Toon Boom Technologies has updated Toon Boom Studio, the company’s Mac OS X compatible 2D animation solution for the Web, to version 2.0.
Toon Boom says that in the update, the camera (the tool that gets your eyes to guide you in creating animation, not your programming skills) offers an even more cinematic approach in setting the scene and choreographing your production. You can view your creation constantly through the camera lens. There are also tools such as an exposure sheet, timeline, rotating light table, peg, drawing and painting tools.
With Toon Boom Studio 2 you can still lip-synch and loop your animations in an instinctive way, but this time you can go much further, according to company representatives. By establishing what mouth shapes apply to specific sounds, the software can place them automatically in the right frames. Version 2.0 is also compatible with the recently introduced Macromedia Flash MX thanks to the Toon Boom Studio Importer for Flash MX.
“Toon Boom Studio is a great complement to Macromedia Flash MX, due to the seamless integration between both products,” said Eric Wittman, director, product management, Macromedia. “Toon Boom Studio is a natural drawing and painting extension to the powerful features in Macromedia Flash MX.”
The Toon Boom Studio Importer (TBSi) for Flash MX is a plug-in that’ll let you load Toon Boom Studio projects directly into Flash MX. TBSi uses technology to improve the communication between Toon Boom Studio and Flash MX, according to Toon Boom.
Also, it gives you full-control of the import process. You can select the scenes, elements (layers) and frames you want to import. You can then decide how you want to import sound. You can choose to have TBSi edit sounds with effects you added to ensure synchronization — or you can choose not to import sounds at all. Finally, you can preserve the layering order of your animation, or collapse layers into one to keep the effect of elements changing relative front-back position in 3D scene planning.
In addition to providing expert control, TBSi logically organizes your content in Flash MX. Element names are maintained in the transfer to Flash MX layers. All of your animation content — sounds, bitmaps and drawings — are organized automatically in your symbol library. Sounds are placed in their own layer.
System requirements are a Power Mac G3 or better (a G4 is highly recommended), Mac OS X, 128MB of system RAM, 100MB of available hard disk space, and a 24-bit color display with at least 8MB Video RAM and capable of 1024×768 resolution. A Wacom Tablet also comes in very handy.
There’s no pricing (or availability dates) yet for Toon Boom Studio 2.0 on the Toon Boom Technologies Web site. However, previous versions cost US$374 for the boxed version and $349 to download register it.