What made you use synfig?

[Ar_D]

Introduce yourself with a little information about yourself, not too personal, but your artist or maybe just real name, your country, how long have you been interested in synfig? , what made you use synfig?
Promote your work, website, channel here too. Who knows we may find some great artists here.
Why did you choose synfig over other softwares?
Are you a professional or just doing it for fun?
If you were given a chance to switch to a professional grade paid software for free for lifetime, would you leave synfig forever?

(This is not officially a post by synfig mods obviously, just felt with the sheer amount of dumbness I see on web these days, it’s better to just inform)

[BEEGROOW]

I don’t knwo maybe is internet.
But I will never gonna give you up.

[Majkel]

I remember to one IT class assignment teacher wanted us to have one vector animation (that’s how I learned about vector animations). I went home, started looking for free programs and that’s how I found Synfig.
BTW I didn’t do that assignment in the end, it was really big and later it became optional

[Ar_D]

@Majkel

IT class assignment

They sadly never taught me animation in IT classes here, we rather learned about networking, SQL, and more different entrepreneurship related stuff that involves technology, hence the name information technology. However once I switched to computer science, we did do a lot of graphic designing, even though nobody was going to pursue graphic designing after deciding to become an engineer, we were in 11th grade at that time.

@Majkel

BTW I didn’t do that assignment in the end, it was really big and later it became optional

I never made a notebook for IT in my school days, turns out the teacher only checks the practicals, and how well you do in tests, it was all required to do well in his classes. Even the tests didn’t really matter that much, except academically, he was one of the very better teachers who understood, someone may not write well in exams, but they can still do good in real life. He acknowledged real skills not a piece of paper.

[Ar_D]

@Majkel

started looking for free programs and that’s how I found Synfig.

That’s exactly how I found synfig, searching for something free. Which I don’t have to pirate like I do with adobe.

[Ar_D]

@BEEGROOW

never gonna give you up.

Oh… Oh noooo …

[victor]

My name is Victor Wachanga From Kenya. I like art and i love to do art. I’m a hobbyist artist. I just came across synfig not long ago. Its been about two weeks since i started using it after losing my more capable PC to a power surge. since i only have a mid-range PC now, i had to abandon Blender temporarily. I did a little research online and came across Synfig and sure its one of the best if not the best free software for 2D animation out there.
I specifically chose synfig over other softwares because it does not lag and has pretty much all the features i need to animate texts, logos, and short clips.
I am currently doing it for fun but i plan on doing it professionally and posting clips on my newly-opened Youtube channel - Pukka Studios -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCuSCtPhWVL6BC4bMWurMmA .

I would consider switching to professional-grade software if i had to use a feature that Sinfig doesnt have. However, i would be more interested in collaborating with developers in future so that we can advance Synfig and help more artists get on board.

Good luck to everyone here!

[Ar_D]

@victor

doing it for fun but i plan on doing it professionally and posting clips on my newly-opened Youtube channel - Pukka Studios

Make sure to keep the confidence up

I will be looking forward for some great animations by you

[victor]

Sure I sure will

[Screen_Legend]

Greetings Synfig Community,

I’m an animator/writer/etc. and I use Synfig to make a show titled, “Damage Control” (YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@cheapspacetravel). What initially led me to Synfig was simply a Google search for open source 2D animation software. I experimented with several other titles, Pencil2D, OpenToonz, and a few others - I don’t recall all of the names. I even tried some commercial software (Adobe Animate). They all seemed like great software, but not exactly what I needed, or what fit precisely, for my purposes. Looking back, Synfig likely resonated (and stuck) with me for several reasons. To name just a few…

1. Synfig has great flexibility, and is regularly improved & extended.
2. The tools and UI are structured in a way that feels aligned with my own thought patterns, which makes it easier for me to learn & use.
3. Synfig rendering engine’s command line interface is great for achieving highly specific desired outputs (resolution/dpi, file formats, compression types, lossless rendering, etc.). In fact, I rarely render in Synfig Studio these days; I use the CLI for pretty much everything related to rendering.
4. Many of the features are just not available in other programs. There are several, but the first one that comes to mind is ‘feathering’. I’m not sure about curve gradients or animatable time controls, because I didn’t get very far with the other software titles that I tried. Regardless, these are fantastic features, and to have them all available in one software package is very convenient.
5. This Synfig community (and Synfig Wiki) provide opportunities for learning, and the sharing of ideas & techniques. Because there are often many ways to achieve a desired results with Synfig, I enjoy reading about how you all have solved animation puzzles & problems, in novel, creative and interesting ways. There are a few YouTube channels out there with tutorials as well, which have also been educational and inspiring.

Having said all of that, I do still use some other software titles, for some things.

• Inkscape: Text. Render to PNGs. Import PNGs to Synfig.
• Audacity: Audio recording & processing.
• PapaGayo-NG: Lip sync.
• GIMP: Raster images that require textured brushes, e.g. chalk, pencils.

Mm hmm.

Permanently,
Screen Legend Dick West

[Ar_D]

@Screen_Legend

regularly improved & extended

I am still stuck that one ol’ version that was sent to me a long time ago, I still use that, never really saw if there are updates. It is a development version, not a stable build, but it works better than the stable build. I hope the update thing was more simplified and easy, right now it’s hard to understand which version is better to use.

@Screen_Legend

CLI for pretty much everything related to rendering.

I could use that too, if there’s a tutorial for it.

@Screen_Legend

Many of the features are just not available in other programs.

With some extra add-ons Adobe animate does all that better than any other free or paid software out there, even better than synfig. But the shady subscriptions of Adobe is extremely bad, really the worst of them all. I hate Adobe because of the subscriptions, I still use photoshop because it’s simply the best and I don’t take gimp as a good enough alternative, gimp lacks a lot, and add-ons are hard to find. I have honestly just pirated photoshop (don’t do that), because I don’t want to pay to Adobe to just get fined while canceling when I don’t want it. And honestly who even has paid for Adobe in the history of softwares.

Better tools are not only meant for somebody who can pay a fortune over it.
There are real talents who can’t afford it, piracy comes as a big help to them.

Like if it weren’t to the free access of stuff (I.e piracy) we would have not gotten a lot of great games and movies from the creators of those.

[Screen_Legend]

Updates/improvements: I stick with the latest stable release, which is currently v1.4.5. Releases – Synfig. But, I occasionally play around with things in the unstable/dev releases.

Regarding the command-line interface: There’s a wiki page for this, here: Render options - Synfig Animation Studio. I’ll put a few examples below, but I’ll refrain from overdoing it because it would be better if we started another thread in a different, and more appropriate, forum category.

You can get CLI help from the built-in help menus. Navigate to your Synfig bin folder and run this command to see the full help menu.

.\synfig.exe --help-all

Output:

There are additional help menus for some particular things, like ‘target-video-codecs’. Type this command to see information about target video codecs.

.\synfig.exe --target-video-codecs

When I render things, I call synfig.exe from Windows PowerShell, For readability, I set the CLI options in variables, and it looks like this:

$resolutionScale = 1
$h = 1080*$resolutionScale
$w = 1920*$resolutionScale
$br = 6000
$startFrame = 0
$endFrame = 120

$srcFile = "{path_to_your_SIFZ_file}\{MyFile.sifz}"
$destFile= "{path_to_your_output_folder}\{MyRender.avi}"

.\synfig.exe -i $srcFile -o $destFile -w $w -h $h --dpi-x 1200 --dpi-y 1200 -T 32 -a 1 --video-codec libx264-lossless --video-bitrate $br --start-time $startFrame --end-time $endFrame

Adobe Animate: I tried Adobe animate for a couple weeks. It seemed like decent software, and had lots of features, but some of the basic features that I require were going to require an additional subscription for After Effects. At that point, I realized that the best possible outcome if I were to continue w/Adobe would be a vague approximation of what Synfig already is. Also, I would eventually become dependent upon Adobe, and be at the mercy of their whims regarding pricing. I just couldn’t do it. Long term, I would’ve been trapped because the switching costs to another platform would rise with time, and ultimately become prohibitive. Essentially, I’d be a prisoner to Adobe until the end of time . And that’s assuming everything went well. There’s also the possibility that certain features, modules, and/or entire products would get discontinued if they ever became unprofitable.