being asked for is obscenely complicated. Let me briefly address those points.

First off, if the informal goal is to provide Affinity users a truly viable alternative to Photoshop, allowing us to indulge in our creative pursuits, then it SHOULD be a priority. After all, Photoshop may have originally been designed for photo editing, but countless creators have also been using it to build 100% new content for decades. Why should Affinity be any different?

In mimicking Photoshop's design, workflow, & aesthetic, Affinity Photo is mostly successful and it's that "mostly" that continues to pain us. Affinity users aren't just "photo geeks" looking to edit our pics. We're creators. If it's a priority for us then, ideally, it should be a greater priority for the developers too.

"Timeline animation is not a critical feature." Again, Affinity's demographic sharply overlaps with Adobe's here. How many Adobe artists are there out there that specialize in pixel art & animation? Just going by the overwhelming number of pieces on ArtStation... countless. Adobe users look to Photoshop to fill that need and, well, it does - by and large. Again, why should Affinity be any different?

There have been a lot of indie & studio pixel art games that have been made using and without having to leave Photoshop. Affinity Photo users can create the stills, but are unable to take them to the next level in situ. We instead have to leave this one experience & enter another. It's a time vampire & workflow disturbance, especially when those 3rd party apps lack Affinity Photo's other tools and overall polish.

If Serif hopes to capture more of those Adobe PS using indie & studio artists who specialize in pixel art, animation then this feature should be critical because, well, it is. Again Affinity Photo, much like Photoshop, has long surpassed its original goal of being an app simply for photo editing. It's now the home to many, many creators - some of whom are indie and others who are simply disenfranchised with the other guys.

How many prospective Affinity users do you think have looked at its feature list, noticed certain things missing, and have just walked the other way or, worse, stayed with Adobe because they had no viable alternative that fit their needs?

"But what you're asking for is some super specialized, complex bit of software. Affinity Photo is not that. That's not our goal."

... ... ...

Ugh. There's this misconception that we're asking Serif to turn Affinity Photo into Moho or Toon Boom. That's NOT the case. We're not even asking for the more specialized features of open source apps like Aseprite or Pencil 2D. Nope.

Hopes & dreamy wish lists aside, what we're asking for is a bare minimum level of functionality. At this point, Affinity Photo cannot even put together simple image sequences. It's a little embarrassing to see this functionality in something as primitive as the 30 year old GIF Construction Set. If "Grandpaware" and FOSS can do it...

Look. I get it. Serif sees threads like this and cringes. Users are greedy when they ask for stuff like onion skinning, tweening, multi-track editing, spline paths, etc. Greedy. Greedy. Greedy. If you need those features, yeah, just get a specialized app. I 100% agree.

Again, this is NOT what the great majority of us are asking for. Do you know what we really want?

1. The ability for us to see our layers side-by-side in order, timeline style.
2. The ability to manually scrub through them.
3. The ability to play them back for preview at some fixed frame rate.

That's it. That's our bare minimum.

We're not even asking for sprite sheet creation or GIF export. We can manage those tasks manually ourselves. However, simply adding in those above 3 features... That would be game changing for a lot of Affinity Photo users. At this point, without them, we're just guessing. With them included, can you imagine how many pixel art users would be breathing a collective sigh of relief?

It wouldn't make Affinity Photo an alternative to high end animation apps, but it WOULD mean that we wouldn't have to leave this one experience and clunkily enter into another.

See? No Moho or Toon Boom. Not even Aseprite or Blender. BARE MINIMUM. That's it. End users asking for more (at this point) are just being greedy.

Affinity Photo isn't an app used simply by people looking to edit their dog's head on their boss' body. It's used by creator looking to create new & unique content designed for mass consumption.

To put this into a somewhat out of context, erm, context, do you know how many Steam games exist with the tag "pixel graphics" on their store? Just over 19,000. IOW, a lot of creators prioritize some degree of timeline animation. Imagine if just a fraction of them could get done - or at least start - that work in Affinity Photo.

Bottom line, I don't expect Serif to see it my way. They know the story, what people really want, and how they're willing to devote their precious few internal resources. I expect this bare minimum request to go unfulfilled. After all, people have been asking for it for a decade plus now.

I want to fully abandon Photoshop. I *really* want to. You're just making it hard, Serif. There are a LOT more people who want this functionality than you think. Most just look at the feature list & walk away without voicing that desire. You're just hearing from a vocal minority, the ones who already bought into the Affinity ecosystem.

[Tormy]

I add the ability to import/export footages. Not to imitate any Video Editing SW but to be able to have access to each frame, make corrections/restaurations and re-import it into  any other video editing software.

because this lack in AP, I recently worked on 128 footages, each of one I had to export frame by frame.

• Import them as separate images on AP, elaborate them
• export one-by-one
• import them into the conventional Video Editor

In Photoshop I could do it without any issue, so I could find the work done in a tenth of the time, right to have got that feature.
Not clue is Serif (today Canva) has clear this P.o.V.