Nov 14, 2020 Download Synfig for free. Synfig is a powerful, industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software package, designed from the ground-up for producing feature-film quality 2D animation with fewer people and resources.
Introduction¶
- Synfig Short Course available on:watch: 'Steven Universe - Garnet Fusion and Song -Anime' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48jFXd3.
- Be sure to check out the resulting animation, and have a look at the gallery below to see other videos exploiting this technique! This tutorial is not 'advanced' as in 'difficult', but it requires that you are familiar with the Synfig interface and tools, as these will not be covered here.
- Synfig Studio 1.4.0 download - Windows 7 - Designed to be capable of producing feature-film quality animation.
Creating an animation in Synfig Studio is really easy. It basicallymeans to change a drawing — you just need to create the first stage andlast stage of a change, and Synfig takes care of the steps in between.
Let’s look at a simple example. Consider a moving light like the one atthe front of the Knight Rider car. Drop the realism, you get a circlemoving from left to right and back. In other words, you need to createthree ‘steps’ or ‘stages’:
- The circle is on the left.
- The circle is on the right.
- The circle is back on the left.
Setting up the workspace¶
Let’s do it. Start Synfig Studio. A new file is created at the startautomatically . Click the caret menu (betweenthe horizontal and vertical rules, in the top left hand corner of thecanvas), then select
Canvas|Properties
or selectCanvas|Properties
from the menu. TheCanvas_Properties_Dialog will appear.Give a name and description for your canvas, then click
Apply
(don’tclick OK
yet — we’re not quite done with the Properties dialog). Cisco anyconnect 4.8. Goto the Time
tab and make sure to edit EndTime
. Change “5s” to“2s” — that will make our animation 2 seconds long.Note
Good to know: Synfig and time representationSynfig Studio can display the time in various formats (Timestamp).You can configure the Timestamp in Preferences. If the endtime is notdisplayed in seconds then go to <tt>Edit|Preferences|Misc</tt> andchange the Timestamp into: (HHh MMm SSs) FFf.More about the Timestamp and its settings can be foundhere ([Preferences_Dialog#Time_Stamp]).
Now click “OK”, select the Rectangle Tool andcreate a simple black rectangle that will serve as our background. It’snot necessary to make it cover the whole canvas.
Now we need a circle. Change the fill color to red, select the CircleTool and create a circle. It doesn’t matter if it’s notperfect: You can edit it. Select the Transform Tooland click the circle. It will go into an editing mode which is easy todetect by the small green dot in the middle and the white rectanglearound it. You can move the circle by grabbing it on its green dot (theOrigin) in the middle.
These are the first steps to draw an object and to move it, but not ananimation yet, you may say. Indeed. Let’s have a look how this works.
Adding movement¶
In the beginning, you entered a value of 2 seconds in the Propertiesdialog. Because the length of your animation is non-zero, your canvaswindow (the one where you draw) has a grey time slider at the bottom,the Timebar. You can click on it, and a small orangeindicator will appear indicating your position in time. Try clicking inseveral places on the time slider and notice that the entry field on theleft of the time slider is changing its values to something like “12f”,“1s 15f”, etc. You can set your position on the time slider by changingvalues in that field. For example, if you enter “1s” and press
enter
, the orange indicator will move in the middle of the timeslider, and entering “2s” will move it to the end of the time slider.Note
At 2s the orange indicator won’t be visible. That’s because“2s” is at the far right boundary of the time slider, putting theindicator out of view.
You may notice that nothing changes on the canvas at this point. Returnto “0s” and switch to Animate Editing Mode byclicking the green man button to the right of the gray time slider. Thecanvas will display a red outline; it reminds you that changes to yourobjects now affect your animation at the time shown in the time slider.
In animate editing mode, every change to your objects creates awaypoint that associates the changes with the currenttime. As you will see, Synfig can create smooth intermediate changesbetween waypoints, and you can even choose the way in which theintermediate changes take place. You will probably find it helpful toassociate some or all of your waypoints with keyframes.
Previously, three “steps” or “stages” were mentioned. These arerepresented by keyframes. (Just in case you’re familiarwith video encoding: No, it’s not the same!) A keyframe is an image intime where something important happens with your objects.
Note
Default keyframe at 0f
When creating a new project, a default
keyframe
is already set at 0f. If for any reason you do not havethis default keyframe, go to the Keyframes_Panel— click on the little tab with the small key icon in the bottom window —to edit keyframes. Now press the small button with the “plus” sign andyou should get a new entry in the list displaying 0f,0f,(JMP)
.Now, go to the “1s” mark in the time slider. The small orange indicatorshould move there. Then add another keyframe by clicking the small plussign. Repeat the process with the time slider indicator set to “2s”(it’s at the end of your animation). You should now have three keyframesin the list.
The s’s and f’s: Understanding the Timeline¶
By now, you may have figured out what those mysterious “1s 10f”-typemarks represent. They indicate a specific point on the timeline,expressing a location in terms of seconds (s) and frames (f).
By default each second is divided into 24 frames, much like a meter on ameasuring tape is divided into 100 centimeters. The frame markings beginat zero (0) and go up to 24, whereupon a new second is entered and theframecount returns to zero.
Office business basic. For example, when five whole seconds and three frames have passed, usingthis timeline notation would be “5s 3f”.
The Keyframes Panel¶
The Keyframes Panel is rather easy to understand.It displays
Time
which is basically the start time, Length
whichis self-explanatory, Jump
which we’ll cover next, andDescription
which is, again, self-explanatory.You might be wondering about the entries called
(JMP)
. In fact,these are links just like web links: click them, and the indicator inyour time slider will jump to the correct time.You can use this to edit your image for a given moment in time. Forinstance, you can now jump to the first second “1s”, and move the redcircle to the right. There! You made your first movement, your firstanimation with Synfig!
Canvas Window, Keyframes Panel and Time Track Panel
Wondering where the animation is? Just click to an arbitrary position onthe time slider: You will note that the red circle is in a new position,one that you didn’t specify! So what happened? Synfig figured out whatyou would like to do, namely move the circle, and drew all the imagesbetween these states. Each image will later make a frame in youranimation and the circle will appear to be moving.
Note that you don’t need to go to the last keyframe at “2s” and moveyour circle back to the left. Keyframes make Synfig remember the imagestates at particular times. That’s why when we modified the circle’sposition at “1s”, it stayed on the left at “2s” (as well as at “0s”). Ifyou switch back to the Parameters Panel, and look at the TimetrackPanel you will see that three orange diamonds (orgreen dots depending on the default interpolation) appeared on the rightof the
Origin
parameter. Those are called Waypoints,and they represent times at which object’s parameters, like location orcolor, are instructed to take on specified new values.Parameters Panel and Time Track Panel with green Waypoints
Rendering your animation¶
Before you can see your animation, you need to render your work. Thereare two ways to do so: using the Synfig Studio (what you have been usingso far) or the command-line program called “synfig”.
Let’s try the first way. Leave the Animate EditingMode by clicking on the red man icon in thetimeline editing widget, and save your file; for instance under the name“BasicKnightRider.sifz”. Then go to menu in the Canvas Window (CanvasMenu Caret button in the upper left corner) andselect
File|Render
or click on the render icon. Change the filenameto “BasicKnightRider.gif” in the same location where you saved“BasicKnightRider.sifz” and choose gif
target format instead ofAuto
, then click Render
. Depending on your processor speed itshould take a few moments, but finally the image window status bar(located on the bottom of the window) should say “File renderedsuccessfully”.Render Settings
Note
The “magick++” target (if it is available) produces muchbetter gif files than the “gif” target because it can optimize thepalette for the image.
Open BasicKnightRider.gif in Firefox or anotherapplication that is able to show animated gif’s. However, Firefox willreplay the GIF all the time which makes your short animation a ratherlong one. If you’re now seeing a red circle moving from the left to theright and back, congratulations! You just made your first animation!
Note
You can also preview your animation. Press the “caret” menubutton in the upper left corner of the Canvas Window and choose
File|Preview
.If you would rather use the command line instead ofthe menu to render your animation, then open a terminal (on Windows, goto
Start|Run
, type cmd
and press enter
), change to thedirectory you saved the file in, and type something like this:synfig -t gif BasicKnightRider.sifz
A few messages appear that don’t matter right now. Depending on yourprocessor speed it should take a few moments, but finally a line likethis will appear:
BasicKnightRider.sifz > BasicKnightRider.gif: DONE
Then you are done and can view your animated gif using Firefox oranother program as mentioned above and it should look like this.
Conclusion¶
Of course, the position of an object is not the only thing you canchange with Synfig Studio. Other possibilities include its size, itsoutline, its color, etc. Synfig comes with several example files thatshould let you dig deeper into the possibilities.
Animated Singing Elephant
Now, let’s continue with the next manual chapter: AddingLayers
You can download the project used :
BasicKnightRider.sifz
- 3Prepare the project
- 4Switch by visibility
Of course, you could render each .sif file to a separate video file and use some kind of video editing software to edit it together.
But what if we want to use Synfig itself to do the editing?
In this example I'm going to take 3 sifz files made by Zelig and mix them together:
- Sy-n-fig-s1-hi.sifz - a 3 second introduction scene (scene 1)
- Sy-n-fig-s2-ball.sifz - 28 seconds of animation (scene 2)
- Sy-n-fig-s3-boid.sifz - 6 seconds of a different scene that needs cutting into the middle of scene 2
First we need a new document in Synfig (CtrlN), and configure his properties a bit.
Cinemagraph after effects. Use '<Menu> → <Canvas> → Properties' (F8), select the 'Time tab' and set the 'End Time' to 47 seconds (3 seconds for scene 1 + 28 seconds for scene 2 + 6 seconds for scene 3 + 5 seconds each for opening and closing titles). To set the 'End Time', you can type '47s' in the field. Alternatively, you can type the 'Duration', eg. '1128f' for 24 frames per second.
Import and prepare your scenes
Using '<Menu> → <File> → Import' (CtrlI), import each of the three scenes one at a time. The scenes will be imported as separate layers.
From Layers Panel, double click each imported layer to rename them 'Synfig Hi', 'Synfig Ball' and 'Synfig Boid' as appropriate.
Two of the scenes have transparent backgrounds, so create a background layer to go behind them. '<Menu> → <Layer> → <New Layer> → <Geometry> → Solid Colour'. Change the Color to white and move the layer to the bottom of the list in the Layers panel.
Synfig now uses the layer visibility (the Amount) to switch between scenes, rather than canvases. To start with, we want all our imported scenes to be invisible, so the Amount will be set to 0.
As we switch to each scene, we want to set the Amount to 1, but we don't want it to gradually fade from one value to the other. To set this up, change the default interpolation type to Constant. This can be found in the main toolbox window, right at the bottom. It defaults to Clamped, but we want our edits to happen exactly when we specify them. The Constant interpolation means that when the Waypoint is reached, the value changes immediately.
From the layers panel, select all scenes using CtrlClick and from the Parameters_Panel set 0Amount row. Now, only the white background remain visible.
Opening, closing titles
We don't have any opening or closing titles, so we're going to have to make those ourselves. Make a new text layer: '<Menu> → <Layer> → <New Layer> → <Other> → Text' and edit the Text Parameter to say something appropriate for the opening titles, and the Color parameter to something you like.
Group the Text layer and rename it 'Titles'. Add a background for the text using '<Menu> → <Layer> → <New Layer> → <Geometry> → Solid Colour'. This will probably be the same color as the text, so change the color of either the text or new Solid Colour layer until you're happy with it. Now get the background layer into the Titles group by dragging it (if it is not already in the group). Finally, ensure that the background is below the text.
Lets animate
Next, go to frame 0 by entering 0f in the Current time in the canvas window. Turn on Animate Editing Mode.
Synfig Animation Software
We want the 'Titles' to show for the first 5 seconds, then switch to the 'Synfig Hi' layer.
Type '5s' in the Current time field, or move the Time Cursor as appropriate. Check that Animate editing mode is on and the default interpolation is Constant. Select the Titles layer and change the Amount to 0, then select the 'Synfig Hi' layer and set the Amount to 1.
If we play the animation from the beginning now (press the |<< button to go to the start of the animation, then press play), we'll see the title frame for 5 seconds, and then it will jump to the 'Synfig Hi' scene. But the 'Synfig Hi' scene has already ended - they've already done their wave. We need to delay the 'Synfig Hi' scene by 5 seconds, so it starts to play at the same time that it's displayed. With the time slider at 5s, edit 'Synfig Hi' layer's Time Offset Parameter to be -5s.
Now when we preview the animation, we see the static title frame for 5 seconds, and then the scene 1 plays until 8s !
Next we need to switch to the Synfig Ball scene. Move the Time Cursor to 8s. Select the 'Synfig Hi' layer and change the Amount to '0' to hide it. Then select the 'Synfig Ball' layer and set the Amount to 1 to show it. Again we'll need to delay the start of this scene, so set the Time Offset Parameter to -8s.
Cut the scene
Now we want to cut the 'Synfig Boid' scene into the middle of the 'Synfig Ball' scene.
Playing with the Time Cursor in the main WorkArea, we see that we want scene 3 to be cut in at around the 23s mark (15 seconds into Synfig Ball, which started at 8s). Adjust the time cursor to 23s and set the Amount to 0 on the 'Synfig Ball' layer. Set the Amount to 1 on the 'Synfig Boid' layer. Adjust the Time Offset parameter to -23s, so that the Synfig Boid scene starts when we switch to it.
Scene 3 lasts for 6 seconds, so move the time cursor to 29s and set the 'Synfig Boid' layer Amount to 0. Switch back to the 'Synfig Ball' layer and set the Amount to 1.
Note that the 'Synfig Ball' layer animation just continued whilst the layer was invisible and the 'Synfig Boid' layer was being animated. We don't want to lose those 6 seconds, so at the 29th second, we'll move the 'Synfig Ball' layer along by 6 seconds so that it picks up where we left off before the cut.
Previously, the Synfig Ball layer was offset by -8 seconds. We now need a further delay of 6 seconds, making a total of 14s. Change the 'Synfig Ball' layer Time Offset to -14s.
Lets display the closing title
The animation will be complete at 5+3+28+6 = 42s, so move the time cursor there and we can add the end credit scene. Switch back to the titles canvas (Synfig Ball Amount = 0, Titles Amount = 1).
Select the Text layer within the Titles layer group and update the Text parameter to something appropriate for the closing credits.
Animation Synfig
Preview your animation to see how it looks.
I ended up with this file: BallAnimation.sifz
Note : that the use of the Constant interpolation means that layer visibility is switched instantly. If you want to fade from scene to scene, you will need to add some extra waypoints at the start or end of the fade and change the interpolation to something other than Constant. Take a look to How Do I : Show or hide a layer, or fade the effect of a blur? for more informations.
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