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efrontier Anime Studio 5 (Full Version) (PC/Mac) | 
 enlarge | From: Smith Micro Software
Category: Software
List Price: £34.99
Buy New: £29.98
You Save: £5.01 (14%)
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 943
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows Xp, Mac Os X
Media: CD-ROM
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 1.3
MPN: ASO-C50-DEM-R
UPC: 814956024108
EAN: 0814956024016
ASIN: B000IK412K
Release Date: February 20, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
Anime Studio 5 May 12, 2007
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
Having been a Flash user for years I was wanting some software that would make character animation faster and more intuitive, and allow me to export the results for use in Flash should I so wish.
Anime Studio 5 makes animating characters so much faster, it exports to SWF and these play fine in the Flash player.
Flash developers need to know this however - What I really wanted to do was import SWFs generated by Anime Studio into Flash to use in interactive work. My first attempt at import was not perfect. The import process was without errors, but the results viewed in Flash MX 2004 showed some objects with missing fills. (As with any SWF import into Flash tween data is missing and every frame is a keyframe.) It does generate symbols in the library, but these can be quite a lot. Having said that, I still think this will speed up character animation for Flash games - even if I do have to go through and manually correct missing fills (can I do this in he library? not tried will let you know later). I don't expect this to be much trouble for short looping character motions for games (though I have not tried this yet).
The software has a nice interface that is quick to learn with a little help from the tutorials that install with the software. I have already mentioned that SWF output is good when viewed in the Flash player, but has issues when imported into Flash MX 2004. Rendering to MOV gave nice results.
Most of all, the bones feature makes animating characters a snap. In just a couple of hours I had figured out how to make my own characters with bones to control movement. Also very handy is the fact you can treat the camera as an animatable item which can zoom, pan and rotate (Flash has no such facility). Really good is the lip synchronisation tools to make sure your characters mouth keeps up with the audio. It comes with premade mouths, but you can make your own and use the same system to do eyebrows, eyes, pupil position, in fact anything your ingenuity can come up with. Briliant. All in all, the software includes many tools that will help character animators be more productive.
Some of the dialogue boxes are a little complex, but I think this is a minor point against all the positives.
The description of the box contents on Amazon gave me the impression that it would include a manual. Mine did not come with a manual in the traditional sense. But the software did install with a good help file and some tutorials - is this what they meant? For me this was a small disappointment (I like to have a book to work from). So don't expect a paper printed manual in your box.
Overall I am pleased so far - it's only my first day using it properly. But I can see already that producing character based animations with this software will be many times faster than using Flash,. I hope future updates improve the Flash export to make import into Flash itself completely error free.
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