Synfig Studio – FOSS industrial-strength 2D film-quality animation software | Hacker News Reader

Synfig Studio – FOSS industrial-strength 2D film-quality animation software

github.com

96 pointsdragonsh18 comments

As others said: Synfig has usability, stability & documentation issues.

I suggest having a look at this incredible one-man OSS project instead: VCG.[1] It's actually two apps. A vector graphics app like Inkscape/Illustrator/CORELDraw and an animation system.

Pictures (or movies) say more that words.[2]

At the core of the software are some novel algorithms for topology independent shape interpolation that were developed by it's author, Boris Dalstein. He published his research at SIGGRAPH 2014.[3]

This guy also needs some help spreading the word. The software is already usable in production but he has a meager 150USD in donations on Patreon.

[1] https://www.vgc.io/

[2] https://www.patreon.com/vgcsoftware

[3] https://youtu.be/-XONNPyeb5U

> As others said: Synfig has usability, stability & documentation issues.

Thankfully, it's open source. Feel free to open some issues with them and help improving synfig.

IIRC, synfig started as a school project and has achieved much with minimal resources.

Edit: nevermind the last part, I was thinking of a completely different tool.

Open source shouldn't be an excuse for bad software

One bug here and there, sure, every system has it.

But some developers just put something out there with a lot of rough edges (and yes, I know it's hard) but it's usually better something simpler that works fine than something complex but very fragile and clunky

> Thankfully, it's open source. Feel free to open some issues with them and help improving synfig.

Did you bother checking their issue tracker on Github? How many tickets they have open there on these topics? Some on very basic UX stuff.

Furthermore: Why must I write/fix code or file an issue to be eligible for being critical of a FOSS software?

Try applying that attitude to other situations in life. E.g. reading a book with bad style or poor character development or watching a movie that could benefit from editing improvements. Do you share such findings/opinions with your friends? What do they reply?

P.S.: I tried using Synfig for a commercial project over a decade ago. I provided lots of feedback on usability some of which was ignored and some of which was met with an attitude.

Maybe things changed ... but looking at the issue tracker on Github (sorted by oldest first) I reserve the benefit of doubting that for now.

I really want Synfig to be great. I've used it several times over the past couple years, but it's extremely difficult to make anything. Unintuitive UI, sparse documentation, and crashes often. I would add it to the list of projects I support financially, but I haven't found a good use case for it.

Here's maybe the best example of a Synfig project: https://youtu.be/PThy9_RZQ8c

I'm supportive of any FOSS software, but like GIMP the UI doesn't look or feel right for me personally. I think Blender 2.8+ features/UI for 2d animation is much more interesting and usable.

That same clip has been going around for nearly a decade. Shame there’s little more to show for the software; I think that’s telling in its own right.

There are more recent videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecVv2IB7f5k

Here is "Hero" made with Blender, for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKmSdY56VtY

Blender's pseudo-3D has more freedom with camera moves, but the capabilities look pretty similar otherwise.

Both clips are impressive.

I guess the question is: how powerful/useful are the tweening and "bones" features of synfig?

I see what look like obvious examples of those features in the demo.

The Genndy Tartakovsky style of the other demo kind of obscures whether those features are similar in blender.

It hasn’t been mentioned in this thread yet, but OpenToonz seems like another fantastic piece of FLOSS software for 2D animation. If it’s good enough for Studio Ghibli and Matt Groening (Futurama), then I dare say it’s good enough for a great many other animators.

How does synfig relate / compare to opentoonz?

https://opentoonz.github.io/e/

What is the current industry standard equivalent of Synfig? Drawing each frame individually in Krita-like software?

CTA4 on the prosumer side, although it comes with more mature 2.5D and upper body / face mocap capabilities.

There isn't really an 'industry standard' for 2D animation. Animation productions will often have a mixture of off-the-shelf software and custom tools.

Some well-known apps in the 2D animation space:

- Moho: This has a long history and probably influenced some of the features in Synfig. Moho lets you rig 2D vector models with 'bones' that will save you having to animate frame-by-frame (although you can do that too). https://my.smithmicro.com/moho-pro.html

- Toon Boom: One of the most popular tools in the industry https://www.toonboom.com/

- TVPaint: Also with a long history and requires a dongle to run (remember those?!) https://www.tvpaint.com/

All the above apps are aimed at professionals in the industry, and have a substantial price to match.

How is the onion-skinning UX in Synfig? Like if I just wanted to do some frame-by-frame animation prototypes?

You are better off using Krita or Pencil2D for that kind of work.

which would you suggest between the two?

Krita

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