TBS and Flash (for TBS Tech)

Well well well, 2 days ago I started to preview Flash CS3 and still playing around with it today. I imported what I did in TBS before it quit on me, (about 2300 frames ) into flash. And just as easy as that …I was able to copy and paste the reusable parts and create the 3 minute piece of the drummer playing. Of course the entire piece was supposed to be about 9 minutes, but after 3.5 minutes there is singing and I had planned to create new drawings for the lip sync.

See my preview here: http://server7.pictiger.com/img/132771/player.swf


Or you can cut and paste in your browser here: http://server7.pictiger.com/img/132771/player.swf


Still, its just amazing that after being unable to copy and paste any portion of the work without screwing up everything, after being unable to drag any significant portion into the library without TBS crashing …that Flash just takes it and hums along with no problem. And mind you I have to be using Flash in the most crude way possible, because I have no book, just trial by fire in the most brute force way! I don’t even know how to set the imported stuff on flash stage …as you can see its off to the side. However, this took me just 15 minutes to do in Flash.

The attached piece shows what I intended to do for the first 3 minutes of my video, in the last minute and a half some of the transitions are not as smooth as I planned because as I said before, I only copied and paste in Flash. Right now …not sure why my gateway tablet and to a lesser extent even my INTUOS 3 tablet does not draw real well on Flash stage. So I’m looking for the analogous Direct-3D or OPEN-GL type settings that would allow me to experience effortless drawing performance similar to using TBS.

However TBS needs to pay attention, for 3 years now I have been saying that the software is not robust, and the work-arounds provided have great intentions but not real fixes!! I intend to demo the latest CS3 version of Flash now and searching the internet to buy a used Studio-8 suite (the last version) somewhere at a discount. But I still intend to use TBS and hope you guys ignore the juvenile partisan rants, and really try to fix your software.

Your software does not behave the way you advertise after the file size reach a certain size, I have been making this argument for years. And TBS is a better suited pure animation software than Flash …its all TBS does. What ever shortfall animation features Flash has in comparison it can easily be justified by the abundance of web-enabled features.

If for some reason you agree that we cannot grow the file size beyond a certain limit and have stable performance from TBS then at least tell us …what that limit is.

kroaky,

If I remember correctly, tiger’s issue in size has to do with everything being done in the same scene. if you break your project up & then put the separate scenes together in final cut or something you shouldn’t have any problem using tbs for your animation.



Kdog, not true. My project was spread across different scenes.

Although I would agree that splitting things up in scenes will be better. But its like …buying time. Even splitting it up in scenes …sooner or later these small scenes will grow the file size to an un-manageable size. At some point, simple task within that file will cause TBS to crash!

However …if you were working on say a SouthPark like feature …then no problem in having seperate files each with seperate several scenes, and assembling it afterwards.

My issue came about because I was working on a music video and wanted continuity with the sound.

But here is the bottom line …when you grow the file size to a certain point …simple things like dragging stuff to the library cause TBS to crash. When I first encountered this issue the problem was rendering my work …everytime I tried to do so in SWF format it would crash half way through.

Most users may never encounter this issue …because it seems most people work on smaller half minute pieces.
In addition I found its not so easy to test for this …if for example you add a few elements and populate the frames with a few drawings and create say large cycles, it still works fine. Its when your actually working …adding multiple key frames, sound, different drawings etc …at some point the software experience convulsions …making once easy tasks difficult.

kroaky ,

If your a professional (and I’m not) you may want to work with TBS Techs. Its a good software to have, if your into pure animation.
One feature you may find invaluable is the 3D camera schene abilities.



Gotcha, hence the “If I remember correctly” disclaimer.



Kroaky, if you haven’t seen it already, I suggest you check out http://drawnbypain.com It is a mix of live video & animation, and all of the animation was done in tbs.



In using the 3D camera effects to set your stage …there are some help guides with the software itself, and some of these people on the site may have more tutorial about it. Just create a post and ask about it.