Based on the “about Toon Boom” link of my software I am running version 3.5.058
I down-loaded this version the very day it was released.
Has there been a patch or upgrade since?
If not when should we look for a patch?
And earlier I discovered that my system responded better when drawing in the camera view compared to using the drawing view.
See my post here: http://www.toonboom.com/support/forums/toonBoomStudio/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=2996
Ugo said there was some “optimization” that was applied in the camera view and I assumed that this is not in the drawing view.
Can I expect this optmization in the drawing view in the next patch?
Lastly because I know this is not very difficult to do …can you give us GIF animation export option with TBS next release? I have been asking for this for 4 years now.
For those having absolutely no use for GIF …please ignore this.
Hi,
My 'about box" says 3.5.099
I am using Windows, if that helps
Hi,
A patch was indeed released at the beginning of February coinciding with the release of Windows Vista. Various bugs were also fixed in that patch so you might want to give a look to it.
Concerning the GIF it is not as simple as you could think. The main reason it was removed was the fact there were too much problem with it at the time. I know you have been looking forward to get the feature but it would take quite some time to get it to work. This being said it is still in the list of feature request for future versions of the application.
Ugo
Ugo
Thanks…I downloaded the latest release and will uninstall and re-install later. Do you know what was fixed in this patch …I can’t seem to find that link with the information on the patch release.
And just curious, is it the same effort to provide JPEG export as it is to provide GIF? Just asking though I think the answer is yes. If thats the case …then I will just wait and keep asking for GIF.
Hi Tiger,
I am not that tech savvy about what goes under it all but GIF and JPG works in complete different way. What define a gif weight is the amount of colors you put in it. You need to select a certain color scheme before exporting and only those colors will be rendered out.
For the jpeg/tga/png… rather then having a color palette for the animation there is a quality meter associated the export which compresses the image. Since the gif format is not longer a native format for Quicktime (which is used to export movie) this mean we would have to code down the whole thing and I suppose this is why it has been held back for quite some time.
Concerning the release notes for the patch I will need to look into this but basically most of the stuff was bug fixes. Snap last keyframe was one of the many features that were fixed.
Regards,
Ugo
Ugo,
Thanks.
If I was to pick only one fix I’d like to see for the next patch or release I’d like to get that …“optimization” … feature, thats in the camera view and not in the drawing view.
It would be great …really great if the drawing experience in TBS drawing view could get better.
thanks.
Thanks for your comments Tiger, we read them and really consider them.
About the animated gifs, it’s not the same kind of effort to provide animated gif then export a sequence of JPEG. It’s much more effort due technicalities (we could over them but really it would be boring 
)
Also, the LWZ compression (used inside the gif format) was under patent (Unisys & IBM) until recently (2004 in Canada and 2006 in the U.S.). Every serious companies about implementing gif format would have to pay royalties for the gif format. It’s just recently that they decide not to renew their patent. I believe the reason is that the gif format is quite old and is being replaced by new more efficient formats such as PNG. The only thing missing to PNG to fully replace the gormat is frame cycling (animation).
Nothing personal really, I prefer to be honest with you tell you right away that gif inside TBS is most likely never to happen unless we really have a huge demand for it.
That said, It would be a pleasure to help you find a quick way to convert TBS animation to animated gif for your projects.
Look I converted a 7 frame animation inside Image Ready it took me about 2 minutes (if you have Photoshop CS3 it would even be easier since they support quick time animation now. It just a matter of importing the video and exporting the gif).
http://www.toonboom.com/020326/BouncingBall.gif
Let me know if you would like instructions or if you would like help to find another software that can be used to convert.
Cheers,
Thanks for being honest. I am well aware that there may not be very many TBS users who want this feature.
Please…please don’t let the whole GIF subject distract you from my number one priority …the optimization …for the drawing view. That I would appreciate more than any other request.
Now getting back to GIF , I use the term “GIF” some-what generically because I don’t really care if its GIF, JPEG or PNG.
In fact PNG being more efficient may better serve me than GIF.
In addition, whatever suggestions you have that could help me would be appreciated. I don’t have photoshop.
I use GIMP to convert my files to GIF. However GIMP has some quirks with it. For example see below where I converted a short piece to GIF. It showed up with some fuzzy and I cant explain why. When I remove the color feature it shows better.
Of course the SWF export had no such issues.
http://www.filenanny.com/files/44f7b9c9f14e0/walk.gif
http://www.filenanny.com/files/44f7b9c9f14e0/walk2.gif
