Doc:How Do I

2007-12-06T22:49:09Z

Zenoscope: /* Make layers go behind other layers, without moving the layer? */

[[Category:Tutorials]]

Feel free to add your own questions here. Or put them on the [[Wiki Wish List]].

__TOC__

== Apply a gradient to an object instead of the entire canvas? ==

# Create the region you want to fill with a gradient, and the gradient layer, if you haven't already.
# Make sure that the gradient layer is above the region layer in the [[Layers Dialog]].
# Select both layers, right click, and select [[Encapsulate]].
# Expand the new [[Paste Canvas|Inline Canvas]] layer if it's not already, and select your gradient layer.
# In the [[Params Dialog]] select the [[Blend Method]] parameter, and choose [[Blend Method#Onto|Onto]] from the drop-down menu.

The gradient will clip to the visible area of the region below it inside the [[Paste Canvas|Inline Canvas]]. (and any other layers in that section).

==Show or hide a layer, or fade the effect of a blur?==
In the [[Params Dialog]], look for an option labeled [[Amount Parameter|Amount]] - this controls how much of the blended result of the layer is composited with the blend of the layers beneath it.

In other words, for a typical layer, this will 'fade it out'. For a [[Blur Layer]] set to "[[Blend Method#Straight|Straight]]", this will fade ''between'' the blurred version and the unblurred version of the canvas. If you want it to become less blurry, adjust the [[Blur Layer#Size|Blur Layer's 'size' parameter]].

==Fill an outline?==
(Requested by [[User:Karlb|Karlb]])

There are several options:
* The easiest way is to link a new region layer to the outline's shape.
*# From the [[Layer Menu]] (either context-click on the [[Layers Dialog]] or use the [[Canvas Menu Caret]]) create a new [[Region Layer]]
*# Make '''sure''' that the [[Region Layer]] is above the [[Outline Layer]] in the [[Layers Dialog]] - this affects which layer's shape remains after the link.
*# Select both layers in the [[Layers Dialog]] This will display only the parameters shared by both layers in the [[Params Dialog]].
*# Context-click on the [[Vertices Parameter]], and select [[Linking|Link]].
*# The [[Region Layer]] will snap to the shape of the [[Outline Layer]].
* Similar to the above, but using a different method:
*# Select the outline you want to fill.
*# In the Params dialog, right-click the Verticies parameter, select "Export", enter a name for the shape, and hit return. This will export the shape of the outline, making it visible in the Children dialog.
*# In the Children dialog, open the ValueBase Nodes tree and select the name you just saved the shape as.
*# Create a new region layer as above, and leave it selected.
*# In the parameter dialog, right-click the Verticies parameter and click "Connect".
* When you create an [[Outline Layer|outline]] with the [[Bline Tool]] that you intend to be a filled area as well, make sure you select the Fill checkbox in the [[Bline Tool#Options|tool options dialog]]. Obviously, this doesn't help much if you realise later that you needed a fill here.
* If you are using the [[draw tool]], there is a button at the bottom of the [[draw tool#Options|tool options dialog]] labeled "Fill Last Stroke", which creates a new [[Region Layer]] and links its shape to the previously drawn outline. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as of Synfig Studio v0.61.04. It has been fixed in the current SVN version of the code.
* Create a [[Region Layer|region]] with the same number of ducks, and manually link each duck. If you want a region that depends on multiple outline layers, this is really your only choice for now.
* Use the draw tool, select only the outline to fill, draw a stroke roughly following the outline and make sure you're holding the Control key when you left go of the mouse button at the end of the stroke. This doesn't work 100% right at the moment.

==Dock Together Windows?==

*To dock (join) separate windows into one you must drag the tab ''icons'' for each of the tools into another window.
*You can create subdivisions inside the windows by dragging the icons into the side tabs (located around the edges, the look like rectangles).
*Tool tabs inside the window can be arranged by dragging them on top of one another, therefore changing the order.

==Use an external Bitmap?==

* In the image menu (>) choose file-->import. PNG with alpha channel works fine.
* To animate it without accidental stretching, right-click on the layer and choose encapsulate. You can then animate the position of the new "Inline Canvas" layer instead of the bbox.

== Close a bline? ==

* Right click on the starting point and then click on loop bline.

Note: It doesn't work unless the initial point has a tangent - ie the first segment is curved. But you can hide tangent ducks (Alt+3, or "Caret Menu > View > Show/Hide Ducks > Show tangent ducks") and process as described. Don't forget to press (Alt+3) after that to show tangent ducks again.

== How do I transform encapsulated objects? ==

* Right click on the Encapsulated object in the Layer dialog and choose "select all child layers". Then you select the ducks you want to transform (usually just all of them, like for rotating the object), and the rotate or scale tool and do the work.

==Make obects go behind each other, without moving layers?==

You'll notice each layer you make has a number in the z depth column in the layers dialog. Say you have 3 layers, they will be numbered 2 (lowest, eg a square) 1 (eg a circle) 0 (lowest, the default, eg a line). In order to make layer 1, the circle, pass behind layer 2, the square, change its z depth to be 3 or more. The z depth of the circle needs to be greater than 2 in order to be behind the square. To make the square on top of everything, you'd change its z depth to -1 or less.
Positive numbers on the z axis go into the screen, and negative numbers go out of the screen, towards the viewer.
It is possible to animate this effect, but each layer is discrete. They seem to go from 0 to 0.9999.

Doc:How Do I

2007-12-06T22:47:35Z

Zenoscope:

[[Category:Tutorials]]

Feel free to add your own questions here. Or put them on the [[Wiki Wish List]].

__TOC__

== Apply a gradient to an object instead of the entire canvas? ==

# Create the region you want to fill with a gradient, and the gradient layer, if you haven't already.
# Make sure that the gradient layer is above the region layer in the [[Layers Dialog]].
# Select both layers, right click, and select [[Encapsulate]].
# Expand the new [[Paste Canvas|Inline Canvas]] layer if it's not already, and select your gradient layer.
# In the [[Params Dialog]] select the [[Blend Method]] parameter, and choose [[Blend Method#Onto|Onto]] from the drop-down menu.

The gradient will clip to the visible area of the region below it inside the [[Paste Canvas|Inline Canvas]]. (and any other layers in that section).

==Show or hide a layer, or fade the effect of a blur?==
In the [[Params Dialog]], look for an option labeled [[Amount Parameter|Amount]] - this controls how much of the blended result of the layer is composited with the blend of the layers beneath it.

In other words, for a typical layer, this will 'fade it out'. For a [[Blur Layer]] set to "[[Blend Method#Straight|Straight]]", this will fade ''between'' the blurred version and the unblurred version of the canvas. If you want it to become less blurry, adjust the [[Blur Layer#Size|Blur Layer's 'size' parameter]].

==Fill an outline?==
(Requested by [[User:Karlb|Karlb]])

There are several options:
* The easiest way is to link a new region layer to the outline's shape.
*# From the [[Layer Menu]] (either context-click on the [[Layers Dialog]] or use the [[Canvas Menu Caret]]) create a new [[Region Layer]]
*# Make '''sure''' that the [[Region Layer]] is above the [[Outline Layer]] in the [[Layers Dialog]] - this affects which layer's shape remains after the link.
*# Select both layers in the [[Layers Dialog]] This will display only the parameters shared by both layers in the [[Params Dialog]].
*# Context-click on the [[Vertices Parameter]], and select [[Linking|Link]].
*# The [[Region Layer]] will snap to the shape of the [[Outline Layer]].
* Similar to the above, but using a different method:
*# Select the outline you want to fill.
*# In the Params dialog, right-click the Verticies parameter, select "Export", enter a name for the shape, and hit return. This will export the shape of the outline, making it visible in the Children dialog.
*# In the Children dialog, open the ValueBase Nodes tree and select the name you just saved the shape as.
*# Create a new region layer as above, and leave it selected.
*# In the parameter dialog, right-click the Verticies parameter and click "Connect".
* When you create an [[Outline Layer|outline]] with the [[Bline Tool]] that you intend to be a filled area as well, make sure you select the Fill checkbox in the [[Bline Tool#Options|tool options dialog]]. Obviously, this doesn't help much if you realise later that you needed a fill here.
* If you are using the [[draw tool]], there is a button at the bottom of the [[draw tool#Options|tool options dialog]] labeled "Fill Last Stroke", which creates a new [[Region Layer]] and links its shape to the previously drawn outline. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as of Synfig Studio v0.61.04. It has been fixed in the current SVN version of the code.
* Create a [[Region Layer|region]] with the same number of ducks, and manually link each duck. If you want a region that depends on multiple outline layers, this is really your only choice for now.
* Use the draw tool, select only the outline to fill, draw a stroke roughly following the outline and make sure you're holding the Control key when you left go of the mouse button at the end of the stroke. This doesn't work 100% right at the moment.

==Dock Together Windows?==

*To dock (join) separate windows into one you must drag the tab ''icons'' for each of the tools into another window.
*You can create subdivisions inside the windows by dragging the icons into the side tabs (located around the edges, the look like rectangles).
*Tool tabs inside the window can be arranged by dragging them on top of one another, therefore changing the order.

==Use an external Bitmap?==

* In the image menu (>) choose file-->import. PNG with alpha channel works fine.
* To animate it without accidental stretching, right-click on the layer and choose encapsulate. You can then animate the position of the new "Inline Canvas" layer instead of the bbox.

== Close a bline? ==

* Right click on the starting point and then click on loop bline.

Note: It doesn't work unless the initial point has a tangent - ie the first segment is curved. But you can hide tangent ducks (Alt+3, or "Caret Menu > View > Show/Hide Ducks > Show tangent ducks") and process as described. Don't forget to press (Alt+3) after that to show tangent ducks again.

== How do I transform encapsulated objects? ==

* Right click on the Encapsulated object in the Layer dialog and choose "select all child layers". Then you select the ducks you want to transform (usually just all of them, like for rotating the object), and the rotate or scale tool and do the work.

==Make layers go behind other layers, without moving the layer?==
You'll notice each layer you make has a number in the z depth column in the layers dialog. Say you have 3 layers, they will be numbered 2 (lowest, eg a square) 1 (eg a circle) 0 (lowest, the default, eg a line). In order to make layer 1, the circle, pass behind layer 2, the square, change its z depth to be 3 or more. The z depth of the circle needs to be greater than 2 in order to be behind the square. To make the square on top of everything, you'd change its z depth to -1 or less.
Positive numbers on the z axis go into the screen, and negative numbers go out of the screen, towards the viewer.
It is possible to animate this effect, but each layer is discrete. They seem to go from 0 to 0.9999.

User:Zenoscope

2007-12-05T05:31:27Z

Zenoscope:

User:Zenoscope

2007-12-05T05:29:13Z

Zenoscope:

Zenoscope is really a thousand monkeys, sitting at a thousand keyboards, taking screenshots. With luck, one may turn out to be a decent one with some relevance to Synfig.

Reminders:

Stuff to add images to:

http://wiki.synfig.com/Building_a_magnifying_glass

http://wiki.synfig.com/Adding_Layers

Image from this tute aren't in the right format :(
http://wiki.synfig.com/Building_a_magnifying_glass
Need to be saved as (whatever the default format for JPG in Gimp is) as the ones Dooglus (and others) have uploaded are not displaying properly.

: The images are fine, but the Wiki is broken. When pabs gets back, hopefully he can fix the wiki and the images will show up. -- [[User:Dooglus|dooglus]] 07:04, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

Finish off:

http://wiki.synfig.com/Getting_Started

Stuff to complete: (with apologies to Tominator)

http://wiki.synfig.com/PictureTutorial
since mine is quite similar and is finished.

http://wiki.synfig.com/Special:Wantedpages

Cheats:
<nowiki>
{| border="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="100%"

| Your text goes here

|}

{| border="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="100%"

| This makes a table with multiple vertical cells

|-

| Another cell goes here.

|-

|}
</nowiki>

[[Image:Test.jpg]]
[[Image:Test.png]]

2007-12-05T05:20:57Z

Zenoscope: /* Exporting the Canvas Parameter */

File:Reuse Animations 4.png

2007-12-05T05:19:22Z

Zenoscope:

File:Reuse Animations 3.png

2007-12-05T05:18:31Z

Zenoscope:

File:Reuse Animations 2.png

2007-12-05T05:16:51Z

Zenoscope:

Doc:Reuse Animations

2007-12-05T05:16:05Z

Zenoscope: /* Keyframes */

[[Category:Tutorials]]

== Introduction ==

One of the goals of all animators (especially the lazy ones like me) is to have the opportunity to reuse pieces of animation. It allows you to save a lot of time if you can insert some portions of animations already recorded into any other position in time.

This is especially useful for making characters speak because you have to move your character's mouth to repeated positions depending on the phonemes it describes while speaking.

This can be done easily just using a combination of [[Keyframe|keyframes]] and exported canvases.

== Keyframes ==

Our goal is to record some sort of animation and reuse it later. This can be done using keyframes. If you create some keyframes at the beginning of your animation you can reuse these "poses" at a later point in time just by duplicating the keyframes at another time position. To do that just do following:

# Create a Keyframe at a frame (all of our keyframes should be created close to each other to use a small portion of time. We only want to record a "pose" not a transition)
# Modify your objects in the way you want (for example make an eye close just by moving the points of the eyelid).
# Give a name to the keyframe just by clicking on its corresponding Description cell.
# Repeat the above steps as many times you need to make a new "pose". Let's say you have created a keyframe at frames number 2 (eye open) and 4 (eye closed)
# Once done then go to another frame with the [[Time Cursor|time cursor]], select the keyframe you want to introduce and press the "Duplicate keyframe" button. You'll obtain a copy of the selected keyframe at the current [[Time Cursor|time cursor]] position.

[[Image:Reuse_Animations_1.png]]

There is a problem with this technique. You are making copies of the entire animation poses that you have stored in the first keyframes of the time (frames 2 and 4 of the sample) and therefore you have made copies of all the other objects existing in the scene (following the example, the eyeball).

If you already have an eyeball animation recorded and you overlap an eyeblink (open and closed) set of keyframes in the middle, then the eyeball animation would be broken by the insertion of the copies of the eyelid movement keyframes.

== Exporting the Canvas Parameter ==

Every time you encapsulate a group of layers you obtain a [[Paste Canvas]] layer called "Inline Canvas" that is a special layer that holds other layers inside and prevents the composition of the inner layers over the other layers outside of it, that are outside of its scope.

One of the parameters of the encapsulate layer is the [[Canvas|Canvas]]. The canvas is like a workspace that represents all the layers that are held by the encapsulation layer.

To avoid the problem described in the previous section (the keyframes affecting all the objects in the scene) you can do following:

# Before creating the keyframe poses of the eyelids, encapsulate all the layers that form the eyelids inside a Paste Canvas layer.
# Then select the encapsulated layer and select the Canvas parameter in the Parameter Dialog.
# Right click the Canvas parameter, export it, and give it a name (in the sample this will be "eyelids").

Once exported you can go to the [[Canvas Browser]] and select the just exported canvas.

Double click it and you a new workarea window will open with just the layers that were encapsulated on the step 1 - the "eyelids" canvas in the sample.

Now you can create all the keyframes you need to store your "poses". Once done you can go to the proper frame and insert a copy of the pose keyframe. It will produce a keyframe in the "eyelids" canvas, but will not produce any keyframe on the other layers (for example the eyeball). This allows you independently animate of a portion of your model, separate from the rest of it.

Now once you have stored the eye blinks (open and closed) at the desired position you can go to the main window (just close the "eyelids" canvas workarea). You'll see that all the modifications have been transmitted to the main animation but they haven't created any keyframes in the main workarea. Even the layers that are inside the "eyelids" encapsulated layer don't have any keyframes (you can see an indication that there are keyframes in the exported canvas - dashed vertical lines - but no keyframe is displayed in the keyframe dialog). Anyway you can see the waypoints created by the keyframes and tweak them but not the keyframes. To modify the keyframes you should edit the exported canvas again in its own workarea. If you modify the encapsulated layers from the main workarea, waypoints will be created according to the main workarea's keyframes, not the exported canvas' workarea, so you will get different effects depending upon which workarea you use to modify the encapsulated layers.

Now, once you have created your animation of the eyelids you can go to the eyeball and modify it to your taste, inserting keyframes or waypoints with no worries about interfering with the eyelid animation. Also you can animate the eyeball before and make the animation of the eyelids later. They won't interfere with each other.

It would be a great improvement if you could connect the time cursors of the main workarea and the exported paste canvas' workarea to show both windows at the same current time. This would give feedback on where to insert the 'pose' keyframes in your local animation.

== A sample ==

Here you can find a sample animation of a blinking eye (the closed and open positions are copies of the keyframes "Open" and "Closed", while the eyeball moves independently in its own animation.

I have stored the poses "Open" and "Closed" at frames 0 and 2. The animation is defined to start at frame 6.

http://www.darthfurby.com/genete/synfig/eyeblink.gif

[http://www.darthfurby.com/genete/synfig/eyeblink.sifz file sample]

All comments are welcome.

TODO: Include some captures of the creation.

2007-09-29T07:44:42Z

Zenoscope: test image for JPG format

test image for JPG format

File:Magnifying glass 02.jpg

2007-09-29T06:58:02Z

Zenoscope:

User:Zenoscope

2007-09-27T08:23:16Z

Zenoscope:

Zenoscope is really a thousand monkeys, sitting at a thousand keyboards, taking screenshots. With luck, one may turn out to be a decent one with some relevance to Synfig.

Reminders:

Stuff to add images to:

http://wiki.synfig.com/Building_a_magnifying_glass

http://wiki.synfig.com/Adding_Layers

Hack the images from:

http://www.musikboden.se/synfigfiles/tutorial_magnifying_glass.pdf

to add to :

http://wiki.synfig.com/Building_a_magnifying_glass

Finish off:

http://wiki.synfig.com/Getting_Started

Stuff to complete: (with apologies to Tominator)

http://wiki.synfig.com/PictureTutorial
since mine is quite similar and is finished.

http://wiki.synfig.com/Special:Wantedpages

Cheats:
<nowiki>
{| border="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="100%"

| Your text goes here

|}

{| border="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="100%"

| This makes a table with multiple vertical cells

|-

| Another cell goes here.

|-

|}
</nowiki>

Doc:Getting Started

2007-09-27T08:21:29Z

Zenoscope: Added picture, it needs to be scaled/cropped though

== Introduction ==

Synfig, like most every other competent graphics program, breaks down individual elements of a [[canvas]] into [[layer|layers]]. However, it differs from other programs in two major ways:

{| border="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="100%"
|
# An individual layer in Synfig usually represents a single "Primitive". ie: A single region, an outline of a region, an imported JPEG, etc... This allows you to have a great deal of flexibility and control. It is not uncommon for a composition to have hundreds of layers(organized into a hierarchy for artist's sanity of course).
# A layer can not only composite information on top of the image below it, but also distort and/or modify it in some other way. In this sense, Synfig Layers act much like filters do in Adobe Photoshop or the GIMP. For example, we have a [[Blur Layer]], [[Radial Blur Layer]], [[Spherical Distortion Layer]], [[color-correct layer]], [[bevel layer]], etc...

Each layer has a set of parameters which determine how it behaves. When you click on a layer (either in the canvas window, or in the [[Layers Dialog]]), you will see its parameters in the [[Params Dialog]].

|| ||
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u243/zenoscope/layer.png
|}

Synfig Studio has an autorecover feature. If it crashes, even if the current file has not been saved, it will not lose more than 5 minutes of work. At restart it will automatically prompt the user to recover the unsaved changes. Unfortunately history isn't recovered yet. That feature comes later.

One thing you may notice is that Synfig Studio is SLOW, making it practically unusable on hardware that is over 3 years old. The biggest reason for this is that all of the color calculations are done in floating point--because Synfig Studio was built from the ground up with High-Dynamic-Range Imaging in mind. HOWEVER, this will not be the case forever.

darco has some fairly major re-implementations and optimizations that he plans to implement that should quite dramatically improve the performance of Synfig on all platforms. The goal is not a 200% speed increase, it is at least a 2000% speed increase. With the optimizations that are planned to be implemented, we will be able to pipeline operations in such a way that this performance improvement can be realized. It should also pave the way to hardware acceleration using todays powerful graphics processors, which should yield further performance improvements measurable in orders of magnitude.

== The user interface ==

{| border="0" cellspacing="5" align="center" width="100%"
| |
|http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u243/zenoscope/toolbar.png
|| ||

When you start Synfig Studio, it will display a splash graphic and boot itself up. After it finishes loading, you should see three windows. The window in the upper left is the [[toolbox]]. This is where you can open files, change [[tools]], etc. You'll notice that most of the buttons are greyed out--because there is no file open yet.

The other two windows (one on the bottom, and one to the right) are customizable [[dock dialogs]]. You can rearrange the contents of these however you wish by simply dragging the tab to where you want it. You can even create a new dock dialog by dragging a [[dock tab|tab]] out of the dock dialog it was inside of.

If you ever accidently close a [[dock tab]]s (by dragging it out of the dock dialog, and closing the new dock dialog that gets created), no worries. Simply goto the toolbox and goto "File->Dialogs", and then click on the name of the dialog you need.

There are a lot of [[dock tab]]s. If you have no idea what a dock tab does, simply hold your mouse over its icon and a tooltip will pop up describing the name of the tab.
|}

Here are some of the more important ones:

* [[Layers Dialog]] - This tab shows you the layer hierarchy for the currently selected canvas. It also allows you to manipulate these layers.
* [[Params Dialog]] - This tab will show you the parameters of the currently selected layer, (OR, if multiple layers are selected, it shows you only the parameters that the selected layers have in common)
* [[Categorical Help#Synfig Dialogs|Tool Options Dialog]] - Shows you any options specific to the currently selected tool
* [[Navigator|Navigator]] - Shows you a thumbnail of what the currently selected Canvas looks like. You can also zoom in and move the focus around with this tab.
* [[History Dialog]] - Shows you the history stack for the current composition. You can also edit the actions in history.

If you click the "new composition" button in the toolbox, a new [[composition]] will be opened and the [[canvas properties dialog]] will appear.

The canvas properties dialog is a mess, I know. I'll have it re-designed into something much more comprehendible in the next few days. For now, ignore the "Image Area" and "Locks and Links" sections.

If you click OK, the canvas properties dialog will disappear and you will see the [[Canvas window]]. This window represents the [[Root Canvas]], not that that means much to you at the moment, but that's OK--I'm just trying to show you around.

In the upper left corner of the Canvas Window, you'll see a button with a [[Canvas Menu Caret|caret]] If you click on this button, the [[Canvas Menu Caret|canvas window menu]] will pop up. (As an aside, if you right click in the canvas area and there is not a [[layer]] under the mouse position, this menu will also appear) So now you know where the menu is in the Canvas Window. Good. Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory in the Canvas Window. (Explanations on the menu stuff is to come in a sec)

== First steps ==

Let's create something so that we can tweak with it. Now that you have a new composition open and the properties dialog is out of the way, go over to the toolbox and click on the [[circle tool]]. (If you don't know which one it is, just mouse over them until you find the one with the tooltip that says "circle").

The second you click on the circle tool, you should notice that the [[tool options tab]] changed. But we'll get to that later.

: '''Note''': Some laptop users might experience trouble where click-drag on the canvas when using the [[circle tool]] doesn't seem to do anything or produce insanely huge circles. The problem is that Synfig has detected the touchpad and enabled that device (incorrectly!) To fix this: click File->Input devices... In the resulting dialog window, select 'Disabled' for your touchpad device. After this change, your external mouse and the touchpad will work as expected.

With the circle tool selected, you can now create circles in the [[canvas window]]. This pretty much works exactly as you might expect it to. Go ahead and create two (or more, if you fancy) circles. If by accident you just clicked on the canvas instead of clicking and dragging (with mouse button pressed) to draw the circle, you end up creating a circle with 0 radius and it is effectively invisible! No need to worry, you can easily fix this. In the Params dialog, you can change the parameters of the selected object. If you just made a 0 radius circle, it should be the current selected object. you can change its radius to some value other than 0, say 10, and manipulate it to your liking with the canvas ducks later.

Now go back to the toolbox and click on the [[normal tool]] (the blue circle with the arrow on it). After you do this, click on one of your circles. You will then see a [[bounding box]](which is kinda useless at this point in time, but I digress), a green dot at the center, and a cyan dot on the radius. Those dots are called ''[[duck]]s''. If you want to modify the circle, grab a duck and drag it around. Easy!

So you can select a [[layer]] by clicking on it. If you want to select more than one layer, hold down CONTROL while you are clicking -- this works in both the [[canvas window]] and the [[layer tab]]. Try it!

You can also select multiple ducks. You can do this in several ways. First, you can hold down CONTROL and individually click the ducks that you want selected, but this can be tedious. However, there is a much faster method -- just create a [[selection box]] by clicking the mouse and dragging it over the area of ducks that you want selected.

Go ahead and select two circles, and select all of their ducks. With several ducks selected, moving one duck will move all of the ducks. This behavior is dependent on the [[Normal Tool|normal tool]]. Thus, a more descriptive name for this tool might have been the "move" or "translate" tool.

The [[Rotate Tool|rotate]] and [[Scale Tool|scale]] tools work much like the [[Normal Tool|normal tool]], except in the case where you have multiple ducks selected. It is much easier to just try it than read about it. Select a few circles, select all of their ducks, and try using the rotate and scale tools.

Note that, unlike the normal tool, the other duck manipulation tools DO have options associated with them. If a particular tool isn't doing what you want, take a look in the [[tool options tab]] to see if it is set up like you want it.

== Linking ==

Now let's try [[linking]]. Let's say we always want these two circles to be the same size. Select two circles, and then select both of their Radius ducks(the cyan dot). Then right click on either duck and a menu will pop up. Click on "Link". Boom. The parameters are linked together. You can prove it to yourself by selecting just one of the circles and changing its radius -- the other one will change as well. Neat stuff, eh?

Linking is a fundamental concept in Synfig. You can create links not only between ducks, but also between parameters as well by selecting multiple layers, right clicking on the parameter in the param tab, and selecting "Link".

DIGRESSION: This is how [[Outline Layer|outlines]] are attached to their [[Region Layer|regions]]—but I'm getting ahead of myself. At the moment, the fundamental power and flexibility of linking in Synfig Core is beyond what Synfig Studio currently allows for. This will change in the future. Anyway, back on track...

Let's say you want one of the circles to be a different color. If you look in the toolbox below the tools, you'll see the foreground/background color selector, the outline width selector, and some other stuff like the default blend method and gradient. The foreground/background color widget works exactly as you might expect -- you can click on the foreground color, and a modest color chooser will appear. Now to can change the color pretty easily.

But sometimes you just want to click on a color and go. This is where the palette editor tab comes in. Its functionality isn't quite 100% yet (ie: saving and loading custom palettes hasn't been implemented yet), but the default palette is pretty decent. Click on the Palette editor tab and have a look -- it's the one with the palette-ish looking icon. Clicking on colors in here will immediately change the default foreground color.

That's all great, but we still haven't changed the color of the circle. There are two ways to do this. The first way is that you select the circle layer you want to modify, goto the params tab and double click on the color parameter--a color selector dialog shows up and you just tweak away. But let's say you already got the color you wanted selected as the default foreground color. Easy. Just click on the "Fill tool" from the toolbox, and then click on the circle in the canvas window. Boom. Circle changes color. This works with more than just circles, but we'll get to that in a sec.

Try playing around with the circles for a bit. Muck around with the parameters, and see what happens. To get you started, play around with feather a bit.

== Digging deeper ==

Of course, so far you just found out how to use the basic features of Synfig Studio but not how you animate a drawing. This is covered in the [[Animation_Basics|next tutorial]].

Doc:Getting Started

2007-09-27T08:20:47Z

Zenoscope: /* The user interface */

== Introduction ==

Synfig, like most every other competent graphics program, breaks down individual elements of a [[canvas]] into [[layer|layers]]. However, it differs from other programs in two major ways:

{| border="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="100%"
|
# An individual layer in Synfig usually represents a single "Primitive". ie: A single region, an outline of a region, an imported JPEG, etc... This allows you to have a great deal of flexibility and control. It is not uncommon for a composition to have hundreds of layers(organized into a hierarchy for artist's sanity of course).
# A layer can not only composite information on top of the image below it, but also distort and/or modify it in some other way. In this sense, Synfig Layers act much like filters do in Adobe Photoshop or the GIMP. For example, we have a [[Blur Layer]], [[Radial Blur Layer]], [[Spherical Distortion Layer]], [[color-correct layer]], [[bevel layer]], etc...

Each layer has a set of parameters which determine how it behaves. When you click on a layer (either in the canvas window, or in the [[Layers Dialog]]), you will see its parameters in the [[Params Dialog]].

|| ||
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u243/zenoscope/layer.png
|}

Synfig Studio has an autorecover feature. If it crashes, even if the current file has not been saved, it will not lose more than 5 minutes of work. At restart it will automatically prompt the user to recover the unsaved changes. Unfortunately history isn't recovered yet. That feature comes later.

One thing you may notice is that Synfig Studio is SLOW, making it practically unusable on hardware that is over 3 years old. The biggest reason for this is that all of the color calculations are done in floating point--because Synfig Studio was built from the ground up with High-Dynamic-Range Imaging in mind. HOWEVER, this will not be the case forever.

darco has some fairly major re-implementations and optimizations that he plans to implement that should quite dramatically improve the performance of Synfig on all platforms. The goal is not a 200% speed increase, it is at least a 2000% speed increase. With the optimizations that are planned to be implemented, we will be able to pipeline operations in such a way that this performance improvement can be realized. It should also pave the way to hardware acceleration using todays powerful graphics processors, which should yield further performance improvements measurable in orders of magnitude.

== The user interface ==

{| border="0" cellspacing="5" align="center" width="100%"
| |
|http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u243/zenoscope/toolbar.png
|| | |

When you start Synfig Studio, it will display a splash graphic and boot itself up. After it finishes loading, you should see three windows. The window in the upper left is the [[toolbox]]. This is where you can open files, change [[tools]], etc. You'll notice that most of the buttons are greyed out--because there is no file open yet.

The other two windows (one on the bottom, and one to the right) are customizable [[dock dialogs]]. You can rearrange the contents of these however you wish by simply dragging the tab to where you want it. You can even create a new dock dialog by dragging a [[dock tab|tab]] out of the dock dialog it was inside of.

If you ever accidently close a [[dock tab]]s (by dragging it out of the dock dialog, and closing the new dock dialog that gets created), no worries. Simply goto the toolbox and goto "File->Dialogs", and then click on the name of the dialog you need.

There are a lot of [[dock tab]]s. If you have no idea what a dock tab does, simply hold your mouse over its icon and a tooltip will pop up describing the name of the tab.
|}

Here are some of the more important ones:

* [[Layers Dialog]] - This tab shows you the layer hierarchy for the currently selected canvas. It also allows you to manipulate these layers.
* [[Params Dialog]] - This tab will show you the parameters of the currently selected layer, (OR, if multiple layers are selected, it shows you only the parameters that the selected layers have in common)
* [[Categorical Help#Synfig Dialogs|Tool Options Dialog]] - Shows you any options specific to the currently selected tool
* [[Navigator|Navigator]] - Shows you a thumbnail of what the currently selected Canvas looks like. You can also zoom in and move the focus around with this tab.
* [[History Dialog]] - Shows you the history stack for the current composition. You can also edit the actions in history.

If you click the "new composition" button in the toolbox, a new [[composition]] will be opened and the [[canvas properties dialog]] will appear.

The canvas properties dialog is a mess, I know. I'll have it re-designed into something much more comprehendible in the next few days. For now, ignore the "Image Area" and "Locks and Links" sections.

If you click OK, the canvas properties dialog will disappear and you will see the [[Canvas window]]. This window represents the [[Root Canvas]], not that that means much to you at the moment, but that's OK--I'm just trying to show you around.

In the upper left corner of the Canvas Window, you'll see a button with a [[Canvas Menu Caret|caret]] If you click on this button, the [[Canvas Menu Caret|canvas window menu]] will pop up. (As an aside, if you right click in the canvas area and there is not a [[layer]] under the mouse position, this menu will also appear) So now you know where the menu is in the Canvas Window. Good. Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory in the Canvas Window. (Explanations on the menu stuff is to come in a sec)

== First steps ==

Let's create something so that we can tweak with it. Now that you have a new composition open and the properties dialog is out of the way, go over to the toolbox and click on the [[circle tool]]. (If you don't know which one it is, just mouse over them until you find the one with the tooltip that says "circle").

The second you click on the circle tool, you should notice that the [[tool options tab]] changed. But we'll get to that later.

: '''Note''': Some laptop users might experience trouble where click-drag on the canvas when using the [[circle tool]] doesn't seem to do anything or produce insanely huge circles. The problem is that Synfig has detected the touchpad and enabled that device (incorrectly!) To fix this: click File->Input devices... In the resulting dialog window, select 'Disabled' for your touchpad device. After this change, your external mouse and the touchpad will work as expected.

With the circle tool selected, you can now create circles in the [[canvas window]]. This pretty much works exactly as you might expect it to. Go ahead and create two (or more, if you fancy) circles. If by accident you just clicked on the canvas instead of clicking and dragging (with mouse button pressed) to draw the circle, you end up creating a circle with 0 radius and it is effectively invisible! No need to worry, you can easily fix this. In the Params dialog, you can change the parameters of the selected object. If you just made a 0 radius circle, it should be the current selected object. you can change its radius to some value other than 0, say 10, and manipulate it to your liking with the canvas ducks later.

Now go back to the toolbox and click on the [[normal tool]] (the blue circle with the arrow on it). After you do this, click on one of your circles. You will then see a [[bounding box]](which is kinda useless at this point in time, but I digress), a green dot at the center, and a cyan dot on the radius. Those dots are called ''[[duck]]s''. If you want to modify the circle, grab a duck and drag it around. Easy!

So you can select a [[layer]] by clicking on it. If you want to select more than one layer, hold down CONTROL while you are clicking -- this works in both the [[canvas window]] and the [[layer tab]]. Try it!

You can also select multiple ducks. You can do this in several ways. First, you can hold down CONTROL and individually click the ducks that you want selected, but this can be tedious. However, there is a much faster method -- just create a [[selection box]] by clicking the mouse and dragging it over the area of ducks that you want selected.

Go ahead and select two circles, and select all of their ducks. With several ducks selected, moving one duck will move all of the ducks. This behavior is dependent on the [[Normal Tool|normal tool]]. Thus, a more descriptive name for this tool might have been the "move" or "translate" tool.

The [[Rotate Tool|rotate]] and [[Scale Tool|scale]] tools work much like the [[Normal Tool|normal tool]], except in the case where you have multiple ducks selected. It is much easier to just try it than read about it. Select a few circles, select all of their ducks, and try using the rotate and scale tools.

Note that, unlike the normal tool, the other duck manipulation tools DO have options associated with them. If a particular tool isn't doing what you want, take a look in the [[tool options tab]] to see if it is set up like you want it.

== Linking ==

Now let's try [[linking]]. Let's say we always want these two circles to be the same size. Select two circles, and then select both of their Radius ducks(the cyan dot). Then right click on either duck and a menu will pop up. Click on "Link". Boom. The parameters are linked together. You can prove it to yourself by selecting just one of the circles and changing its radius -- the other one will change as well. Neat stuff, eh?

Linking is a fundamental concept in Synfig. You can create links not only between ducks, but also between parameters as well by selecting multiple layers, right clicking on the parameter in the param tab, and selecting "Link".

DIGRESSION: This is how [[Outline Layer|outlines]] are attached to their [[Region Layer|regions]]—but I'm getting ahead of myself. At the moment, the fundamental power and flexibility of linking in Synfig Core is beyond what Synfig Studio currently allows for. This will change in the future. Anyway, back on track...

Let's say you want one of the circles to be a different color. If you look in the toolbox below the tools, you'll see the foreground/background color selector, the outline width selector, and some other stuff like the default blend method and gradient. The foreground/background color widget works exactly as you might expect -- you can click on the foreground color, and a modest color chooser will appear. Now to can change the color pretty easily.

But sometimes you just want to click on a color and go. This is where the palette editor tab comes in. Its functionality isn't quite 100% yet (ie: saving and loading custom palettes hasn't been implemented yet), but the default palette is pretty decent. Click on the Palette editor tab and have a look -- it's the one with the palette-ish looking icon. Clicking on colors in here will immediately change the default foreground color.

That's all great, but we still haven't changed the color of the circle. There are two ways to do this. The first way is that you select the circle layer you want to modify, goto the params tab and double click on the color parameter--a color selector dialog shows up and you just tweak away. But let's say you already got the color you wanted selected as the default foreground color. Easy. Just click on the "Fill tool" from the toolbox, and then click on the circle in the canvas window. Boom. Circle changes color. This works with more than just circles, but we'll get to that in a sec.

Try playing around with the circles for a bit. Muck around with the parameters, and see what happens. To get you started, play around with feather a bit.

== Digging deeper ==

Of course, so far you just found out how to use the basic features of Synfig Studio but not how you animate a drawing. This is covered in the [[Animation_Basics|next tutorial]].

User:Zenoscope

2007-09-27T08:02:48Z

Zenoscope:

Zenoscope is really a thousand monkeys, sitting at a thousand keyboards, taking screenshots. With luck, one may turn out to be a decent one with some relevance to Synfig.

Reminders:

Stuff to add images to:
http://wiki.synfig.com/Building_a_magnifying_glass
http://wiki.synfig.com/Adding_Layers

Hack the images from:
http://www.musikboden.se/synfigfiles/tutorial_magnifying_glass.pdf
to add to :
http://wiki.synfig.com/Building_a_magnifying_glass

Finish off:
http://wiki.synfig.com/Getting_Started

Stuff to complete:
(with apologies to Tominator)
http://wiki.synfig.com/PictureTutorial
since mine is quite similar and is finished.

http://wiki.synfig.com/Special:Wantedpages

Cheats:
{| border="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="100%"
| Your text goes here
|}

{| border="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="100%"
| This makes a table with multiple vertical cells
|-
| Another cell goes here.
|-

|}

User:Zenoscope

2007-09-27T07:54:13Z

Zenoscope: New page: Zenoscope is really a thousand monkeys, sitting at a thousand keyboards, taking screenshots. With luck, one may turn out to be a decent one with some relevance to Synfig. Reminders: Stu...

Doc:Getting Started

2007-09-25T08:31:21Z

Zenoscope: inserted a picture

== Introduction ==

Synfig, like most every other competent graphics program, breaks down individual elements of a [[canvas]] into [[layer|layers]]. However, it differs from other programs in two major ways:

{| border="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="100%"
|
# An individual layer in Synfig usually represents a single "Primitive". ie: A single region, an outline of a region, an imported JPEG, etc... This allows you to have a great deal of flexibility and control. It is not uncommon for a composition to have hundreds of layers(organized into a hierarchy for artist's sanity of course).
# A layer can not only composite information on top of the image below it, but also distort and/or modify it in some other way. In this sense, Synfig Layers act much like filters do in Adobe Photoshop or the GIMP. For example, we have a [[Blur Layer]], [[Radial Blur Layer]], [[Spherical Distortion Layer]], [[color-correct layer]], [[bevel layer]], etc...

Each layer has a set of parameters which determine how it behaves. When you click on a layer (either in the canvas window, or in the [[Layers Dialog]]), you will see its parameters in the [[Params Dialog]].

|| ||
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u243/zenoscope/layer.png
|}

Synfig Studio has an autorecover feature. If it crashes, even if the current file has not been saved, it will not lose more than 5 minutes of work. At restart it will automatically prompt the user to recover the unsaved changes. Unfortunately history isn't recovered yet. That feature comes later.

One thing you may notice is that Synfig Studio is SLOW, making it practically unusable on hardware that is over 3 years old. The biggest reason for this is that all of the color calculations are done in floating point--because Synfig Studio was built from the ground up with High-Dynamic-Range Imaging in mind. HOWEVER, this will not be the case forever.

darco has some fairly major re-implementations and optimizations that he plans to implement that should quite dramatically improve the performance of Synfig on all platforms. The goal is not a 200% speed increase, it is at least a 2000% speed increase. With the optimizations that are planned to be implemented, we will be able to pipeline operations in such a way that this performance improvement can be realized. It should also pave the way to hardware acceleration using todays powerful graphics processors, which should yield further performance improvements measurable in orders of magnitude.

== The user interface ==

When you start Synfig Studio, it will display a splash graphic and boot itself up. After it finishes loading, you should see three windows. The window in the upper left is the [[toolbox]]. This is where you can open files, change [[tools]], etc. You'll notice that most of the buttons are greyed out--because there is no file open yet.

The other two windows (one on the bottom, and one to the right) are customizable [[dock dialogs]]. You can rearrange the contents of these however you wish by simply dragging the tab to where you want it. You can even create a new dock dialog by dragging a [[dock tab|tab]] out of the dock dialog it was inside of.

If you ever accidently close a [[dock tab]]s (by dragging it out of the dock dialog, and closing the new dock dialog that gets created), no worries. Simply goto the toolbox and goto "File->Dialogs", and then click on the name of the dialog you need.

There are a lot of [[dock tab]]s. If you have no idea what a dock tab does, simply hold your mouse over its icon and a tooltip will pop up describing the name of the tab.

Here are some of the more important ones:

* [[Layers Dialog]] - This tab shows you the layer hierarchy for the currently selected canvas. It also allows you to manipulate these layers.
* [[Params Dialog]] - This tab will show you the parameters of the currently selected layer, (OR, if multiple layers are selected, it shows you only the parameters that the selected layers have in common)
* [[Categorical Help#Synfig Dialogs|Tool Options Dialog]] - Shows you any options specific to the currently selected tool
* [[Navigator|Navigator]] - Shows you a thumbnail of what the currently selected Canvas looks like. You can also zoom in and move the focus around with this tab.
* [[History Dialog]] - Shows you the history stack for the current composition. You can also edit the actions in history.

If you click the "new composition" button in the toolbox, a new [[composition]] will be opened and the [[canvas properties dialog]] will appear.

The canvas properties dialog is a mess, I know. I'll have it re-designed into something much more comprehendible in the next few days. For now, ignore the "Image Area" and "Locks and Links" sections.

If you click OK, the canvas properties dialog will disappear and you will see the [[Canvas window]]. This window represents the [[Root Canvas]], not that that means much to you at the moment, but that's OK--I'm just trying to show you around.

In the upper left corner of the Canvas Window, you'll see a button with a [[Canvas Menu Caret|caret]] If you click on this button, the [[Canvas Menu Caret|canvas window menu]] will pop up. (As an aside, if you right click in the canvas area and there is not a [[layer]] under the mouse position, this menu will also appear) So now you know where the menu is in the Canvas Window. Good. Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory in the Canvas Window. (Explanations on the menu stuff is to come in a sec)

== First steps ==

Let's create something so that we can tweak with it. Now that you have a new composition open and the properties dialog is out of the way, go over to the toolbox and click on the [[circle tool]]. (If you don't know which one it is, just mouse over them until you find the one with the tooltip that says "circle").

The second you click on the circle tool, you should notice that the [[tool options tab]] changed. But we'll get to that later.

: '''Note''': Some laptop users might experience trouble where click-drag on the canvas when using the [[circle tool]] doesn't seem to do anything or produce insanely huge circles. The problem is that Synfig has detected the touchpad and enabled that device (incorrectly!) To fix this: click File->Input devices... In the resulting dialog window, select 'Disabled' for your touchpad device. After this change, your external mouse and the touchpad will work as expected.

With the circle tool selected, you can now create circles in the [[canvas window]]. This pretty much works exactly as you might expect it to. Go ahead and create two (or more, if you fancy) circles. If by accident you just clicked on the canvas instead of clicking and dragging (with mouse button pressed) to draw the circle, you end up creating a circle with 0 radius and it is effectively invisible! No need to worry, you can easily fix this. In the Params dialog, you can change the parameters of the selected object. If you just made a 0 radius circle, it should be the current selected object. you can change its radius to some value other than 0, say 10, and manipulate it to your liking with the canvas ducks later.

Now go back to the toolbox and click on the [[normal tool]] (the blue circle with the arrow on it). After you do this, click on one of your circles. You will then see a [[bounding box]](which is kinda useless at this point in time, but I digress), a green dot at the center, and a cyan dot on the radius. Those dots are called ''[[duck]]s''. If you want to modify the circle, grab a duck and drag it around. Easy!

So you can select a [[layer]] by clicking on it. If you want to select more than one layer, hold down CONTROL while you are clicking -- this works in both the [[canvas window]] and the [[layer tab]]. Try it!

You can also select multiple ducks. You can do this in several ways. First, you can hold down CONTROL and individually click the ducks that you want selected, but this can be tedious. However, there is a much faster method -- just create a [[selection box]] by clicking the mouse and dragging it over the area of ducks that you want selected.

Go ahead and select two circles, and select all of their ducks. With several ducks selected, moving one duck will move all of the ducks. This behavior is dependent on the [[Normal Tool|normal tool]]. Thus, a more descriptive name for this tool might have been the "move" or "translate" tool.

The [[Rotate Tool|rotate]] and [[Scale Tool|scale]] tools work much like the [[Normal Tool|normal tool]], except in the case where you have multiple ducks selected. It is much easier to just try it than read about it. Select a few circles, select all of their ducks, and try using the rotate and scale tools.

Note that, unlike the normal tool, the other duck manipulation tools DO have options associated with them. If a particular tool isn't doing what you want, take a look in the [[tool options tab]] to see if it is set up like you want it.

== Linking ==

Now let's try [[linking]]. Let's say we always want these two circles to be the same size. Select two circles, and then select both of their Radius ducks(the cyan dot). Then right click on either duck and a menu will pop up. Click on "Link". Boom. The parameters are linked together. You can prove it to yourself by selecting just one of the circles and changing its radius -- the other one will change as well. Neat stuff, eh?

Linking is a fundamental concept in Synfig. You can create links not only between ducks, but also between parameters as well by selecting multiple layers, right clicking on the parameter in the param tab, and selecting "Link".

DIGRESSION: This is how [[Outline Layer|outlines]] are attached to their [[Region Layer|regions]]—but I'm getting ahead of myself. At the moment, the fundamental power and flexibility of linking in Synfig Core is beyond what Synfig Studio currently allows for. This will change in the future. Anyway, back on track...

Let's say you want one of the circles to be a different color. If you look in the toolbox below the tools, you'll see the foreground/background color selector, the outline width selector, and some other stuff like the default blend method and gradient. The foreground/background color widget works exactly as you might expect -- you can click on the foreground color, and a modest color chooser will appear. Now to can change the color pretty easily.

But sometimes you just want to click on a color and go. This is where the palette editor tab comes in. Its functionality isn't quite 100% yet (ie: saving and loading custom palettes hasn't been implemented yet), but the default palette is pretty decent. Click on the Palette editor tab and have a look -- it's the one with the palette-ish looking icon. Clicking on colors in here will immediately change the default foreground color.

That's all great, but we still haven't changed the color of the circle. There are two ways to do this. The first way is that you select the circle layer you want to modify, goto the params tab and double click on the color parameter--a color selector dialog shows up and you just tweak away. But let's say you already got the color you wanted selected as the default foreground color. Easy. Just click on the "Fill tool" from the toolbox, and then click on the circle in the canvas window. Boom. Circle changes color. This works with more than just circles, but we'll get to that in a sec.

Try playing around with the circles for a bit. Muck around with the parameters, and see what happens. To get you started, play around with feather a bit.

== Digging deeper ==

Of course, so far you just found out how to use the basic features of Synfig Studio but not how you animate a drawing. This is covered in the [[Animation_Basics|next tutorial]].

Tutorials

2007-09-25T07:59:18Z

Zenoscope:

This is an index of all of the tutorials for Synfig Studio.

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="80%"
|'''Tutorial Name'''||'''Description'''
|-
| [[Getting Started]] [[http://www.synfig.com/synfig_tutorial.pdf PDF]] || New to Synfig Studio? This tutorial will help you get the gist of things
|-
| [[Animation Basics]] || Introduction to making things move, the timeline, and the keyframe dialog.
|-
| [[Adding Layers]] || Introduction to the Layers palette, and basics of compositing.
|-
| [[Creating Shapes]] || Introduction to making shapes using the bline and normal tools.
|-
| [[How do I|How do I...?]] || Quickie tutorials, and commonly-needed tasks.
|-
| [[PictureTutorial|Timonator's newbie tutorial with pictures!]] || a WIP tutorial with lots of screenshots.
|-
| [[Flower Animation]] || A beginner tutorial, showing animation with blines. It could be a good tutorial to follow, after the Animations Basics one.
|-
| [[Following a BLine]] || A tutorial showing how to make a layer follow a BLine rotating to face the direction it's moving in
|}

== See Also ==
* [[Keyboard Shortcuts]]

General animation tutorial links:

[http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/old/popThru/popThru.html Keith Largo Tutes]

[http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/05/meta-100000-animation-drawing-course.html The Animation Drawing Course at The Animation Archive]

[http://www.garycmartin.com/mouth_shapes.html Lip Sync]

Tutorials

2007-09-25T07:47:36Z

Zenoscope: re-erfixed everything. sigh.

This is an index of all of the tutorials for Synfig Studio.

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="80%"
|'''Tutorial Name'''||'''Description'''
|-
| [[Getting Started]] [[http://www.synfig.com/synfig_tutorial.pdf PDF]] || New to Synfig Studio? This tutorial will help you get the gist of things
|-
| [[Animation Basics]] || Introduction to making things move, the timeline, and the keyframe dialog.
|-
| [[Adding Layers]] || Introduction to the Layers palette, and basics of compositing.
|-
| [[Creating Shapes]] || Introduction to making shapes using the bline and normal tools.
|-
| [[How do I|How do I...?]] || Quickie tutorials, and commonly-needed tasks.
|-
| [[PictureTutorial|Timonator's newbie tutorial with pictures!]] || a WIP tutorial with lots of screenshots.
|-
| [[Flower Animation]] || A beginner tutorial, showing animation with blines. It could be a good tutorial to follow, after the Animations Basics one.
|-
| [[Following a BLine]] || A tutorial showing how to make a layer follow a BLine rotating to face the direction it's moving in|
|}

== See Also ==
* [[Keyboard Shortcuts]]

General animation tutorial links:

[http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/old/popThru/popThru.html Leith Lango animation tutorials]

[http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/05/meta-100000-animation-drawing-course.html The Animation Drawing Course (free) at The Animation Archive]

[http://www.garycmartin.com/mouth_shapes.html Lip Sync]