To make a long story short: I’m trying to do a series. Mainly, it’s a hard one since I want good animations. The ones like “uncrappy” animation. But, at this time, I only know how to move a circle from one side to another and it took me 2 hours actually. What I’m trying to say is: I want some help from you. I don’t want to rely on tutorials as my mentor on Synfig. I want real help from real people.
Hi repetonce,
It is difficult to help you without an speciphic question to solve. That’s the intention of the tutorials: show you to do general things.
Regarding to the “move the circle from one side to other” that took you about two hours: I wonder if you get stopped by some speciphic step of the tutorial (becuase it is the basic one for begginers) or there were something wrong in your synfig version that didn’t respond like the tutorial explained.
Also, and don’t take this as offensive, we would want to know what’s your background in animation process, because knowing your knowledge level in this matter, would prevent us to think that you are familiar with terms like keyframe, waypoint, timeline, interpolation, layer, blend mode and such.
What we know about synfig and synfigstudio usage comes from the experimentation and the exploration of the source code. The wiki (synfig.org) has been constructed by volunteers that started only with some small documentation at the beggining (Animation Basics tutorial I think).
We gladly would help you on any help you need but consider worth to read the tuturials and to do some of them as basic training. A little of effort from your side would encourage us to help you better.
Finally, we could help you better if you tell us the operating system you’re using, and the current version of synfig you have installed. That would prevent us about some past bugs already solved.
Cheers!
-G
Also, if you post your questions on the #synfig IRC channel, you may be able to get real time help from people there. (Depending on who’s there, and how busy they are, of course).
see synfig.org/Contact for more details.
Chris
What’s bugging me is how to make the character I draw to move its mouth perfectly for lip-sync like the one in this animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx0vqdyvPy0.
For now, I’m still drawing my character.
I also wanna know how to make a half-circle.
Did you try using the circle tool to make a bline-based circle,
and then remove one or more vertices?
For lip-syncing, did you look at papagayo? Given the current lack
of sound support, sound integration is however unfortunately
limited.
G.
The best way to sync your animation to sound now is to open up the sound file in a sound editing program(I use Audacity) and zoom in to find out where sounds should begin and mark it and also mark places where the mouth should open and close and record the times. When you are ready to animate the voice go into synfig and make key frames at the positions you marked. It is easiest to start your frame on an even second mark, but you can start from anywhere as long as you remember to add it correctly. When you animate your character, think of how the mouth should be shaped to make a certain sound. It will make it look better and your character won’t look like it is constantly screaming. Just remember that 24 frames = 1second (unless you changed it…I don’t recommend it).
24 frames = 1 second
18 frames = .75 seconds
12 frames = .5 seconds
6 frames = .25 seconds
3 frames = .125 seconds
Any thing less than that probably won’t be needed, but if you need to go smaller or at a weird interval use this formula:
y/1 = x/24
y = desired time and x = desired frame 1 = 1 second, 24 = number of frames to make one second.
it’s just basic math but to simplify it even more. All you do is cross multiply. Say I wanted a movement to start at .65 seconds… I would multiply .65 by 24
.65 * 24 = 15.6
You would need to start at 15.6 frames for a starting time of .65 seconds.
Therefore, the simplified formula is.
desired time * 24 = desired frame
if the desired frame number is higher than 24 you can divide it by 24
for example… if my desired frame turned out to be 97 frames
97/24
24 goes into 97 4 times
24 * 4 = 96 97-96 = 1
you add the remainder on as frames instead of using decimals
so your result is 4 seconds 1 frame which is notated in synfig as:
4s 1f
I hope this helped someone.
It is also important to make sure that when you render your final png sequence and compile it into a video (I use virtual dub in windows) in cinellera, you set the output to 24 frames per second or your audio will not sync correctly. If you use the avi output, it may or may not be correct. If it isn’t, please try the PNG rendering method. When you use a video editor, you can load in the png file by selecting the first PNG rendered. The rest should load automatically. It will be named:
filename0000.png
where filename is the name that you chose to save it as. Please note that it works best to render the png files to an empty folder. Also, even if you type in filename.png, you should still change the drop down menu from auto to png.
Can I save my animations into .mpeg format so I can put it on Windows Movie Maker for sound editing?
Have you looked on the website? It contains various ways to render
an animation to various types of movie files, including mpeg. So, yes.
G.
If nothing else, you could always convert the avi files to mpeg.
Do you advice that I draw on a different software like Paint.NET or GIMP?
Sometimes, when I’m drawing with Synfig, from time to time, it crashes.
yeah…u could try either Gimp or Inkscape! both of those drawing programs r really good, work excellent, and r completely free! 
personally, i think those programs will be ur best option for drawing…they have more drawing tools than synfig (no reflection intended…don’t get me wrong! i love synfig! 
), and so i think they’ll suit ur purpose better!
Hope this helps!
-C
I really have a lot of questions.
Hope they get answers.
Why can’t I open a JPG or PNG file on Synfig? Sometimes, when I do this, a message appear that ,unfortunately, I haven’t got the chance to copy and tell you what does it say.
Why can’t I open an animation I made on Windows Media Player even though its in a MPG file format? A message appear saying:The specified module could not be found
And last:
Why does it always crash even if I’m just doing simple things like drawing a cirle or rectangle?
File-> Open and selecting a image file will likely cause a crash, as the code is expecting a sif or sifz file.
On the Canvas screen, > File-> Import should allow you to import jpg and png files OK.
Last time I checked Windows media player only makes wmv files. If you really do have mpg file, it is likely that Synfig is unable to find ffmpeg.exe.
Download the compressed file from ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/ffmpeg/
(I’m using version 10464, but anything later should work too)
You may need an unzip program like Peazip to read the 7z file. Once extracted, put ffmpeg.exe in a dir in your path, so that Synfig can find it.
Synfig shouldn’t crash doing simple things like drawing a circle. Have you seen and applied the fix mentioned in the FAQ?
synfig.org/FAQ#Can_I_do_anything … gstudio.3F
Where can I download earlier versions of Synfig?
Same place as current versions.
Hello I’m new on this forum (and on synfig) 
and I want to know how to view an animation.
I’ve rendered my animation like you said with png and I get lots of images. I want to know with what programm to view the animation (all the images)
because I tried with lots of programms, but it doesnt work.
please help me 
Did you look at the documentation on the website?
Such as the manual, the FAQ, the Tips sections?
In particular: http://synfig.org/Tips#Rendering_trough_png_sequence.
G.
thank you for the link, 
but I don’t understand what it says. I don’t understand what to do… 
I do believe Gerco was referring to converting the png images into an ffmpg movie, using this command via the terminal:
ffmpeg -r <frame rate> -i render/frame.%04d.png <more settings from ffmpeg's manual> my_animation.movGood luck!
-Coolname007