开始使用

介绍

Synfig像其它一些主要的图形软件一样, 将一块画布 分解为多个层. 然而它有两点与其它的程序有很大的不同:

一个单独的层表现为一个独立的“图元”. 例如: 一个区块, 一个区块的轮廓，一个导入的JPEG图像，等等... 这样可以让你拥有无以伦比的灵活性和控制能力，所以一个作品由上百个层组成就不足为奇了（组织成一个层次结构的艺术家当然理智）。 层不仅可以和它下方的图像进行合成处理，而且还会扭曲和/或修改另一些方式。从这个意义上讲，Synfig层的行为就像在Adobe Photoshop或GIMP中滤镜的作用。举例来说，我们有一个模糊层，径向模糊层，球面化层，颜色正确层，斜面层等.. 每个层都由一套参数来决定它的形为，当你单击一个层（不管是在图布窗口中还是层面板中）你就可以在参数面板中看到它的参数

Synfig工作室具有自动恢复功能。如果崩溃，即使当前文件尚未保存，也不会损失超过5分钟的作业。在重新启动它会自动提示用户恢复未保存的更改。不幸的历史还没有复苏。该功能最近就会推出。

有一件事您可能会注意到的是，Synfig Studio是缓慢的，3年以前的硬件几乎是无法使用。最大的原因是，颜色的计算都是有浮点做的 - 因为Synfig工作室从最底层构建与高动态范围成像考虑。(because Synfig Studio was built from the ground up with High-Dynamic-Range Imaging in mind.) 然而，这不会永远都是一个问题。

Darco有一些比较重大的重组和优化的实现，他计划实施，应该相当显着地提高Synfig在所有平台上的性能。我们的目标不是200％的速度增长，而是至少2000％的速度增长。随着该计划实施的优化，我们可以使用管理操作来提升性能，它还为使程序运行在今天更强大的图像处理器上铺平了道路。它应产生一个巨大的数量级上的性能提升。

用户界面

在启动Synfig Studio的时候，会显示一个引导图像，完成载入后你应该可以看见三个窗口，左上角的窗口是工具箱，在这里你可以打开文件，改变当前使用的工具等等。在没有文章打开的时个多数按钮都是灰白色的不可用状态。 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 grayed out--because there is no file open yet. 其于的两个窗口（一个在底部，一个在右边）是自定义的停靠窗口，你可以通过拖拽标签重新排例里面的内容。你甚至可以通过拖拽标签脱 离停靠对话框来创新一个新的依靠窗口 如果你偶然的关闭了一个停靠标签（通过将它拖离停靠对话框，并且关闭刚刚创建的停靠对话框）不要害怕，很简单只要到工具箱窗口中选中"File → Dialogs"，然后单击你所关闭的对话框的名子就可以了。 有很多的标签，如果你不知道停靠标签的作用，你可以反映鼠标放在依靠标签的图标上就会弹出标签的说明。

下面介绍一些比较重要的面板： Here are some of the more important ones:

• 图层面板 - 这儿显示你所选中画布中层的层级关系，你也可以在这里面对层进行一些操作

• Params Panel - 这个标签显示你所选中层的参数，（如果你选中多个层，这儿显示你所选中层的共同参数）

• Tool Options Panel - 显示你所选中的工具的选项

• Navigator - 显示画面的缩略图。你也在在这里面缩放或平移视图

• History Panel - 显示你的操作历史，你可以编辑你的历史动作，回到以前状态

单击工具箱中的“new composition”按钮，会打开一个新的Work Area Window 单击画布窗口中“＞”按钮（在水平标尺和垂直标尺的左上角），然后单击“editor”“Properties”，然后会显示画布参数对话框

画布参数有点混乱，在以后会重新设计这点，现在你可以忽略“图像区域”和“锁定和链接”选择。

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 caret. If you click on this button, the 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 Panel 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 Work Area. 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 Panel, 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 Ducks. 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 Work Area and the Layers Panel. 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. Thus, a more descriptive name for this tool might have been the "move" or "translate" tool.

The rotate and scale tools work much like the 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 Panel 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 dots). To select multiple ducks, either drag a rectangle around them, or select the first one, then hold the Control key while selecting the rest. Once you have the two radius ducks selected, 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 outlines are attached to their 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 next tutorial.