Have just started a new animation project which involves mostly cutout animation shots combined with live-action(it’s a cheesy music video one of my mates is directing).
I decided to try out synfig, which looks pretty good on the whole.
The prog still has many mysteries to me but I’m managing to get something done .
There’s room for improvement on the manipulation of keyframes. I’m managing but it’s a little slow in terms of workflow.
Anyway, I’m still pretty impressed with this piece of software on the whole and hope I can encourage and help in it’s development.
As for my background, I’ve been working in videogames for quite a while and decided to take a break from it.
Yes, Synfig’s idiosyncratic approach leads to quite a few mysteries. Luckily, there are some members of this forum who can answer just about any question, so feel free to ask away. And good luck with your project!
I recommend to read this: synfig.org/wiki/Keyframe
Which in many animation programs are called keyframes we call them waypoints. Keyframes for us are what is defined in the prevoius link.
And yes, we need some waypoint handling improvement. But I think that keyframe handling is fine now. Perhaps we need to update the wiki to adapt it to the 0.62.00 version where there was introduced a new keyframe widget. From the 0.62.00 version the keyframes can be handled by the mouse on the timeline. They appear like small vertical arrows and can be handled by the mouse like this:
Left click & drag-drop: move the single keyframe position
ALT+Left click & drag drop: insert time between the keyframe and the one before it.
-G
As for the keys,waypoints, I’de like to be able to select a whole bunch of them by select drag.
I’d like to have some sort of marking of the waypoints on the animation curves and be able to move them around.
Zoom in, out and move within the animation curve editor the same way we move around the scene window.
But then, I’m a dreamer…
Sorry, if I’m using the wrong terms.
Anyway, I’m still able to get something done and that’s the most important thing. I’ll send a link here when the project will be finished and will be showing.
I’ve never used any other vector based animation software besides synfig. It does strike me that many people who do have experience with other software have trouble getting started because the interface is apparently so different.
Having a different interface doesn’t bug me that much to be honest. I’ve managed to pick this program relatively easily (at least for my use of it) but just had some thoughts how this could be better.
There is no ideal piece of software and then there are differing opinions how things should be. But I think that something like drag and drop selections on waypoints would be a definite plus in terms of efficiency(or even moving waypoints on different layers at the same time).
Anyway, enough rambling, got a project to get on with.
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