Some experience with Synfig?

[Philipp Stumpp]

Hi there,

does anyone has any experience with Synfig? I dont ask because i want to promote another software, but I'm asking because we could use our experience we made with Synfig to make OpenToonz better.

Synfig has been on the OpenSource market for along time now and it looks like it is not really up to date. Maybe I'm wrong but as Synfig is another OpenSource solution for animators we should share our experience (Pros AND Cons) to make OpenToonz better. 

As for a main question: What does OpenToonz need to evolve in a healthy way. What happened to Synfig and what is the development state of OpenSource animation Software right now?

What do you think? 

As of now, there is no real comparison between OT and other software. I quess OT is very very powerful. But the world should now why and why it is a better product than any other Software out there. So maybe we can start a discussion :)

Greetings,

Phil 

[Soumitra Saha]

I've tried synfig. Current version is installed in my system too. But the main problem is it's slow compare to other software. As an animator everybody want fast view port performance.

[Rodney]

I love a good discussion.     :)

 the world should now why and why it is a better product than any other Software

Comparisons often fail because measurements are inherently biased but there are some contrasts that can be given that might suggest why OpenToonz might be better... more powerful... advantageous.... <insert your descriptive reason for using OpenToonz here>.

There are many things I like about OpenToonz but I think if I had to list only one it would be the exposure sheet.  OpenToonz's xsheet gives it an advantage and continuing improvements related to that suggest that things will continue to improve there as well.

I've attempted to use Synfig several times but in each case it didn't gel with me.  (I'd have to reinstall and try it out again in order to refresh my memory on the specifics)

With OpenToonz, after an initially steep learning curve (which was resolved mostly by watching the videos of users who were learning OpenToonz themselves) I found OpenToonz to be a great fit and every day I discover it fitting even better.  :)

What aspects of Synfig and OpenToonz do you like most?

If you could pick one feature from OpenToonz to use in Synfig what might that be?

And... to be fair...  what from Synfig might you like to see more fully developed in OpenToonz?

 

[Philipp Stumpp]

Thank you for your kind words Rodney. I also like good discussions :)

First of all I have to say that it seems that they are not really developing Synfig any more. The last version they did was one year ago so maybe the whole Synfig project is coming to an end. So what you said is true. With OpenToonz we have a stable development improving day by day. A lot of developers are on it for now and I hope we get all these great ideas from users all over the world into the program so that one day everyone will use OT on their machines. Be it windows/linux or even OS :P

But yes, i guess there is one feature within Synfig i really like. And that's this little window in the down-left corner of the screen. Every drawing you have on your board involves different information like its position, colors, the brush, etc. And every information is displayed in one extra window so that you can change it's values with just one click. I've made a screenshot so that you get a clue. 

I would like to see such feature in OT but maybe I haven't used OT long enough. If there is such a feature in OT you have to apologize me :)

Maybe we will find some other features we could use. This is just a start, cause I'm a total newbie :D

[Dikkie Dik]

I have recently tried Synfig and just starting to use OpenToonz, so if I overlooked a function, forgive me..

But the thing I did like in SynFig, altough I could get it working correctly, is the Layer -> Other -> Skeleton (or the plugin (Plug-ins -> Add skeleton (simple)).

This is a way to just once draw a cartoon character and because you then add a skeleton with joints on which the drawn parts (arms, legs, head, feet, hands, fingers) move in a natural fashion.

Look at : https://wiki.synfig.org/Doc:Basic_Bone_Tutorial

This was what drew me to Synfig, and what doesn't seem to be implemented in other animator software while it looks like a workeble solution to quickly perform all kinds of action with one cartoon figure.

Kind regards,

Koos

I'm not a native speaker, so please forgive any grammar or syntax errors.