Doc talk:Overview

Thoughts

The switch of topic from Synfig Studio to animation in general seems jarring to me. Could we change "As you probably know, animation is the rapid display of ..." to something related to Synfig Studio or digital animation? Recycler (talk) 07:36, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Maybe we should put explanations about animation in general right into beginning? And then it will get focused on Synfigs Studio as specific tool for animation. --Zelgadis (talk) 12:29, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

The first paragraph "As you probably now...." is already a kind of this explanations... and this could be rewrited. Maybie adding not too much details but adding somes adhoc links (for example, wikipedia ; Motion_graphics , Computer_animation, Cutout_animation) to present quickly in what Synfig is so powerfull : Morphing/CutOut/Links . And so, why not add also a "Data Linking and automatic animation" level 1 paragraph starting at "Synfig Studio gives you flexible...." . I see two reasons, first one, to add space in this block of text, and to highlight the links capability ... or not ... ;-) --D.j.a.y (talk) 13:06, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but in my opinion the page turned into total mess now. Introducing such complex concepts as ValueNodes and PasteCanvases is not god strategy. Tere's no reason to dive into layer differences, because this will be explained later in the "Diving In" section. Also I'm against of putting multiple links into text (especially to the external resources), because the text of this manual is going to be exported into PDF for offline reading and even printed on the paper. My recommendation is: revert to revision from "19 August 2010", move "As you probably know, animation is the rapid display..." paragraph to the top. Then feel free to improve the text but plase stick to the existing structure. Sorry if my critique sounds hard. I realy appeciate your contributions, but I have to keep the manual solid. --Zelgadis (talk) 10:10, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

No prob. I love critique and you present good points. Thanks :) --Recycler (talk) 10:24, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

1) "have to keep the manual solid" ... ok... but not austere. The work of Recycler, adding images, adding spaces in this solid block of text was for me very valueable and interesting : This is the first page to read for a newbee ... this page must be attractive and must make readers want to read and click next. 2) Yep, "dig into" dig into synfig, but overview page is a good place to make a tour and enumerate magical synfig feature in my point of view. 3) "exported pdf" yep, cool! , but for me it's not a reason to cut us from hypertext! (anyway i agree with the "not too much" external linking idea...) --D.j.a.y (talk) 08:08, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

My screenshot in the layer section is from an ugly Windows desktop. Feel free to change it. --Recycler (talk) 03:37, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Waouh... what a nice rewrite and formating !... I have added somes litle words, and now have another work in translation ;-) --D.j.a.y (talk) 00:09, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the addition. I'm not good at formally writing a document, but hopefully people will feel like Synfig is worth trying. Still a long way to go :D. --Recycler (talk) 08:11, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Is it necessary to separate morphing and cutout animation? To me, this kind of information can be concentrated into the Tutorials section, because they are artistic choices available other programs as well. Both methods operate on ValueNodes and tweening, which is why I think we could condense this into a short overview of ValueNodes, mentioning morphing and cutout as "examples of use". What do you think? --Recycler (talk) 02:04, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I think we should separate them for following reasons. Cutout animation based on simple transformation of pieces (translation, rotation, scale) - this is a high-level "deformation". Morphing takes care about changing the shape - this is low-level "deformation". The user should understand those two types of animation and from the start he can choose what he prefer to go for. In fact, those types are represent animation at different levels. Cutout is a simplest one and it's enough to learn it to make a simple animation. But you can't do quality morphing animation (for characters) without using cutout animation. It's important to understand that to get good character animation you have to combine those two types together - that's what we do in Morevna Project. But if you try to separate complex movement into elementary transformations, you'll always end up with combination of morphing and simple cutout transformation. Well in fact, there are third type - frame-by-frame animation technique (replacing one image with another, without any tweening) - this also can be considered as transformation type. But I don't want to dig that deep in the Overview. ^__^ --Zelgadis (talk) 16:28, 4 December 2012 (UTC)