A review and tutorial of Synfig Studio for animationopensource.com /article/16/12/synfig-studio-animation-software-tutorial Posted 08 Dec 2016 Seth Kenlon (Red Hat) Feed 55 up 1 comment Animation is a robust field with a large number of specialties and an even larger number of tools for creating a particular look or style. In the past two months, I've covered Krita Animation for hand-drawn digital cel animation and StopGo for stop motion animation. There are many more animation applications out there, not the least of which is Blender for 3D animation and all manner of hybrids (check out how some users are abusing the Grease Pencil tool for animation or the excellent Freestyle effect), GIMP Animation Plugin GAP, Tupi, the recently open-sourced OpenToonz, and many more. I can't review every animation application (at least, not all at once), so the last animation suite I'll look at this year is Synfig Studio. Synfig Studio is a "tweenless" animation system designed to speed up the animation process by using sprites and digital tweening rather than adding to the illustration workload. For this reason, it's ideal for a solo artist or a small animation team. Synfig is production-ready. The Morevna Project, a small anime studio, is producing not only content but several tutorials about their tools, with everything being produced on an open source stack, released as Creative Commons. Better still, as they work, they are developing and improving the tools they use and committing their code for everyone to use. If you'd like to fund their excellent work, visit patreon.com/morevna and subscribe to their content! Installing Your distribution might package Synfig in its repository, but be sure to download the most up-to-date version directly from upstream. The Synfig site offers .rpm, .deb, and generic .tar packages. If you download an .rpm or .deb, then use your system's package manager to install them as usual. If you download the .tar file, just untar, place into a sensible directory such as "~/bin," and run synfigstudio. Interface The layout of Synfig is probably familiar to anyone who's used an animation application before or even a graphics application in general. The upper left panel holds your tools, the central panel your canvas, and the bottom panel the timeline and keyframes. Property panels appear along the right. Before starting, go to the Canvas menu in the menu bar and select Properties (or press F8 on your keyboard). In the properties window, enter your desired canvas size. You might want to start with 1920x1080 (1080 HD) if you've got a moderately powerful computer, or lower if you're on a less powerful computer. Generally, I feel safer working at one resolution greater than my target if my computer lets me, on the theory that it will future-proof my work, but obviously your target determines how necessary that is. 1/10 it gets an entry into the Layers panel. located in the upper left corner. Even a simple shot can become very complex.Also in the Properties window is the amount of time you want your timeline to contain. and what that translates to in human time depends on how many frames per second your animation plays. is best done in using the Canvas and Layers in conjunction. you'll find all the usual suspects in the toolbox. For this demo. click on the object either in the canvas or in the Layers panel (located in the bottom right by default). allowing you to record each movement you make on the rig. but the idea behind its animation technique is the old "paper cutout" principle. There are several. use the File menu and select Import. Synfig has several drawing tools included. When you create or import an object. Drawing and Importing In order to animate. Once you've set your project properties. 2/10 . with the layers nearest the top of the list being "in front of" the layers lower down — this will be important later. Whether you've drawn or imported an asset. so working with them can get confusing. If you add several objects. Playback the recording. and so on. The item's properties appear in the Properties panel in the lower left corner. The more frames per second you use. If you want to use Synfig's drawing toolkit. but most users I've ever seen use Synfig seem to prefer to draw elsewhere and then import their assets. the smoother the animation looks. To import items into your shot. Working with any object. Synfig adds each as a Layer. as you may have seen in Terry Gilliam's famous "Monty Python" interludes or in the "South Park" television series — each element that you want animated is an object that gets "pinned" to a rig. so use both views — the "on set" view of the Canvas and the "dope sheet" that the Layers provide. or handles. a bezier pen. Time units for animation are frames. I'll use the slower frame rate of 16fps and a total timeline length of 128 frames just to keep numbers low. you need assets. There are shape tools to generate rectangles and ellipses. and you've created an animation. To see the properties of each shape you draw. whether drawn from scratch or imported from an external application. paint bucket. Synfig doesn't require it. save your file. any object in your shot gets controls. but you're also managing and rendering many more frames. The blue handle "rotates" (pivoting around the green handle. and then manipulate it using its handles. it's a scale effect with no regard for aspect ratio. The red handle provides a "skew" effect. To start recording movements. 3/10 . click the person-shaped icon near the bottom right of the Canvas.To break it down: The green center handle is "origin. The only step left to do for a basic animation is to press "record" and start moving things. then you're about half way to animating already. but stumbling every time you need to interact with your subject is extremely frustrating. you'll be able to do everything else in Synfig much easier. Animate Good news. Once you get used to this basic interaction method. Try importing or drawing an object. respecting the aspect ratio. trying to animate. Trust me." or the X and Y coordinates of the object. Drag it to move your object. Drag it to re-size your object. The yellow handles "distort" an object. The brown corner handle (top right) "scales" an object. If you've just been experimenting with the controls of an object. Ctrl-drag the green handle to re-position the pivot point). the idea is to automate the tweening process: you get your character into position at the 0th frame and the 16th frame. 16th frame. mouth. No more tweening. but movement over time. and Synfig figures out how to get it from one position to the next. you must also progress through your timeline. 4/10 . and select Group Layer to place all selected layers into a folder. Draw or import an object. so to make something be animated." In Synfig Studio. Of course. relative to their common origin. but I still have access to each component should I need to animate individual body parts. and eyes will all move together.You'll know when you're recording because the icon turns red when active and a bright red border surrounds your canvas. Now the pierogi can be moved as one object. 2. animation isn't just about movement. an object's control handles encompass the entire group. While you're in record mode. you would draw your character in each of its major poses at specific points in time (say. This process is called "tweening. and imported individual parts into Synfig as PNG images. I've drawn a anthropomorphic pierogi in Inkscape. Try it yourself: 1. then its body. Once grouped. With each layer selected. and then you would go back and draw the frames in-between. everything you do with an object is recorded as a keyframe in your timeline. Keyframes and Tweens In traditional animation. right-click in the Layer panel. and the 33rd frame). if I rotate my pierogi character. the 0th frame. As an example. To enter live recording mode. I'll make him tilt to one side. click the Key icon in the lower left panel of the Synfig window. and move your character to some new position. and a big red border surrounds your canvas. you can either scrub through your animation to get a preview. in my example. At this point. 5/10 . Move the playhead (the vertical dotted line) in your timeline to the fourth frame. 6. I'll have my pierogi dance. The icon turns red. or just press the Play button to see a real-time render of what you've done. Use the control handles to move your object to its initial position. Repeat this process until your character is in its final position. Since I'm just having my pierogi do a jig in place.To start animating. just to be safe. I'll tilt him in the other direction. 3. This switches you to a timeline view. so don't make any unintended movements! 4. so as the first (0th) frame. At this point. 5. click the Animate button (the green icon) in the lower right corner of your canvas panel. everything you do in your canvas will be recorded. Click the Animate button to leave recording mode. This places a Switch layer in your Layer panel. Layer Types and Effects Not all animation is possible with just transform handles. the Layers panel is a "tree. I drag and drop it under the Pierogi folder to add it to the Pierogi group. For instance. look at the black line indicating how deep into a layer you're descending. Defining which layer is a parent and which is the child can be tricky. There's rarely a need to animate the way the lips get into the position they need to be for each phoneme. Because the point of a switch layer is to switch between different sprites." not just a stacked list as it would be in GIMP or Inkscape. go into the New Layer option and select Switch from the Other category." all of its children are subject to it. Drag and drop it into your target group. in my example. For additional effects and animation tricks. you can also animate those by revealing them in your Layers panel and making changes to them with the record mode active. they're all equal children of the same switch parent.If the object you're animating is a group of individual parts. All effects in Synfig work this way. go to the Layers panel and right-click. I'd hide the smiling-mouth sprite with a mouth shaped for a different phoneme. To try out this technique. The Switch layer is an "effect. so an animator will just swap out the shape. in other words. I'll add a second mouth position under the switch. a common way of animating mouths for speech and vocables is to swap out mouth shapes. 6/10 . From the contextual menu. Since Synfig is built more for sprite animation than hand-drawn. there are different layer types. to get that same effect I would replace one sprite for another. The order of these sprites don't matter. Click the parent group to view its properties. the same as when you animate anything else. not a list. generators. A new keyframe appears. Enter recording mode. time loops. so make sure practice moving layers along the tree. and then place your playhead at the 0th frame. Synfig doesn't create tweens from one mouth position to the next because nothing's being transformed. there's a switch function in the layer group's properties. In my example. and in my example the mouth position changes from a smile to a surprise." meaning that you move or adjust a setting resulting in no change. then you're probably looking for the Switch effect. Just keep in mind that the Layers panel is a tree. then the properties appear in the Properties panel in the lower left corner of the Synfig window. To animate an effect. you must be in record mode. and you'll discover all kinds of cool effects. if I highlight the layer containing the switch and different mouth positions. and then move your playhead farther along the timeline and set the Active Layer Name property to an alternate layer. So jiggle the setting to the active layer you want to start with. color effects. It has blurs. Synfig has are many other effects. so the moral of the story is that if you want to disable auto-tweening for something. We're just doing a quick-change of sprites. but forcing the computer to notice and record the movement.Now that the switch layer effect is in place. and much more. this is unofficially but commonly called "jiggling. Sound Unlike the previous animation 7/10 . and not all of them are technical effects like a switch. Set the Active Layer Name even if it's already on the Layer you want to begin with. because then I have a "master" copy of the animation.png extension and inserts a frame number. then you can also leverage the bundled version of ffmpeg to go straight out to a movie file (although your sound does not.applications I wrote about. go to the File menu and select Render. It's not (and shouldn't be) a robust audio-editing interface by any means. but if there is not "later" in your pipeline. Synfig automatically splits whatever filename you provide just before the . To do that. and won't play it back. 3. I find it easier to render to an image sequence. Synfig has integrated sound playback. To add a soundtrack: 1. from which I can encode many different versions. at least in the current version of Synfig Studio. so you'd have to attach that manually. click the Play button under the canvas to watch and "hear" your animation. it's all you need. Once your soundtrack is in place. you'd export your project in a series of frames and they'd be turned into a movie file later in your pipeline.. 8/10 . get included. Click the ellipsis [. give it the path to an empty directory where you'd like the files to be saved and the filename each image should use as its base.. In the Filename field. Add a "Sound" layer from the Other category to your Layer panel. Synfig thinks you're still setting the sound file.] next to the "Filename" property and select the sound file you want to use. Traditionally. 4. but to sync up mouths and sound effect cues. Click the sound layer to bring up its properties in the lower left corner of the Synfig window. You can do it that way. later). Click off of the "Filename" property. 2. Rendering How you render an animation is more choice than technique. if you don't. so you'd only want to use a final or near-final soundtrack. This catches me off guard every time. webm Whether you output as a movie file or as image sequences. select "cairo_png" for an image sequence. Set Quality to 9 and Anti-Aliasing to 31. For example: 9/10 . a message just under your Canvas provides a status report while you wait and an alert once it's finished. It might take some time for your render to complete.%04d. To turn your rendered image sequence into a movie file with sound. Once finished. as well as the number of frames you want rendered. and so on. in the event that you want to scale down your animation.png -vcodec vp8 -an dance- video. combining an audio stream to video after the fact is pretty simple. From the Target pop-up menu. click the Render button. use ffmpeg from a terminal. You may also adjust the image size here. For example: $ ffmpeg -r 16 -f image2 -s hd480 -i dance. flac -acodec libopus dance. Synfig Studio is the one to use.webm -i music. but the elimination of tweening pays off in the end.webm Synfig is a professional-grade animation application with all the must-have features. and plenty of additional ones as a bonus.$ ffmpeg -i bounce. It's got a learning curve when compared to cell animation. 10/10 . If you're after fast and efficient animation.
Report "A Review and Tutorial of Synfig Studio for Animation"