Konstantin's weekly report #35

[KonstantinDmitriev]

Hello, everyone! My weekly report is slightly delayed again, but it’s finally here.

Lots of things happened last week. First of all, Ivan have finally fixed the Windows build, which was broken for almost one month. That allowed me to publish the latest development snapshots for all platforms. Now everyone can test all the latest features landed into Synfig for the past months.

Then Ivan continued the optimization work by implementing some optimizations for Image Layer. He also tried to get rid of Tile rendering, but that turned to be a bit more tricky than we expected.

Also, he have made some steps to finalize the Bone Multilink feature. If you watched my last demonstration video, you probably noticed that it is impossible to move the shape points that are influenced by more than one bone (the points are marked with gray color).
Ivan have fixed this by implementing the reverse manipulations for WeightedAverage convert type. Unfortunately, we can’t to merge this feature into master branch, because there are still some problems with file loading/saving remain there. We hope to get them fixed soon.

Finally, the news about our fundraising campaign.
The campaign is coming to the end, but the good news that it’s already reached its goal! That means Ivan will keep working on Synfig in April.
Many thanks to everyone who supported us and made that happen!
I would like to take a chance and put a special recognition for Gerald Young, who have funded one-third of every campaign for 4 months in a row. Thank you!

The “Choose Priority” reward was claimed by Rylander Animation studio - and this time we’ve got a request to implement a special development priority and after some short discussion the agreement was made for…

BONE-DRIVEN IMAGE DISTORTION!

You can find the similar feature in Anime Studio (see this tutorial, paragraph 1) or ToonBoom Harmony Stage (see this page) - it allows to deform a bitmap image using a skeleton layer.

As usual, the main challenge will be not the distortion implementation itself, but achieving the good speed. Let’s see how it will turn out. Stay tuned!

[hulf2012]

Hello
Some comments:

• About the Group Transformation Widget: In the Transform Tool Panel, there must be writen that using the spacebar you can change the origin of the transformation.

• In this development build (at least in Windows), the skeleton layer doesn’t appear in the Others category. In this report says that :

Ivan have fixed this by implementing the reverse manipulations for WeightedAverage convert type. Unfortunately, we can’t to merge this feature into master branch, because there are still some problems with file loading/saving remain there. We hope to get them fixed soon.

but in the http://www.synfig.org/cms/en/news/development-snapshots1/ says:

Bones animation system for cutout and vector animation

as it was implemented, like in the videos. This thing confuses me. Because is not implemented yet, right?

• My opinion is that the dynamics-enabled animation is related with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mass-spring-system.png. It will be good to relate the explanation in the wiki with some figure or diagram. I quite understand the use of variables, but my physics knowledge is … pitifull in this specific field

Thanks for the effort, to all the team and the contributors.

[Yoyobuae]

@Zelgadis

The “Choose Priority” reward was claimed by Rylander Animation studio - and this time we’ve got a request to implement a special development priority and after some short discussion the agreement was made for…

BONE-DRIVEN IMAGE DISTORTION!

You can find the similar feature in Anime Studio (see this tutorial, paragraph 1) or ToonBoom Harmony Stage (see this page) - it allows to deform a bitmap image using a skeleton layer.

As usual, the main challenge will be not the distortion implementation itself, but achieving the good speed. Let’s see how it will turn out. Stay tuned!

Hmmm, would be possible to implement the image distortion as a separate layer, and then use the bone/skeleton layer to control it? Seems possible to me, as long as the image distortion layer is controlled by some handles.

[d.j.a.y]

hello,

@hulf2012

Group Transformation Widget:

this should be explained in the doc/wiki i think, has others many features/changes that will come with the future/next release

@hulf2012

In this development build (at least in Windows), the skeleton layer doesn’t appear in the Others category.

has it’s not written here, skeleton is experimental, and to play with it you must activate experimental features in setup. Nota wiki edited

@hulf2012

My opinion is that the dynamics-enabled … explanation in the wiki

yep … the wiki will need some rewrite … maybe you can help ?!

[d.j.a.y]

i have tested a little Bone Multilink feature. and Link to skeleton and … whaou … it’s incredibly powerful !

in this little test, i have also used two skeleton layers -
one for the top,

one for the bottom

[KonstantinDmitriev]

@d.j.a.y

@hulf2012

In this development build (at least in Windows), the skeleton layer doesn’t appear in the Others category.

has it’s not written here, skeleton is experimental, and to play with it you must activate experimental features in setup.

As of today the bones aren’t marked as experimental features anymore. So they will work out-of-the-box in our next snapshots.

@Yoyobuae

Hmmm, would be possible to implement the image distortion as a separate layer, and then use the bone/skeleton layer to control it? Seems possible to me, as long as the image distortion layer is controlled by some handles.

Yes, we have considered that as “minimal implementation plan” at first. But at the end we have come to different concept. Please see the new report for details - Konstantin's weekly report #36

[d.j.a.y]

@Zelgadis

As of today the bones aren’t marked as experimental features anymore. So they will work out-of-the-box in our next snapshots.

Cool !