Motion, Animation & Parallax Tool

[G.M.1986]

Hi I didn't know where to put that request and I think there was some similar requests on the forum... But I wanted to be sure and make a little precision. Considering that there is a lot of people that want to use Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo as a professional tool, to me it is Affinity Designer, for Digital Drawing, Graphic Design, UX/UI... and certainly motion design & 2D animation. But considering that one of the most important tool is After Effects and that it is really hard to work with AD to AE, because it doesn't import SVG, you can't import EPS with transparency and gradient into AE, actually you can with PDF, but when you convert to layer to work with all your different layers everything disappear.

What I am trying to say is AD and AE don't work really well together. So I was wondering, actually almost begging Serif/Affinity to develop some kind of a motion and animation... and why not parallax effects tool. Not one as complex as AE, we don't need everything. Like a light version of AE with only motion features, animation tools, maybe something like Spine (http://fr.esotericsoftware.com/), a light version as well; imagine an animation tool that got like 2-3 personas like motion; skeletal animation; parallax and that is able to export to tools like Unity, export PNGs animation, Sprite sheet; mp4 and mov.

 

It could be amazing! Thanks for reading me even if it doesn't get done.

[Uncle Mez]

Hello everyone, I'm not making a request to Serif team for a new tool but asking to all Pro here: what motion tool or vector animation software. 

I want to animate what I create with Adesigner. 

Your inputs are welcomed. 

[Scungio]

This is a real complicated issue. After Effects and Illustrator being owned and developed by the same company makes their compatibility possible. For Serif it is hard to make it possible to achieve that same goal. There are many applications out there that have their own take, their own proprietary vector approach. And even when you try to use some format like SVG or EPS even then it is hard to get all the apps on the same page, or to support all of the features of a format to the same degree.

For example, I have Moho Pro 12, I can use that to do character animation, or to do some motion graphics type of stuff in a rudimentary way, it is no After Effects or Apple's Motion. It can import SVG from Affinity Designer but there are gotchas, issues here and there. For example, say I want to do a character, I can't really get too fancy in terms of expecting Serif's effects or styles to come though, even something as simple as a gradient does not import into Moho. If I want it to be vector then the best I can do is use simple colors for the stroke and fills, no gradients. Then in Moho I can use the gradients, effects and whatnot from within that program. Or I could use all the bells and whistles in Affinity Designer but when I go to export I would have to rasterize it and work with it that way in Moho.

This may or may not be relevant but here is a video I did for a forum member a while back talking about the SVG import and export, the back and forth from Designer to Moho. In the video I talk about the differences of how they handle vectors, and whatnot. Unfortunately, it is all about workarounds and learning to deal with limitations. I have been wanting to do a long, comprehensive video showing how to do a character in Designer and export it to Moho and finish it up, rig it, etc, but it is a pretty daunting task and I have been busy with other stuff. Sigh, maybe one of these months...

https://vimeo.com/237423775

 

[InfoCentral]

You can use Synfig Studio with Affinity Designer/Photo now for FREE

[Guest]

Having Affinity Designer export Apple Motion shape files (.molo or .motn) would be a nice complement to the current export as Final Cut Pro/Motion compatible PSD option. Of course you can bring PDF files into Motion, but you loose the ability to work directly with the geometry. Bumping this similar conversation from last year.

[Rocketdrive]

For an animation project I did two years ago I successfully used assets created in AD, exported as PNG and animated in Apple Motion. If You plan the scaling in advance You can easily work with pixel based files. I mean that In many cases it is enough to export double resolution files, in more extreme cases just bump up the res of the assets.

Seeing how long Publisher is taking, I am not counting on a production ready animation app within the next five years, if ever. There are great apps out there, including AE, Moho, Motion, Fusion and the new Resolve which comes with it’s own Fusion page. Fusion and Resolve have extremely capable, free versions. Motion is a bargain for what it offers.

[Uncle Mez]

16 hours ago, Rocketdrive said:

For an animation project I did two years ago I successfully used assets created in AD, exported as PNG and animated in Apple Motion. If You plan the scaling in advance You can easily work with pixel based files. I mean that In many cases it is enough to export double resolution files, in more extreme cases just bump up the res of the assets.

Seeing how long Publisher is taking, I am not counting on a production ready animation app within the next five years, if ever. There are great apps out there, including AE, Moho, Motion, Fusion and the new Resolve which comes with it’s own Fusion page. Fusion and Resolve have extremely capable, free versions. Motion is a bargain for what it offers.

Thank you so much for your reply that helps.
I've tried to make Resolve work but my config is not that hi-tech so i gave up.
Now i'm thinking of giving a try to HitFilm Express, it's a free video editor software that (supposed) to enable us making good + they offer the ignite Express pack for free which works with most of the popular video softwares out there.
I will stick at learning and doing Arts and will surely improve my workflow in a better and professional way when publisher is out (even need to check the topic about APub and see what will come with for the first public release).

in my case i've trashed my Adobe things from all my studio computers (not coming back) to make more space and become a better Graphic Artist.

[SrPx]

And Natron, Blender ? (at least for those of us already handling well Blender, it allows quite some crazy stuff). Blender imports SVGs (a nice workflow I used for some very specific cases: auto trace raster images in Inkscape, export as svg, import in Blender, convert that shape to a boolean, carving and embossing it, made all my anim from there ), at least the contours infos, as curves. U can then texture/color them as a mesh, or whatever. Can even use the really improved grease pencil (initially was only a way to 2D sketch in the viewport, to help 3D workflows ! Now you can shade and paint with it quite well, allows reshaping/morphing with the brush, very fast, for for example, squash and stretch classic animation effects) animation tool, is like 2D in 3D, is pretty something of its own. Classic 2D animators are helping there to make it really good. I tend not to recommend blender for these usages, as requires fully handling of Blender's UI, plus the particular task itself, and for that is definitely needed special commitment (but it definitely pays for itself, after one year or so). But I was suggesting it for its video compositor and nodes system, particles system, physics, high end rendering as well as toon rendering (3D can be toon rendered and mixed wioth plain 2D animation, etc, etc, etc) To dominate all this one might need more than one year, unless doing every area absolutely guided by commercial and free -both- extensive VIDEO tutorials.  (I learnt without them, nor any book,  took me a lot longer than it should due to this. Video tuts is the way to go with Blender, much faster. And the courses are inexpensive, I recommend the Blender.org material always, as it helps the thing going)

I've posted today some giant post about animation tools... oh, yeh, it's here : https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/61196-animating-your-ad-files/   Not sure if some of those tools might make sense for your needs, as you are asking mostly for the vector based, 2D graphics anim part, I believe....