Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas
Well, you got me hooked! I'm really interested in it.
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Well, you got me hooked! I'm really interested in it.
Glad to here it! Thanks!
Im glad to see someone else writing software. The lack of free software prompted me to write Helium Frog, so I hope you choose to keep it free for everyone. It wont make you a lot of money anyhow. The user base is too small. I think the professional software is a bit of a rip off. If I can program most of the routines, it should be about £10 tops. Just remember Blender 3D is free and look at the programming in that! (Vista is not free, but should be!)
My feature requests would be
Simple interface which is obvious how to use. (Most of my users dont read the manual.....but then again, I dont when I use other peoples software so I cant complain!!!!)
If you want to attract more experienced animators you will need "Live View" support for Canon / Nikon cameras etc. and be able to capture in high resolutions. They also grew up using "Lunchbox" or simple cameras so they dont use any assists like onionskinning etc. just good reliable software.
I would forget about the video effects. Most webcams have a black and white switch. The first user will want sepia, then next, lightsabre, the next motion blur, so you will never please anyone. There are already free effects software, wax etc. and cheap professional stuff also.
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What language have you programmed it in to make it cross platform?
I have also looked into chroma keying, its relatively easy to do per pixel slowly, but a nightmare to do in real time.
Do you have a name for your software yet?
I appreciate your feedback, and I agree with you on several of your points. I also have quite a bit of experience animating myself, so I have a pretty good idea of what a good stop motion program should have. Hopefully our main focus will not be a possible profit from this, so much as to have a stop motion program out there (possibly for free) that everyone finds helpful and user-friendly. The only thing I must point out is that we are going to include onion skinning, because many of the newer animators out there enjoy having a little help with their animations (along with some experienced animators).
As for the language it is being written in, it is called Adobe AIR. It is based off of flash (I know, flash doesn't seem very powerful, but you would be surprised). The good thing about the fact that it is being written in a flash based language is that it is cross platform. The difference between AIR and regular flash, is essentially that AIR is designed to make desktop applications using flash, and it adds tons of functionality to the action script and flash base. So far the progress we have made is quite shocking to me, seeing how it works so well out of flash.
Also, I agree with the live chroma-key concern, but we think we may have discovered a complex but probable way of achieving live chroma-key, and we are trying to put it all together.
Right now, the name of the software is unknown, but we haven't really been focusing on all the technical stuff just yet, so we'll see what happens. By the way, I have been using Helium Frog for a quite a while now, and it is quite good! It is great that you are sharing it with the BIM community!
Last edited by kevin66655 (January 21, 2009 (05:06pm))
Compatible with Windows 7?
Give it the option of showing the previous frame or frames as a ghost image so one can see what has changed.
Ok, I think it should automatically be compatible with windows 7, but I'm not 100% sure.
Mcoov, do you mean like multi-layered onionskinning, because we have already designed that.
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