Revision as of 16:22, 1 June 2010

The Synfig Team is proud to announce a new version of Synfig: 0.62.01. This new version does not feature as many major changes as the last one, but it does come with some interesting features. Some of these additions are listed below. A detailed change log is available in the NEWS files of the source code (core - interface). To discover them, download Synfig now!

Dual Splash Screen

This time we have two alternative splash screens because there was a tie between the top entries in the competition. But that is not a problem! Both are shipped with the application and one is selected at random during start up.

Splash Screen from Madeleine Crubellier	Splash Screen from Konstantin Dmitriev and Nikolay Mamashev

New functionalities for the Normal Tool

The Normal Tool is used to move ducks in the work area. It is also the tool that is selected when the user stops using another tool. In this new version, the Normal Tool has been renamed to the Transform Tool. Apart from simply translating objects, it can now rotate and scale them without need to select another tool. Users should find this new feature to be more convenient for construction and animation.

Transform tool in rotate mode	Transform tool in scale mode

To use the new rotate and scale abilities, the user needs to hold down the CTRL or ALT (MOD for Mac) keys while dragging the ducks. Then cursor will change to indicate if the ducks are being scaled or rotated. The SHIFT key can be also pressed together with the CTRL or ALT keys to produce constrained rotations (every 15 degrees) and scales (keep aspect ratio). If both CTRL and ALT keys are pressed the ducks well be both scaled and rotated.

Enable single threaded renderer for Microsoft Windows version to increase stability

In the past, Synfig Studio had suffered from a bad reputation due to its stability problems on Windows. While we have not been able to determine why multithreading leads to crashes on Windows, a single-thread option has been added and enabled by default to make the application much more stable.

Improvements in SVG import module

Gradient support have been improved in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) import module. Now import your artwork from Inkscape is more accurate and usable than before. Here you can see a import example of artwork from Inkscape to Synfig Studio. Images ceded by Ricardo Alexandre B. Graça.

Art work in Inkscape	Imported SVG in Synfig Studio

New target parameters dialog that allows custom codecs when rendering with ffmpeg

Users reported several times that the built-in settings passed to the ffmpeg renderer were not correct and produced pixelated renders. Previously, the option to select the codec to use with ffmpeg was also unavailable.

In this version we let the user select the video codec and the bitrate to pass to the ffmpeg renderer. It is possible to pass a custom codec when ffmpeg expands its range of supported codecs. (For example, it will be possible to render in the WebM format once a new version of ffmpeg supporting the VP8 codec is released).

New icons for actions and layers

Thanks to several collaborators, all the Synfig Studio layers and most of the menu actions have now icons. Here are some of them:

Updated Documentation: new manual & tutorials

Although the features that you are seeing here are not so many, we have worked hard to ship to you a stable, clean and polished new release. It is important to notice that the Synfig Team is now working on reorganizing and updating the documentation, a needed and useful content, complementary to our software. Discover our new user manual and our tutorials, among others. Therefore, despite being labeled minor, this release seats the basis for the path towards 0.63 which we hope will be even better.

There have been also some bug fixed and other added features (new Italian and German translations, automatic building and packaging script, more parameters for the motion blur layer...) To discover them, download Synfig now!

As always, you can get free and diligent support for any problem you might have during installation, usage, remaining bugs or missing features.

Enjoy our release! Proudly yours,
The Synfig Team