It’s been a long path since the day when we have started migration of Synfig Studio UI from Gtk2 to Gtk3 toolkit. And finally, today we are happy to present you the first testing builds for all supported platforms - Windows, Linux and OSX.
Those builds are also include all the latest developments made to Synfig code for the past months. Here’s the list of notable changes:
Interface migrated to Gtk3 (thanks to Ivan Mahonin)
Various UI improvements (thanks to Yu Chen, Jerome Blanchi, Konstantin Dmitriev)
Improved Bone Distortion (thanks to Ivan Mahonin)
Various fixes for Brushes feature (thanks to Jerome Blanchi)
Sound playback for Preview Dialog (thanks to Ivan Mahonin)
HSV color wheel and improved SpriteSheet export (thanks to Dmitry Zdorovtsov)
We would like to thank all people who supported our last fundraising campaign in May 2014 and keep supporting us after that through donations and subscriptions:
Thank you! You made all those changes happen, you helping us to keep moving, make Synfig better and get closer to version 1.0.
Hi guys!
It is exciting see the new version 1.0 coming along finally!!
I would tell you some of my wishes for this brilliant release:
The new release has LOTS of new goodies what would make very happy the user. But (always there is a but) there are still some bugs that needs to be fixed without more delay. One of them is the onion skin bug. It has stopped of working and I think it is essentially for many of the users. The other is the Preview window crash (at last in windows 32 bits). As you can see those two are blocking bugs for a stable release.
The two bugs shown above are just the result of 30 minutes of testing the development version. It is absolutely needed that we help the developers to focus their efforts on what fix first, because the better they are guided, the earlier the 1.0 version would be out. And I bet you that you’ll love many if the new features added…
So please, dear forum member, download and install the development version. Take some time to play with it (open your favorite compositions, explore the new features, etc.) and bring to the developers all the bugs you’ve found. Every tiny complain is valid. Some bugs are difficult to find and unfortunately some of them are difficult to solve. Let’s help the developers!
Also If you’re not certain what’s going on and are not ready to bug report there’s always the Debugging section of this forum, a halfway point between issue and bug report.
Hello,
Congratulations for this new version and many thanks!!
I hope, some day, colaborate more in the development of this project.
I think I’ve found a bug:
My system: Ubuntu 14.10 32 bits. Right now, my machine is a Pentium 4, 3,20GHz x 2 , 995,2 mb ram (Ubuntu says that)
Bug?: Synfig crash if you want to render, and the animation is not saved before.
How to reproduce it:
Just make an animation with the usual tools. Don’t save it, then go to Render dialog. In “name of the file” go to “choose”. AFter that, I tried to change the directory, but the system crashed.
Hope I’ve been clear.
mmm… other thing, compared the screenshot with mine, I see that the handles doesn’t appear in my screen. MAybe is related with my monitor which is a Dell with a proportion of 12" x 9"
Other thing: what are those buttons in cross for each panel, can’t be disabled?
To see the handles you have to select the layer. you can do that by either click on the layer from the layer list or click on the layer itself on the canvas window.
Those buttons are the places to drop down the panels tabs to arrange them in different configurations. Subdivide the panel it belongs to into two panels and the dragged tab would be in the relative place where you drop the tab over those four buttons.
I was waiting to see GTK3 build for Windows in hope that it will bring a normal color integration with Windows custom color themes (High-Contrast in my case) and was so happy when I saw the announcement on the main page…
But I was disappointed very quickly, because the interface is a total disaster. I know it’s rude to say that… Many people spend time on it and so on. So I will try to explain what I dislike:
GTK3 is ignoring your custom theme, totally. I have red on black and Synfig has black on white. GTK2 was much better at this even if it was far from perfect.
Synfig’s interface is now so messy that you can’t work on 800x600 resolution (native resolution of my monitor). Heck, it’s barely workable on 1024x768. Try opening Window->Workspace->Default. Why so many useless toolboxes? Other modes (animating, composition) are a bit better, but still trashy.
No compatible mode with Synfig 0.64.3. There were a File->Panels->Horizontal dock that arranges 3 most needed windows (Layers, Parameters, Keyframes) in one. And what now? How can I restore that behavior? I tried combining some toolboxes in one, but no success yet…
No timeline in a main window. Now it’s a separate window in Windows->Timetrack. Not so comfortable.
Global menu sucks. It hasn’t any menu borders and icons. And now instead of quickly picking up a layer by its icon I have to read all those text entries.
There’re dead windows. When choosing Window->Workspace->Default mode, some windows appears, but no any information in it and you can’t close them.
Toolbox’ titles are HUGE (where those arrange buttons are placed). They eat up pretty much of the workspace.
When only one animation project is opened the tab panel should be hid to save some place on screen. I wrote about it here: Tabs on work area
Localization doesn’t work properly. Synfig thinks I am Russian and shows me localized interface, but I don’t like Russian and changed it to English (Edit->Pref.->Misc.->Interf. lang.). And you know what? Half of menu entries now in English, others still in Russian. Synfig is a truly multilanguage program…
Workspace (where you see your actual animation) now renders using the other different BAD method. It waits for the picture to be fully rendered and only after that it allows you to work. While rendering (state “Rendering…”) THE WHOLE interface hangs. So if you work with some big animation, you’re in a wait of rendering. And I afraid to tell you what happens when you try to zoom your animation and then do some navigation…
Tested on Windows 7, 32 bits, 4GB RAM, i5 processor, cheap Nvidia adapter.
Sorry if I were rude, it’s just… you know, ruined my dreams about a new shiny GTK3 interface that will bring peace to the Universe.
I agree with that, but it’s probably easy to fix. Also I think the font that was used in the current stable version is much more readable. The font in the dev version is to thin and fragile esp when it’s greyed out. Is there a way to choose a more bold version or even better use the one of the current stable version?
I had a mix of Dutch and English. I went to Synfig/share/locale/… and kept only the folder “en_GB”. That got rid of the Dutch words.
I don’t miss the timetrack in the main version, but I do think there should be an option wheter or not to display it in the main window.
Now that cairo is no longer maintained (must be a bummer for Genete, cos he worked long and hard to implement it) and I have to switch it of because it prevents the skeleton deformation (thx for Rylleman for mentioning that error) to work, I am more eager to switch of single thread too, which raises my next question: Is there still a problem with multithreading under windows?
Apart from that I am having tons of fun with this new version.
Aha, that fixed it - thanks! Seems like a bit cruel method… Oh, well.
I also get the timeline back. There’s a button for that I didn’t notice
And I was able to restore Horizontal dock (File->Panels->Horizontal dock in Synfig 0.64.3). So you can strike out 2,3 and 4 items, I guess.
Still, development build is hardly usable for me now. At least, not before 1, 5 and 10 items are fixed.
9. Localization doesn't work properly. Synfig thinks I am Russian and shows me localized interface, but I don't like Russian and changed it to English (Edit->Pref.->Misc.->Interf. lang.). And you know what? Half of menu entries now in English, others still in Russian. Synfig is a truly multilanguage program...
I introduced this unfinished “Interface Language” function, yes, some part of ui string are loaded at very beginning, so they will not be changed even if you change UI language from “Interface Language” dropdown list. So if you would like to use english version of UI, you make have to manually change by export LC_ALL=“en” before synfigstudio startup, or you can just remove two Russian po files from Synfig Studio installation then it will fallback to english UI. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
Well, the easiest way for me was removing all folders except en_GB in the locale directory as darkspace65 said. But I think if localization is unfinished it’s better to leave it as it is in Synfig 0.64.3 (“interface languages” option during the installation process).
And of course, thanks jcome for your work. The GTK3 interface is not suitable for me now, but I will surely check the next builds.
The handles doesn’t appear “as icons”, in the top bar, like the icons of “rendering”, “preview”, “save”, etc. And that long bar with a red circle with a “x”, it doesn’t do nothin most of the time, and is hidding the handle icons. I find it as a big problem: the handles appear as check buttons. Let’s say I want to hide the vertex handles. I uncheck it, and it goes back to the canvas, so I have to click again in the handles sub menu and chek and uncheck the other handles. A big amount of time is lost there. I don’t know if someone see what I see??.
spanish:
Los handles aparecen como botones check. Si yo hago check en uno, ya no puedo hacer check o uncheck en ningun otro. Tengo que volver al menu y volver a clickear el sub menu de los handles.
Otra cosa, no me dices nada sobre el primer problema, acerca del “crash” cuando intento renderizar sin salvar.
Por otro lado, todos han hecho un buen trabajo resolviendo los otros bugs, y añadiendo la capa skeleton, el renderizado en spritesheets… gracias
Thanks
Reading the message of Djay…There is a new version of 0.65??
