Flash vs Animate: PIVOTS

Pivots in ANIMATE are a little more complicated than they are in FLASH. In Flash, when you edit a Symbol pivot in order to reset a rotation/scale point, you enter the Symbol, select the pivot and drag it into place, and that's pretty much all there is to it.

It took a lot of trial and error (and I had to re-do a lot of messed up animation) for me to realize that there are "Pivot settings" in ANIMATE to pay attention to. Not only this, there are Drawing Pivots, Symbol Pivots and Peg Pivots and with Symbol Pivots, there are two levels of editing involved.

1. To reset the Symbol Pivot (for rotation/scaling) when you drag a Symbol's pivot to a new position in the Camera View, this is only a temporary change that applies to that one action. The pivot doesn't actually change position. It's still there.To set a new permanent Symbol pivot, click on the Pivot Tool in the left-side toolbar first, before dragging that pivot. All instances will now have the new pivot position. *This is done on the top level, not inside the Symbol.

2. You can also reset the Drawing Pivots inside the Symbol. These pivots are not linked to the Symbol Pivot unless if you Copy Pivot to Parent Symbol after editing each pivot. Note that your Drawing Pivot and Symbol Pivot will now be the same, and I find it less confusing to work this way especially when I need to add new drawings to my Symbol.




When editing pivots inside the Symbol, note the Set Pivot For All Frames option. If this is enabled, your new pivot will apply to the entire layer of drawings inside the Symbol. If you disable this first, each drawing can have its own pivot position. This is important when the drawings (eg, hands or legs) inside a Symbol are positioned all over the place and they don't share the same pivot position.

And then using the Library Drawing Substitution Feature, when I swap between different drawings, even though they are not drawn registered together, when I am in the Top Level/Camera View, they will appear registered in the right place.

A little word of warning: If a Symbol's pivot point is reset, all CHILD SYMBOLS attached to this Symbol will also be affected.

I hope this makes sense...

Any tips? Questions? Solutions? Please share!

ROCQUITA: work in progress, notes on Layer organization

Sharing a capture of the ANIMATE workspace as I animate the characters in this scene.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THIS BIGGER

Notice that each character has their own single Master PEG layer on the main timeline. It took me a while to get my head around what Peg layers are and do because this feature is unique to ToonBoom and doesn't exist in Flash. In Flash, we tend to organize body parts in symbols within symbols within symbols and there is a lot of double-clicking deep into symbols within symbols to do what we need to do.

ANIMATE favors organization on parent-child layers that are all visible and accessible on the main timeline.

In a nutshell, a Peg layer is like a "controlling layer" under which all the layers of a character are registered. The Peg layer is expandable and collapsible.

Here is the Indigo Master Peg layer expanded:



CLICK HERE TO SEE THIS BIGGER

In ANIMATE, Keyframes are represented by black dots on the timeline and these can be Motion Keyframes (tweening, as represented by arrow on the timeline) or Stop Motion Keyframes (no tweening).

Interesting distinction: In Flash we MUST add a keyframe on the timeline to change a drawing from one frame to the next.

In Animate, it depends on how the drawing is being changed. If the drawing is to be repositioned, scaled, rotated etc. from one frame to the next, then we need to insert keyframes. If the drawing is to be replaced by a different drawing or an edited version, there is no need to add a keyframe. We use the "Drawing Substitution Window" OR > "Duplicate Drawings" to create an edited version. In the timeline screengrab above, the vertical lines separating the grey frames show where there are "drawing substitutions". I am still getting used to this concept.

*When the "Animate mode" button is enabled , ANIMATE will automatically insert keyframes on the timeline where needed... this is a timesaver!! And the beauty of having a Master Peg layer is that if you move something on one layer, all the other layers remain linked/registered.

Tip: If I want to edit a drawing and not be distracted by other drawings/layers or don't want to accidentally select something on another layer, this button above the timeline will hide ALL layers except the one that I am currently working on.

We are learning new things each day and as with learning any new program, it will take a little while before we settle on a working system or pipeline that feels right for us.

Assigning drawings to different layers, Drawing Substitution

Here is a short video showing a work in progress (also a learning process). I have just exported a scene from our STORYBOARD PRO animatic into ANIMATE. The sound track has been imported too, and the animatic drawing is in its own layer in bitmap format.

Assigning drawings to separate layers

At this stage I have (roughly) animated the camera move and roughed out a layout drawing over the imported bitmap layer. There is a neat feature in ANIMATE where you can quickly copy or cut out drawings from one layer and "Paste In Place" (to use Flash lingo) on other layers. First, use the Cutter tool to cut out that drawing, then use F9 to assign it to another new or existing layer. This beats going through the motions of Copying and Pasting...

Our only gripe is that the ANIMATE Cutter tool isn't very precise and we wish that it worked more like a Flash or Photoshop lasso where you can select parts of strokes, rather than entire strokes...

I have also started drawing rough key animation poses for each character (Rocquita, Indigo and Joe 101) and when I want to reuse an earlier drawing, I can swap using the Library's Drawing Substitution Window ... just scroll to the drawing you want to swap with... This is really cool. In Flash, only Symbols are swappable, but in ANIMATE, ALL drawings on a layer are swappable.

I also think it's super cool to be able to animate the characters with the camera move already done.

SIDENOTE: My OS is Windows Vista 64-bit and it is painfully slow to draw and paint. Especially when the Auto-Flatten feature is enabled in my BRUSH Tool Properties Window. Also when I have the Onion skinning on. I was sketching with both these features enabled, and ANIMATE suddenly crashed and shut down on me. Must remember to keep SAVING!!!

UPDATE: Thanks to Eric for the tip about holding down "Alt" when using the Cutter tool. This helps!!!

Flash vs Animate: SYMBOLS

In ANIMATE, Symbols do pretty much the same thing as what they do in Flash, but there are some differences.

Here are the similarities:

In both FLASH and ANIMATE, Symbols are like containers that live in the Library and can be dragged out and reused. They have their own internal timelines and nested layers. You can have Symbols within Symbols. Symbols are important if you intend to use motion tweening or effect changes to a drawing over time. To edit a Symbol, double-click on it to be taken inside the Symbol. All instances will be edited too.

Off the top of my head, here are the main differences that I have noticed so far:

In FLASH: Symbols can be easily swapped out for other symbols. (select > properties >swap)
In ANIMATE: Symbols cannot be easily swapped for other symbols. You have to delete a symbol from the timeline and drag out the other symbol from the Library.

In FLASH: Symbols can be reused across different Scenes.
In ANIMATE, each file is ONE Scene (no multiple scenes per file) and the Symbols only exist in that scene and cannot be accessed from any other scene. If you want to reuse a drawing for another scene, you have to save it as a Template (.tpl) - which can contain Symbols. If you create a bunch of Symbols in one scene, save them in a .tpl and drag that .tpl out into another Scene, you can then access those Symbols, however.... ANIMATE will make a copies of those symbols in the Library. This can be useful or confusing.... like finding multiple identical copies of a Symbol in your Library....

Question: Is it safe to delete duplicates in the Animation Library? Will my other scenes will be affected?

In FLASH: When you convert a drawing on the stage to a Symbol, it appears in the Library becomes a Symbol right there and then. To convert several frames/layers to a Symbol you have to "Create New Symbol" and copy/paste those frames into the new empty Symbol and then make sure the Symbol is in the correct position on stage. There are different ways to do this.
In ANIMATE: Life is much much easier!!!! You can drag anything (one drawing or multiple frames/layers) from the timeline into the Symbol Library to Symbolize. One difference though is that the drawings and layers in your timeline don't get Symbolized right there and then. You have to delete what's on your timeline, and drag the Symbol out of the Library onto the timeline. Notice that the drawings automatically appear in the same position where they were created.

In FLASH: When you "break apart" a symbol, it becomes a Drawing Object. If you have multiple layers in your symbol, they all appear on the same layer when broken apart. You lose your symbol's timeline too.
In ANIMATE: When you "expand" a symbol, the internal layers and drawings are expanded on the timeline underneath the original symbol, with timeline intact!

In FLASH: Symbols can be positioned anywhere on the stage, with pivot points that you can edit knowing that other instances won't be affected.
In ANIMATE: Every symbol is registered to the position on the stage where it was created. This is useful when you are rigging a character and want body parts to always have the same placement to each other. It's not so useful if you accidentally move a symbol (without creating a keyframe) which could screw up your animation. All instances will shift out of place.

In FLASH: Instances of Symbols can be modified by the same tools that you use to modify all drawings. Scale, Skew, Flip ... you can also change Alpha and Tint.
In ANIMATE, Symbols are not visible in the program's Drawing View, only in the Camera View. This is kinda frustrating when you are constructing a character and want to use Symbols. (In the manual they suggest that you do ALL your drawing first, before converting to Symbols.. but this isn't really feasible to me.) To modify or move a symbol on specific frame, insert a keyframe on the timeline. With no keyframe, you will risk modifying the source symbol and all other instances of it on stage. (I learned this the hard way!) Similarly if you want to move the Symbol's pivot point for one frame, make sure you insert a keyframe first.

In FLASH: there are Graphic Symbols and Movie Clip Symbols. By default, these all "loop" when played.
In ANIMATE: All Symbols behave more like Flash's Movie Clips. They have their own layer (nothing else can exist on a Symbol's layer). They don't loop. You have to copy cells from the timeline and "Paste Cycle" to create the loops.

In FLASH: Using Symbols is efficient practice and keeps your file size down.
In ANIMATE: File size isn't affected whether you use Symbols or Drawings. Via this forum thread: "you can call back drawings that were previously made and this won't create anything new in the file structure (basically it will simply call an existing drawing regardless of it being in a symbol or not)."