Toon Boom Technologies has released a new version of their 2D animation solution for the web. This is a program that before V2 was a great time saver for anyone doing animations for web with Flash, and with Version 2 it has gotten even better.
I quote from some of the new features:
New in V2 3D Sceneplanning:
- New color transform and clipping effects.
- Different appearances for first and last key frame on a motion path so that you
can easily identify and modify the key frame you want.
- Copy and paste motion point properties.
- Import, organize and synchronize all drawing, image, bitmap, sound and multimedia
files in the Exposure Sheet.
- Track the timing of each object and maximize reuse of recurring images.
- Use the 3D staging tools to develop storyboards into detailed animatics complete
with precise timing and camera movements.
New in V2 Drawing:
- Draw with a Polyline tool to create closed, vector shapes of any dimension.
- Paint vector shapes with bitmap textures.
- Auto-gap closing for speed painting.
- Accelerated painting with auto-paint.
- Optimize vector shapes for output to the Web.
- Improved stroke end point identification to easily close zones.
New in V2 Sound:
- Automap lip charts to mouth drawings for fast and efficient lip-syncing of voice tracks.
- Sound scrubbing so you can fine-tune lip assignment.
- Support for sound streaming.
New in V2 Export:
- Export media links as Macromedia Flash movie clips to decrease file size.
- QuickTime export includes all sound modification you add.
- Improved optimization options for SWF output.
A more indepth look at Toon Boom Studio V2 can be found at MacCentral, quote:
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.
The upgrade from V. 1.x to 2 cost US $99 (electronic) and US $129 (boxed), while a new registration of Toon Boom V2 will set you back from US $349 (for download) to US $374 for the boxed version. V2 is only available for Windows at the moment, the newest version available for Mac is V 1.2. There is a trial version available for download on the site.