ImageFX versus Photoshop?!

[Bobsonsirjonny]

I cant really comment on ImageFX - having never really got to grips with the guts of it.

But photoshop is king for today. Right now I've just been helping a student. Poor lad was given this week to produce 15 seconds of animation, coloured up with a sound track... he hasn't even been taught the principles yet. Let alone how to use the software. Furthermore half the equipment that would help automate the task has yet to arrive. So I used my brain, and had a look at what we already had...

So we shot the line test on the EOS - used Premier to split it up back down into the individual frames. Used Photoshop Actions to clean the drawings up - make the lines darker, loose some of the smudges etc. And then used Actions to automate colouring up flood fill areas.

He's now going through colouring up the fiddly bits. Later on we will be back into Premier, glue the frames together - whack on a backing track and out onto miniDV :-)

Its cool, cos now you can do this stuff on a shoestring :pint:

Anyway - its Friday, most students have gone home for the holidays. I should be getting all my lovely bits and bobs on Monday - Equipment! Set it all up next week and it should all be hunky dory for them in the new year :-)

[Bobsonsirjonny]

Just out of interest - does ImageFX allow you to batch process a number of images as opposed to a folder?

I mean is it possible to get it to batch process frames 001 to 093 leaving 093 and upwards alone. That would be dead cool if it can.

If it could do that - and there was some modern decent animation software available for OS4/AmigaOne... well ... :-)

[Bobsonsirjonny]

Wow - From an animation point of view - particularly for students I think we may have the OS4 killer App here.

I could see how easily this could be used for cell animation painting - working with files as opposed to folders will be so tidy. Can you specify it to work on odd frames or even frames - could you make a selection and can it duplicate that selection over and over on other files/frames and colour that selection acordingly.

For example - I have an animated man. I know that the torso will only move so far in one direction and so far in the other - so if I select the centre of the torso, I know that no matter where the body moves - the centre of the torso will be selected. If thats the case you could just do a batch colour and have all your torso's done with ease. Is it then possible to render the frames out as a .avi or .mov. Specifying the frame rate, codec and res?. Obviously at the start people will have to take there frames in at the correct res - or at a high enough res at the right aspect ratio so at least it could be worked down if need be. Sound could be added etc in any old edit package.

Animo, CTP, Toonz et all - and other cell animation production tools cost a bomb - and I mean seriously funny money. But if Image FX is the right price - and can do all that - well it may be worth my while to invest in it. Anything that can speed up the ink and paint process is a Godsend. Were animators, so we'd rather spend more time doing that :-)

[Bobsonsirjonny]

@ Mips

Thanks! The potential use of this is huge. I'm gonna do more diggining. If such a set up is as/more powerful than the industry standard solutions available, and more economical I will definately get one. I can now justify buying an AmigaOne (I was going to buy one - but with this, well at least I can justify its presence :-) ) Seriously - the market for its use as a tool to assist the 2D animator is massive.