hello

General Introductions
1

Hello,

new here, name’s Bart, from Belgium.
I make drawings with Inkscape (see my portfolio for those interested), and am interested in SVG animation. Very interested, actually. At the moment I’m learning a bit of Javascript to get into animation “under the hood” finally.

I have mixed feelings about Synfig. First off, big thumbs up for getting your chest wet and making this project happen. It’s a great project, it really fills a hole as far as SVG animation goes, and the general setup is fine.

But when I try to use it, I just can’t get to where I want. This is partly because of some features that are missing but that could come in later, so no problem there, I can be patient. But what I’m really missing is a kind of drawing interface like Inkscape’s. Coming from Inkscape, I can’t help finding the Synfig drawing interface a bit clumsy and restricted. I’m sure it’s partly about getting used to it, but partly it’s just not quite as fine and efficient in its setup, I think.

As far as the animation tools go (timeline and such): very promising and interesting. I would love to experiment more with it, but every time I try to draw something, I just can’t do what I’m used to be able to doing in Inkscape, and abandon.
Also, I find the timeline is sorely missing graphical tools for smoothing out movements. I would like to draw a graph (a bézier curve actually) representing accelerations, instead of sliding about individual keypoints or calculating their position beforehand.

So that’s my general impression: superproject, a real necessity; great general setup and very promising as far as animation goes; drawing possibilities just don’t feel right (compared to Inkscape); and apart from that still a few key features missing (like graphical timeline tools mentioned above)…

I guess it’s too late for that, but isn’t it possible to graft more of Inkscape in Synfig instead of using Karbon as a base? Karbon, as an SVG editor, is not at all up to par with Inkscape as far as graphically editing SVG’s goes (hope not to offend anyone, just my impressions). Inkscape is more of an Illustrator-like program, and I think if you want to get into animation, you’ll want more an Inkscape-kind of interface than a Karbon-like one?

Well, just a few thoughts… WIll be glad to discuss further… Keep up the good work!

2

hello Bart and welcome here…

you have several way to import your art into synfig … gimp / inkscape / svg / list of raster images …
wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Category:ImportArt

i also recommend you to take a look to the step by step synfig manual (if not already done …)
wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Category:Manual

3

Hello fellow countryman, :smiley:
and welcome to the forum. Als je gewoon bent om te werken met Inkscape kan je makkelijk je tekeningen vanuit Inkscape exporteren naar sif formaat en ze verder animeren in Synfig. Denk er dan wel aan dat niet alle toeters en bellen van Inkscape ondersteund worden door Synfig. Bij Synfig draait alles om layers en eens je dat door hebt wordt het animeren makkelijker. Het is een hele grote en droge hap, maar ik raad je aan om de wiki te doorlopen en het simpel te houden in het begin bij het animeren. Laat bijvoorbeeld een cirkel van links naar rechts animeren en verander de interpolatie van de waypoints om te kijken wat er verandert aan de timing. Meer over waypoints en interpolatie vind je o.a. hier. Heb je vragen, aarzel dan niet om die op het forum te plaatsen.
http://wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Waypoints. Als je echt iets wil doen ivm met svg animatie moet ik er wel op wijzen dat Synfig niet exporteert naar svg of animated svg met of zonder smil, maar alleen rendert naar een resum gebruikelijke pixel formaten. Persoonlijk vind ik dat zeer spijtig aangezien bijna alles intern in vector formaat is opgeslagen, maar voorlopig is het wachten op svg export al of niet geanimeerd.
Greetz!

4

Thanks for your replies.
(To my fellow countryman: hello also, fellow countryman :slight_smile: I’ll continue in English so not only our fellow countrymen can follow :slight_smile: But nice to cybermeet you.)

About importing into Synfig (from Inkscape for instance): it’s not the same as natively drawing inside the program, of course, and I don’t feel like exporting/imprting all the time. Also, imagine I import from Inkscape, do some animation tweaking, and then decide I want to change the base drawing, I can start all over (loosing all the animating I did in Synfig)… So I am very reluctant towards exporting/importing.

I would happily mount the learning curve of Synfig, and already followed the basic tutorials, but as long as the drawing part isn’t up to par (according to my taste, it’s purely personal of course), I am reluctant to spend a lot of time and energy on Synfig… As I said, I find it a bit of a pity that the drawing part of Synfig resembles more Karbon than a full featured SVG editor like Inkscape…

Maybe it’s not really a critique someone can do something with, sorry for that. I think I’ll wait it out a bit, see where development takes Synfig. Meanwhile I’ll learn javascript animating SVG, the knowledge I pick up doing that will always serve something… And from time to time have a look at Synfig…

I guess it’s a real challenge to make a great SVG animation program, you still are the only ones (at Synfig) coming really close… So thumbs up for you guys anyway. Synfig remains very promising…