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Animation Software


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I would like to put my two cents worth of requests in for an additional product that I see a great potential for, animation.  Currently, there are many products for animation such as Toon Boom's Harmony, Moho, Adobe Animate, TV Paint Animation, and Blender's Grease Pencil. But none of these have the ability that Affinity has provided with combining the seamless workflow between the Affinity software. Applying Designer and Photo to an animation software would allow for the ultimate use of the animation creation process, simplifying the process, and provide the best workflow for anyone to achieve quick and polished work. Many of the above listed software have tools to create the vector and bitmaps, but most of them don't provide the abilities and ease that Affinity has.

Thank you for listening.
Paul Ihms

Sent from my iPhone

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People ask to create software for all creative needs, DAM, video editing, VFX, animation...

They have limited men power for all of that, and to update the current trio.

I think their next software is a DAM (like Lightroom), they made a poll about it and their CEO said they they were experimenting creating such software.

Since all  apps share the same base code, I can see an animation software can be next after the DAM, since they already have a good base for it. But you'll have to wait 2-3 years for that at least.

 

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But I do hope they will make sure their current apps are (as far as possible) fully featured and (as far as possible) bug free, before they start on any new apps! :)

Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz :  32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home
Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

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I think that Serif could get spread too thin if they took on more and more and more apps. 

People want them to do video editing yet there are already free options out there like DaVinci Resolve 16, that has Fairlight and Fusion, for audio and composting/motion graphics, which makes it very compelling. How does Serif compete with that??

Others want Serif to do web design, motion graphics and now animation?? 

I use Harmony and Moho. What I would like to see is Serif make export options that are more friendly to those apps, sort of like how we can export out with Json to Spine. I have workarounds where I export out to Moho just fine using SVGs but it is sort of tedious. Others have mentioned how they need more robust export options for formats like TGAs, Targa format, etc. To me it seems more doable, more possible to make the Affinity apps work well with other apps than it is for them to compete against them.

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  • 1 month later...
On 6/27/2019 at 4:53 AM, pwihms said:

I would like to put my two cents worth of requests in for an additional product that I see a great potential for, animation.  Currently, there are many products for animation such as Toon Boom's Harmony, Moho, Adobe Animate, TV Paint Animation, and Blender's Grease Pencil. But none of these have the ability that Affinity has provided with combining the seamless workflow between the Affinity software. Applying Designer and Photo to an animation software would allow for the ultimate use of the animation creation process, simplifying the process, and provide the best workflow for anyone to achieve quick and polished work. Many of the above listed software have tools to create the vector and bitmaps, but most of them don't provide the abilities and ease that Affinity has.

I could not agree more. Moving images are the de facto standard for many graphics tasks these days. A basic toolset with the awesome usability and integration within the Affinity family would be an extraordinary step forward. From my point of view, it does not have to be a competitor to Adobe Animate, Toon Boom or graphics animation like After Effects/Apple Motion right out of the box. However, a simple 2D animator like a timeline with easy-to-use keyframe editor would be awesome already. Basically an extension based on what is already there with Photo and Designer. It could easily be integrated (or blended out if not needed) with a new "animate" persona from within Affinity Designer or Photo. An in-between sequencer or interpolation - like the one Blender's grease tool offers - would be a wonderful addition, as well. And if the demand is there, this tool could grow up on this basis.

It would be wonderful to animate with the tools and the power of Affinity Photo/Designer, let alone all the brushes we got in our collection already. I think there's a more than solid basis for such an animate persona or an additional Affinity animate application in place.

Of course, this is wishful thinking. Wishful thinking because I like the usability and the interface of the Affinity products so much and would like to grow with these tools. Blender can do a lot with its powerful grease tool in this matter but the interface is a whole different beast unfortunately.

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  • 7 months later...

I feel that maybe Serif should acquire Moho from Smith Micro. SM have abandoned it. And it’s actually quite strong, though the 13 iteration is actually far worse than 12.5. But I feel Serif cares. And as a technology to challenge Adobe, they are the strongest candidate for acquiring and improving Moho. 

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I want to see an After Effects/animation tools hybrid where you can get a timeline for all Affinity products and the ability to animate things like vectors, raster, and adding camera and layer effects like After Effects. I am personally interested in animating pixel art and UIs, which would be pretty convenient to do inside of Affinity instead of porting stuff over.

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I’d love to abandon adobe, but the video and animation are the problem. Moho seems a tighter fit in style for an Animate substitute, though something that allowed bone rigging and AE style compositing would be amazing. I’d pay more that $50 for that, for sure. 

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There is an official FAQ that includes the following question:

Do you plan to have Web site design/Digital Asset Management/animation/video editing products too?

The answer is: We’re not sure yet! but we are very interested in adding a DAM solution to the Affinity suite in future.

So, I would not hold my breath to see this any time soon. You all better investigate existing software (see a list of alternatives here).

You can read the whole FAQ here (yes, it's a rather old post but to my knowledge this hasn't changed):

d.

 

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

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Yeah, it’s a long shot but considering how good Moho got with 12.5 (additions in 13, not an improvement at all) I would love to see a company like Serif pick it up and use the bones to create a new part of their suite. Smith Micro is refocusing and if they don’t sell it off, I fear it will be gone. Looking at Harmony otherwise. 

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  • 9 months later...
On 6/27/2019 at 8:44 PM, Scungio said:

I think that Serif could get spread too thin if they took on more and more and more apps. 

People want them to do video editing yet there are already free options out there like DaVinci Resolve 16, that has Fairlight and Fusion, for audio and composting/motion graphics, which makes it very compelling. How does Serif compete with that??

Others want Serif to do web design, motion graphics and now animation?? 

I use Harmony and Moho. What I would like to see is Serif make export options that are more friendly to those apps, sort of like how we can export out with Json to Spine. I have workarounds where I export out to Moho just fine using SVGs but it is sort of tedious. Others have mentioned how they need more robust export options for formats like TGAs, Targa format, etc. To me it seems more doable, more possible to make the Affinity apps work well with other apps than it is for them to compete against them.

how do you export to toon boom harmony?

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11 hours ago, rodsal23 said:

how do you export to toon boom harmony?

I was able to export a test PDF file to toon boom harmony though it failed in the end.

I put the pdf in its own folder
in Toon Boom I went to windows dropdown menu at the top and clicked library
then I right clicked on the left pane of the library window and clicked open library and chose my newly created folder
I right clicked the newly added library in the left pane and clicked the top option "right click to modify"
It opened a command prompt and ran a batch file which converted it into a tpl file and it was able to show the file.

My test file had a rounded square duplicated many times each with a different effect applied and some converted to curves out of the 10 states only 3 survived and those too where dismantled or rasterized.

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On 1/22/2021 at 11:03 PM, Squarebear said:

Since Affinity software doesn’t work in keyframes why would onion skin be a thing? For tracing in traditional illustration layer modes and opacity handle this.

which animation software do you think best compliment Affinity designer? I couldn't decide between animate or toonboom, are there better alternatives?

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On 1/23/2021 at 3:32 PM, rodsal23 said:

which animation software do you think best compliment Affinity designer? I couldn't decide between animate or toonboom, are there better alternatives?

OpenToonz/Tahoma2d is highly effective and powerful 2d animation software. It is comparable to ToonBoom Advanced and in some regards ToonBoom Harmony. The built-in compositor is as strong as Harmony.

Tahoma2d is a version of OpenToonz with a simpler default GUI setup. Either one is free and open source. It is used in the Japanese animation industry, and even Clip Studio Paint EX includes a direct OpenToonz export option (Clip Studio is not meant for full animation production, while OpenToonz is a full animation studio).

As for Adobe Animate: I would avoid it. Flash used to be great, but Adobe's Animate development team has their priorities upside-down, if you ask me. The last production usable and ready version is still Flash CS6, while the later Animate version introduced bug after bug after performance regressions, and more bugs. The bone tools are useless. Every time a new animation feature is introduced, somehow the dev team botched it, and delivered only half-working tools.

That said, an old copy of Flash CS6 plus Flanimate (free character animation plugin for Flash/Animate) is a really good combo. Animate's current state is a crying shame, though.

Avoid Toonboom Essentials. ToonBoom Advanced and Harmony are the way to go if you decide to go with ToonBoom. Essentials is way too limited in my experience. Besides, OpenToonz wipes the floor with Essentials, and even measures up with Harmony in many regards - for free!

Also have a look at Krita, which has nice bitmap-based frame-by-frame animation.

It also depends on the type of 2d animation that you are looking for: traditional hand-drawn frame-by-frame? Puppet-based cut-out characters? That makes a world of a difference. Cut-out 2d character animation can be done brilliantly well in not-so obvious software such as Blender and After Effects with the free DUIK plugin, or the dedicated Moho Pro animation app.

And do not underestimate Character Animator 4 from Reallusion. It is getting better and better for this type of animation too.

To answer your question better, let us know what specific type of animation you are looking for.

 

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i would like to put my 2 cents in for a DAM or at least a primitive browser!Th single image editing features of Photo are amazing and would certainly be enhanced by being able to see more than one comparative images at once. The asset manager accompaniments. would be great on top of that but could be added as   developed.  the browser feature at this point would be wonderful! I agree with many others that current capabilities should be refined before moving into other dimensions

Jerry

 

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  • 1 year later...
On 3/7/2022 at 2:32 PM, charlengifford said:

Recently, there are more and more applications for creating animation,

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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  • 4 months later...

as I wrote in February, I am really missing a decent browser (aka DAM?)

I do only still photography  so video and animation are irrelevant,  That is my selffish attitude as I recognize a small company is by neccity limited in what they do.  For the price, Affinity is by far the best thing around!!!

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Integration. I think my preferred word is this one, in the case of the missing apps from the Affinity Suite.

Serif is already involved in some major tasks with the core applications. Instead of them developing other applications competing against other "artisan" software, I would like them to collaborate with other artisan developers to share files.

So, see how to integrate the Affinity apps with existing animation, web development, 3D modeling, DAM, structured test writing applications. Each developer will continue to work on what they know how to do better.

Paolo

 

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