Various NLE support SWF movies. premiere and after effects both support it. SWF export allows for better quality and perfect transparency on projects to be composited (99% of all professional end projects are composited)

its also more convenient to work with a 100kb swf file than a 1GB transparent AVI.

SWF ca also be imported back into flash and further modified/refined using flash's tools.

for example, one could do principle character animation in CTA, export to swf.
then import that sequence to flash and further enhance it. hide joints, add additional cycles, maybe even work around CTA's shortcoming when it comes to characters with long hair. i wound be perfectly fine animating bad characters in CTA, importing the sequences into flash, and animating the long hair onto the imported sequence.




Ibis Fernandez   |   (available for hire)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professional Animator, Filmmaker | Creator of the highest quality (modular) G2 rigs for cartoon animator and developer of Toon Titan and Puppet Producer 
Author of Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
>>> be sure to check out http://toontitan.com for professional grade assets, templates, and custom tools for Cartoon Animator and more.

CTA version 1 had SWF export. It was useful for exporting a character out to make adjustments to them (say change a shirt), save out the individual elements from within Flash to re-import individually back into the character via the Character COmposer in CTA. It was a tedious PITA to do so though, because each imported element had to be re-sized, re-positioned, and usually re-rotated.

While I'm all on board with a SWF export, what I'd rather see than export the animation, is export a character sheet similar to the one that get's imported into CTA. SO we can export, tweak, make modifications, then re-import the character all very easy and intuitively like...

I can see why reimporting would be useful but in terms of creating a final product, most pros will rarely stick to just doing it all within a single product, unless that product has all the base features they need. CTA is an amazing achievement, but its not quite there yet.

At this time for example CTA does not have motion matching capabilities, does not have a "3d camera" system, and does not allow for such things as depth of field and or mixed media (for example having a a video based waterfall playing in the background etc). But there is other software that does.

So someone with After Effects could use CTA for the character animation stuff, bring that sequence into AE, composite it into a true 3d environment, add lights, cast shadows, even mix it in an NLE like Premiere with sequences created in other animation software that allow for things that CTA can't do yet. (I'm sure it will eventually, they come a long way very fast.)

example:
CTA's current camera system is not real 3D but rather what we call "Multiplane". This is a system created in the 1930's, it works great, and does the job. But this is the year 2014 and a multitude of 3d cgi possibilities are out there.

here is what a typical shot done in CTA might look like. Its really not that bad, and depending of the production, it might just be perfectly fine.



Notice that the paralax effect created by mutiplane system is perfectly fine. Now notice how you cant really tilt the camera around to look at any of the sidewalls. also note the shadows are baked into the drawings. to the untrained eye, it looks fine. And depending on the production, that style is perfectly fine as well.

Now look at this...



I composited the scene in actual 3d space in AE. The angle of the scene actually changes as the camera tilts. Notice the shadows being casts against the objects by an actual light source. Notice the side wall as the camera tilts over towards the right. But also notice the pixelation that takes place as the character gets too close to the camera.

This is when the swf output will shine. Resolution independent, perfect alpha channels, and low file size.And since CTA doesn't support those features, the SWF output would at least make it feasible for us to use other software that can do it, in conjunction with CTA.

I mean seriously, look at that podium and see how that shadow casts itself on the floor, the back wall and the side wall asI move the light source around.





Ibis Fernandez   |   (available for hire)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professional Animator, Filmmaker | Creator of the highest quality (modular) G2 rigs for cartoon animator and developer of Toon Titan and Puppet Producer 
Author of Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
>>> be sure to check out http://toontitan.com for professional grade assets, templates, and custom tools for Cartoon Animator and more.

Ibis, with your drawing creativity as well as your knowledge of animation, why are you using CTA? (Not trying to offend or be argumentative), but there are much better 2D animation applications out there, that are a bit more creativity oriented instead of technically oriented, like CTA. Just curious...

It's a perfectly valid question.

The answer is that as a professional animator, even though i can just as easily draw an animated sequence in something like flash, faster than i can rig up a puppet and tweak around levers and stuff, I can see the benefits of using something like CTA as part of my workflow.

One of the reasons 3D cgi has taken center stage over traditional hand drawn animation is because with cgi, an animator doesn't really have to know how to draw. He just has to have a general sense of timing and be able to move some levers and sliders around. But 3d cartoons still look too plastic and synthetic and don't have that expressiveness and style that can only be achieved from hand drawn 2d animation. CTA basically brings both the CGI aspect and allows you to keep that 2D look look and feel.

I owned CTA1 as and never actually used it in a professional setting. It just wasn't feasible for me. But there's nothing out there like CTA2, that can do the 3d puppets and in terms of workflow this might actually be the first software of its kind that actually gets heavy support from the professional community. The ability to have a cast of characters that can just be dragged, dropped, and manipulated in 3d is so much easier than having to manually animate and draw every single shot.

Using this new workflow, at worst, a professional animator can now just take the chore out of the boring sequences like a general walking, running, etc. and just do 'em with the CGI approach. the only time he's have to manually animate hose shots is when the shot is more complex like running over prop while doing some weird perspective action.
So so for the close up shots and complicated sequences, one can revert back to the traditional means and just mix and match the shots. So it will easily shave a good 50% of the workload required for a full-on project.




Ibis Fernandez   |   (available for hire)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professional Animator, Filmmaker | Creator of the highest quality (modular) G2 rigs for cartoon animator and developer of Toon Titan and Puppet Producer 
Author of Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
>>> be sure to check out http://toontitan.com for professional grade assets, templates, and custom tools for Cartoon Animator and more.

I was thinking that might be the case. I've used Anime Studio Pro for a several years, bouncing back and forth between it and CTA. As skeptical as I was about the 3D motions in CTA, I do admit it's an impressive feature, but the application itself seems so limiting at times. And without your puppet plugin, creating and importing new characters seems to be a bear of a task.

All 2D animation applications would allow you to create multi-dimensional characters, ASP (Anime Studio Pro) does so via switch layers, and personally I think their SmartBone functionality is just as impressive as the 3D motion usage in CTA. With good SmartBones, animating a head turn is quite simplistic. And they also do have a full 3D environment, so camera turns are possible. Of course it's more difficult to lay out and build a scene than a pure 2D layout would be, but (again in my opinion) a pure 2D scene can look just as good as gimmicky 2D animations with 3D subsets.

Thanx for answering the question though. I'm always curious about why people choose one application over another. I'm strictly a hobbyist, so hearing a professionals opinion carries much more weight than my own.

I was a big supporter of Anime Studio from the start. When they were called "Moho".

But so many versions later and nothing ever changes its hard to continue to support them. Not really sure where they taking their advise from or who their target audience really is. They have lots of potential but they just never bothered with making their software work at the basic level. Just drawing and animating is so insanely difficult its not even worth the trouble.

Sometime an animator just wants to draw a freaking simple line from from point a to point b. or a draw a basic ball for whatever reason. I shouldn't have to go through this entire 50 click process just to draw freaking line or a circle. Yes they are the first vector based product with a 3d environment, but what good is it f you cant ever actually get to the phase where you actually can make use of it.

I like CTA because it has a decent camera system, also a fairly easy animation system. They don't have a native drawing solution but because of its lower price point, it still makes makes it feasible to use something else as its drawing platform.




Ibis Fernandez   |   (available for hire)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professional Animator, Filmmaker | Creator of the highest quality (modular) G2 rigs for cartoon animator and developer of Toon Titan and Puppet Producer 
Author of Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
>>> be sure to check out http://toontitan.com for professional grade assets, templates, and custom tools for Cartoon Animator and more.

I too used ASP when it was first known as Moho, and I've never really had a problem using it. Truthfully, if I had to compare it to CTA, I'd say it was much easier than CTA. I agree, their drawing tools don't follow any sort of standards and can be difficult to grasp at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's real simple to use.

To me, it makes more sense to be able to tweak the underlying artwork and assets if need be during animation, which is impossible in CTA. Unless you tweak and re-import, but you're certainly not going to be doing it on the fly. And having point level editing (PLE) animation techniques available is also extremely beneficial.

But I digress... I'm not here to convert anyone, or sway anyone. As I said ealrier, I was merely curious...

What are the plans to support swf export? Is it on the roadmap? Can we expect it soon?

Please see our update plans for CTA2 below.

https://forum.reallusion.com/Topic172346-356-1.aspx

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com