I’m working on sbpro 2 - Reluctant to make the move to 4 as i fully expect a lot of changes and bugs that will reduce my work flow and methods . . Anyone out there using it .? could you offer any drawing based user advise . ?
i haven’t used sbpro 2 only 4 and find that drawing in vector mode is smooth and easy. doesn’t bog the system down at all especially when doing hundreds of frames.
why don’t you download the trial and see for yourself? you’re the best judge.
The biggest difference are the toolbars. You can’t float them in a separate window as you could in SBPro2. This still bugs me and I’ve been using 4 for a while now, but I’m getting used to it. Also, if you change workspace mode, say from drawing to timeline all your toolbars will be crammed up on the right side and you have to spread them out again. This waists a ton of time. Booo Toonboom on that one.
Long time Storyboard Pro 2 user here, and now Storyboard Pro 4 user as well. I have a few major gripes about SBP4:
-You can no longer group select same-named layers across multiple panels in the thumbnail or timeline view for resizing them all at once. You can select the layers themselves, but cannot select the line work itself in order to move them all or re-size. It only works when it wants to which is maybe 1 out of 10 tries. This has been a huge headache at work for the entire department and a major waste of time, shrinking a character down across 100 panels has gone from a few minutes of time spent to a whole afternoon.
-The selection handles are very finicky now. When using the selection tool it is too easy to move the selection or resize it using the corner handles. The left/right and up/down handles are harder to select, and the skew L/R and U/D when clicking on the bounding box edges is nearly impossible to get without zooming in super close. It’s as if the corner handles and center move handle have large active areas that take precedence over the others.
-On the Mac version you can no longer open a file by double clicking it or dragging it to the SBP4 icon. Doing so only opens the program but not the file. This doesn’t apply to the PC version.
My verdict is stick with SBP2 until these bugs get patched if they ever do, unless you really need the bitmap brushes and/or 3D implementation. My employer has been hounding them about the first bug I mentioned and still no luck in getting a patch.
I’m currently using sb4 at the studio ( they bought a copy for me - hurray ) So far its a great improvement for me just from the drawing tools alone . I have been harping on about the drawing tool properties to toon boom for years now . Finally they have changed the structure of the tool set up . Simple things like not attaching the pen preset to the colour makes so much sense .
Also the ability to change the size of the pen using keyboard without changing your preset is great . Thank you toon boom - my daily struggle is now 20% less so !
mlong - I wonder whether the file opening has changed because of the backward compatibilty issue . once you open a file in 4 there’s no going back .
sdietter i haven’t tried but can you not grab the tab and move it in order to separate the window from the main.?