Link artwork to photoshop

I do my artwork in photoshop. I’d like it if Animate linked itsself to my photoshop docs so when I changed something in photoshop, it automatically updated in Animate.

As far as I know, Animate doesn’t have this feature. You can however reimport your PSD file and vectorize it. Once inside of Animate you can replace the updated images and parts into your rigged layers.

To my knowledge, both Anime Studio and CelAction have this feature. Perhaps this is something Toon Boom should consider adding. It would be nice!

Updating files from PhotoShop or Autodesk Sketchbook Pro would be
a major step forward from my point of view.

So sign me in on that request.

Best regards
Ivar

This can be a tricky feature. In Harmony you have the option to link to an external file that doesn’t reside in the scene however we found that your studio has to be really well organized because if you move the psd file or send the scene to another studio the link will be broken. We have that issue often with linked palettes and users don’t understand why the colors need to be recovered. The same would apply to psd files like backgrounds.

Another issue is if you have different platforms (mac, windows and linux for Harmony). The paths on each one might not get resolved properly thus the link is broken.

It would be possible to do it in Animate Pro but it was decided not to because of all the support calls of lost connections to assets when moving, renaming,etc the scene or files.

As a workaround you could edit the imported file found in the scene’s element folder if you didn’t vectorize it and left it as a psd. Then when you change that file it would be updated in the scene. If you vectorized it then you’d have to re-import as mentioned above though.



This sounds like it should be a basic / important feature request. Animate pro or Harmony could set up with a file manager system that would setup scene folders in a specific project file for your given project. Scenes will automatically save to a scenes folder and assets such as backgrounds / images could be assigned it’s own specific folder, pallets their own etc…all with in the project managers system, that way even if a file is shared all the contents will be in pre determined destinations thus alleviating much of the troubles you have mentioned. Softimage has such a system, old though it is, however, I have never run into the problems you have mentioned since it is all laid out to work in a specific way. It just make much more sense.

If a scene asset is originally designed outside of the project managers folders, then that specific asset would be copied or linked to the project managers folder system and if tweeking is needed that way it can have continual adjustments made that would automatically update in the scene / project directories. Optional dialogue box could alert the artist that the file is outside the file system and a “Would you like to import the file into your project managers image folder?” then if the data is not in the system after that then that is the artists fault.
A system such as harmony and animate pro should have these sort of project/asset management systems already to go out of the box. Studios and artists should be able to focus purely on the content creation process. Things such as linking to other apps will make the whole process run like clock work.

There should also be an allowance though that reflects the studios specific filing system by allowing custom filing systems. In such cases that a studio would like to implement it’s own system then the software could link up with the custom mode to continue with the process. Just a thought.

For me, After Effects is the pinnacle of good asset management in its flexibility. It can ready nearly every media type. You can see where everything lives, and if you move a folder out of place and break everything, you just have to relocate one thing, and the software finds everything else. Animate’s asset management is a little iTunesy to me.