It is not my strong suit, do you have any tips on the process or anything else that would make it easier than just “practice”?
Yeah, just practice. Everyone is different and will adopt a different workflow. I would recommend making something you actually want to make rather than making various exercises and learn from there.
I can share what I learnt from making my last animation, but it’s not a professional opinion, but rather an amateur’s discovery:
- Do not settle for raster animation in Synfig. Synfig does support cut-out animation but that’s very limiting and you will occasionally want to break out of it to make your character turn and then you will have to use some other program to do frame-by-frame animation because Synfig doesn’t have necessary tools. So yeah, use raster work for backgrounds, not characters
- Compose everything in Synfig. Some people use Inkscape to make their vector art and then import it in Synfig. That’s a questionable approach because a) not every Inkscape feature is supported and b) your work won’t be optimized for animation
- Achieve more with less. A shape with too many vertexes will be a HELL to animate, believe me. Do you really need a circle made from outline and region? Maybe you can achieve the same with just 2 “Circle” layers? Do you really need to construct an arm from that complex region? Maybe you can make an arm using a bunch of simple outlines with various widths? So think how can you achieve the desired result using fewer layers
- 2D animation hate details, so keep it to a minimum. The reason for that is that every little detail on your character you will have to animate manually. It’s not like in 3D where you can stuff your characters with all the details, elaborated clothes, accessories and then just throw it at a GPU to render. Think how can you make an interesting and memorable design without going overboard. Also, Synfig is pretty slow at rendering, so that doesn’t help the case either
- Name your layers. Use some scheme that will help you quickly identify key layers/groups. It will help when you can’t select the desired shape from canvas because it’s underneath something else so you will have to go to Layers panel
- A lot of nested groups will bring you suffering when you will need to change Z depth of objects. Keep every part that can theoretically overlap in the root group. Here’s an example of such organization from my current work:
Layers named “ARM-RIGHT-F*” are fingers for the right hand. Notice that they are all in one root group and not in something like “ARM-RIGHT → PALM → FINGER1”. If your model ends up with a very complex nested structure, not only you will struggle with Z order, but you may also end up using “Sets” to make it somewhat manageable
- Bones are in a bad state. You cannot copy them or it will destroy your work, so reusing them becomes a huge pain. Bones do have some nice features though, like inverse kinematics but bugs and setting them up properly makes me avoid them completely. If you decide to rig your characters using bones, please, backup your work and backup it often
Those were some general notes on modelling in Synfig I personally follow. If you never modelled/rigged your characters in Synfig before, I recommend checking out this tutorial from Khemardi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh5j00Tu0wQ&list=PLjuma0nCUc48790w-SaPViLtfNFB7erCM
I didn’t watch it myself since I rig characters differently (without using bones), but nevertheless it’s a good watch if you aren’t afraid of bones like I am.
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I like @Svarov suggestions but I don’t think Synfig is a “modelling” software, it’s a great animation package that lets you model shape in a pretty decent way but if you really want to speed up your projects you should widen your workflow and introduce some other better “modelling” software.
Here I’m sharing with you the 2 workflows I suggest to all my students, I prefer the first one, Inkscape to Synfig, as it is an smoother transition and you could stick on a FOSS environment. Another important thing @Svarov said is that not all Inkscape/Illustrator/YouNameIt modelling software features will work when importing so you need to test the workflow, see what works, what doesn’t and find workarounds or better approaches to your specific needs.
INKSCAPE → SYNFIG
- Design your shapes trying not to use or add special effects, they may not work in Synfig… in case you are unsure, just check if everything is exported as you want.
- Save the document in SVG native Inkscape format so that you have a first original copy of your design
- now “save as…” or “save a copy…” and select “Synfig animation (*.sif)” file format
- Open the file in Synfig
- open Canvas / Properties, go to Gamma tab and set R, G and B parameters to “1.0”
- finally, in Time tab you will need to set the time your animation will have as the imported file has just 1 frame
- done!
ILLUSTRATOR → INKSCAPE → SYNFIG
- Design your shapes trying not to use or add special effects, they may not work in Synfig… if you need them use “Expand” Illustrator feature or just check if everything is exported as you want
- Save the document in AI native Illustrator format so that you have a first original copy of your design
- open the .ai file in Inkscape
- leave the importing options by default, press “OK”
- now “save as…” or “save a copy…” and select “Synfig animation (*.sif)” file format
- you might also need to delete the “.ai” ending to the name so that it really save is as .sif
- Open the file in Synfig
- open Canvas / Properties, in Image Size you will have to rewrite your project dimensions in pixels
- now go to Gamma tab and set R, G and B parameters to “1.0”
- finally, in Time tab you will need to set the time your animation will have as the imported file has just 1 frame
- done!
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