REV June 11, 2014

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Anime Studio Pro 10

Users Manual

Contents
Anime Studio Tutorials
Using the Embedded Media Files

Quick Start

Bones107
Tutorial 3.1: Bone Binding

107

Tutorial 3.2: Bone Constraints

116

Tutorial 3.3: Bone Dynamics

126

Tutorial 3.4: Character Setup

133

Tutorial 3.5: Flexi-Binding

144

Tutorial 3.6: New Bone Features

147

Tutorial 1.1: A Quick Run-through

Tutorial 1.2: Drawing Simple Shapes

Images156

Tutorial 1.3: Drawing Complex Shapes

16

Tutorial 4.1: Image Layers

156

Tutorial 1.4: Bone Setup

31

Tutorial 4.2: Image Warping

160

Tutorial 1.5: Animation

42

Tutorial 4.3: Image Textures

163

Tutorial 4.4: Animating a Talking Head

172

Drawing55

Animation176

Tutorial 2.1: Welding

55

Tutorial 2.2: Drawing Shapes with Holes

65

Tutorial 5.1: Automatic Lip-Sync

177

68

Tutorial 5.2: Phoneme Lip-Sync

179

Tutorial 2.4: Varying Line Widths

71

Tutorial 5.3: Cycling

182

Tutorial 2.5: Shape Ordering

74

Tutorial 5.4: Animation Curves

185

Tutorial 2.6: Brushes

79

Tutorial 5.5: Sorting Layers by Depth

189

Tutorial 2.7: Layer Masking

84

Tutorial 5.6: Actions

194

Tutorial 2.8: Styles

88

Tutorial 5.7: Frame by Frame Animation

200

95

Tutorial 5.8: Creating a 3D Scene

205

Tutorial 5.9: Basic Physics

214

Tutorial 2.3: Hidden Edges

Tutorial 2.9: Simple 3D Construction

Tutorial 2.10: 3D Shape Design
Contents

101

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Effects221
Tutorial 6.1: Shadow Tricks

221

Tutorial 6.2: Camera and Depth Effects

225

Tutorial 6.3: Moon and Clouds Effect

229

Tutorial 6.4: Particles

232

Tutorial 6.4.2: Custom Particle Generators

235

Tutorial 6.5: Particle Tricks - Grass and Crowds

238

Tutorial 6:5.2: Crowds, Particles, and Depth of Field 243

Tutorial 6.6: Using Pre-made Particle Effects

246

Tutorial 6.7: Speeding Up Particle Effects

249

Tutorial 6.8: Perspective Shadows

254

Tutorial 6.9: Using 3D Models

260

Contents

Anime Studio Pro 10

Tutorials

Anime Studio
Tutorials

In this manual, we will walk you through various aspects

of using Anime Studio. This is the perfect place to start if
youve never used Anime Studio before. Even if youre
an experienced Anime Studio user, this version of Anime
Studio has some big changes, so we recommend reading
through the tutorials again.

The best way to get started is to read all the tutorials in the
Basics section in order. Each of these tutorials builds on skills
learned in the earlier ones, and one-by-one will get you up
to speed with Anime Studios basic drawing and animation
techniques. Once youre comfortable working in Anime
Studio, then you can move on to the other tutorial sections.
You dont have to read them all (although that probably
wouldnt hurt), but choose the ones that address the
specific techniques you want to learn about.

When you first start Anime Studio, you will be

prompted to create a Custom Content folder
in a location that you specify. The tutorial files that
are used in this tutorial manual will get installed in
that Custom Content folder. You can find them by
going to your Content folder, and looking for the
Tutorials sub-folder. If youre having trouble with a
tutorial, try opening the corresponding Anime Studio
file to see what it should look like.
If you did not create a custom content folder
at startup, you can create one any time by
choosing Help > Set Custom Content Folder.

Once youve finished the tutorials, you should be

comfortable enough to continue on your own. However,
the tutorials wont teach you how to use every feature
of Anime Studio - the rest of this manual is a reference
that covers Anime Studios features in detail, and is
recommended reading to be able to use the full power of
Anime Studio.

Using the Embedded Media Files

This manual features some embedded media files to help
you learn concepts that are more easily explained in video

Anime Studio Pro 10

Tutorials

format. To play the media files, click on the placeholder

image. The videos will play in a separate window. You can
close the window at any time by clicking the small X in the
upper-right corner of the video window.
Please note that recent updates to Adobe Flash may, in
some cases, display a notification that Acrobat cannot
connect to the flashserver when you attempt to play the
media. You can ignore the warning and click OK to display
the video without issue.
However, if you want to prevent the message from
occurring each time you play one of the embedded
media files you can reset your Acrobat preferences as
follows:
1. Open Acrobat, and choose Edit > Preferences.
2. Select Trust Manager from the left hand pane.
3. Click the Change Settings button under the Internet
Access from PDF Files Outside the Web Browser section.
4. In the Web sites list, select adobe.com and click Delete.
5. To re-allow adobe.com, go to the top section of the
Trust Manager, and choose the Custom Setting option.
Enter www.adobe.com in the Specify Web Sites to
Allow or Block field, and then click Allow. The Adobe

web site will then appear in the trusted sites list, marked
Always Allow.
6. Click OK to set the Preferences, and click OK again to
exit the Preferences dialog.

Anime Studio Pro 10

Tutorials

Quick Start

menu (Windows). When you create a new Anime Studio

project, the application starts off looking something like this:

Tutorial 1.1: A Quick Run-through

This tutorial quickly runs through the major features of
Anime Studio, without going into too much detail. The
purpose here is more to give an overview of how Anime
Studio works, rather than to teach you how to use any
specific features. In this tutorial, we will draw and animate a
very simple object.
Anime Studio has several groups of tools, used for different
types of tasks. Some of these tools are used to create
new objects, and others are used to modify and animate
existing objects. The basic Anime Studio tool groups are:
Draw, Fill, Bone, Layer, Camera, and Workspace.
This tutorial introduces a few of the Draw, Fill, and Layer
tools, while the following tutorials focus specifically on each
of the tool groups.

Drawing a Simple Shape

Launch Anime Studio by double-clicking the Anime Studio
icon, or selecting the Anime Studio shortcut in the Start
Quick Start

The Anime Studio Interface

Choose File > New to create a new project, and then click
the current tool icon (just beneath the File menu), to select
Reset All Tools. This puts all tools at their default settings so
that you can follow along with this tutorial.

Anime Studio Pro 10

Tutorials

Oval
Reset all tools.

Select the Draw Shape tool by clicking on it in the toolbar.

The Style panel on the right side of the Anime Studio

interface allows you to select fill and stroke colors for the
shapes you draw. To select a fill color, click the Fill color
square to open a color palette, or click one of the color
squares in the Swatches palette. Select the fill color you
want to use, and click OK.

Draw Shape

Select the Oval shape from the Draw Shape tool options.

Changing the fill color

Quick Start

Anime Studio Pro 10

Tutorials

Press the Shift and Alt keys while you drag from the center
of the workspace to create a circle shape. The Shift key
forces the shape to be a circle, rather than an oval; and
the Alt key centers the circle around the point that you first
clicked. Try to keep the circle within the blue rectangle (this
rectangle represents the visible area of your project). Note
that the circle will automatically fill with color when the
Auto Fill option is checked as shown in the previous figure.

Changing the Color of Your Shape

If you want to change the fill color, choose the Paint Bucket
tool from the Fill toolbar. The Fill option changes only the Fill
color; the Stroke option changes only the Stroke color; and
the Both option changes both the Fill and the Stroke color
to those that you have selected in the Style window.

If youre not happy with your circle, just select the Edit >
Undo command from the menu bar. Your circle should look
something like this:

Paint Bucket Tool

Select a new color from the Style panel, similar to the way
that you selected the color in the previous steps. Then click
inside the shape to change the color(s).

Simple Animation
Your first Anime Studio drawing

Quick Start

When you animate in Anime Studio, you move objects

around and set up keyframes - points in time at which an
object has a certain position. At points in time between
keyframes, Anime Studio automatically computes the
position of all objects.

Anime Studio Pro 10

Tutorials

Near the top of the Timeline window is a ruler that displays

frame numbers in the animation. Click the number 36 to set
the current time to frame 36.

Transform Points

Click and drag the bottom point of the circle upward to

distort the circle into a shape that looks like this:
The Timeline

Next, choose Edit > Select None from the menu bar.
Pick the Transform Points tool from the toolbar.

Moving a single point

Quick Start

Anime Studio Pro 10

Tutorials

Now use the Transform Layer tool from the Layer section of
the Tools panel to rotate the layer.

Transform Layer
To rotate the object with the Transform Layer
tool, click and drag in the area between the
two bounding boxes that surround your object.
Rotate the object into a position similar to the one
below:

Rotating an entire layer

Back in the timeline, click frame number 72 in the ruler to

change the current time. Next, select Draw > Reset All
Points from the menu bar to move all points back to their
original positions. In the tool options area at the top of the
main window, press the Reset button to reset the rotation of
the entire layer.

Click the Reset button to reset the rotation of the layer.

Quick Start

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Tutorials

Finally, well shorten the length of the animation from its

default length of 240 frames. In the Timeline window, enter
80 in the second number field. This will shorten the length of
the animation to 80 frames.

Shorten the animation to 80 frames.

Congratulations, youve made an animation! Press the play

button near the bottom of the main window to watch it
go. When youre done, press stop. OK, so it probably wont
win any film awards, but youre off to a good start learning
Anime Studio.

Quick Start

Playback controls.

Heres what your finished animation should look like

(approximately). Press the Play button below to see the
result.

Anime Studio Pro 10

Tutorials

Tutorial 1.2: Drawing Simple

Shapes
In this tutorial you will learn how to draw simple shapes in
Anime Studio. The following tutorials will build on what you
start drawing in this tutorial.

Creating a Background
Launch Anime Studio by double-clicking its icon. Or, if
Anime Studio is already running, choose File > New to
create a new project, which opens in a new document
tab.
The final result. (MP4 File)

Youve learned how Anime Studio has different groups of

tools for different operations, and even how to use a few of
those tools. You can experiment more on your own, maybe
adding more keyframes. When youre ready to learn more,
move on to Tutorial 1.2: Drawing Simple Shapes on page
9.

Click the current tool icon (just beneath the File menu),
to select Reset All Tools. This puts all tools at their default
settings.

Reset all tools.

Quick Start

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In the Tools window, click the Draw Shape tool to activate

it. Then select the Rectangle option.

Draw Shape

Select a brown fill color.

Rectangle

From the Style window, select a brown color for the Fill color
as shown below.

Quick Start

Click and drag in the working area to create the rectangle

shown below:

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Add Point

Click on the top edge of the rectangle and drag the

mouse upwards:
Draw a simple rectangle.

This shape is going to be the start of some rolling hills. So far,

these hills look kind of flat, so lets fix that. Pick the Add Point
tool from the toolbar.

How to add a point to an existing shape.

Quick Start

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You should have something now that looks like the picture
below. If this isnt what you got, select the Edit > Undo
menu item and try again. Be sure to click on the line that
forms the top of the rectangle and drag upwards from
there.

Add a second point and drag it downward.

Drag the new point upward.

To keep things organized, its a good idea to name the

layers in an Anime Studio project. Double-click this layer
(the only one so far) in the Layers window.

Lets add another curve to the hills by clicking a little more

to the right and dragging downwards:

Accessing a layers properties.

Quick Start

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In the dialog that appears, type in Hills for the layer name
and click the OK button.

click the Reset button to reset the fill colors to their default
settings.

Rename the layer.

After creating the hills, choose Edit > Select None to

deselect any selected points. Then click the Select Shape
tool in the Fill section of the Tools panel, and click the fill on
your hills.

Select Shape Tool

The Style window will display the settings for the fill: its color,
its line width and color, and the styles used to display it. To
remove settings that you have used in previous projects,
Quick Start

Click the Reset button.

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Set the line width to 1. Then choose Gradient from the

Effect menu to open the Gradient dialog.

When you select the Gradient fill style, Anime Studio

automatically opens up the gradient settings dialog. The
Linear gradient type is automatically selected for you.

Linear gradient.

If you want to change the gradient settings later, click the

details button to the right of the pop-up menu.
To set the left gradient color, double-click the left square at
the bottom of the gradient bar to open the Color Picker.
Select a green color and click OK to return to the Gradient
dialog.
The Style Window

Quick Start

To set the right gradient color, double-click the right square

at the bottom of the gradient bar to open the Color Picker.
Select a brown color and click OK to return to the Gradient
dialog.

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When your colors are selected, the Gradient settings should

appear as shown below. Click OK to return to the scene.

Gradient settings.

To see the gradient preview more easily, click outside

the hill to deselect the fill. Youll notice a line with a filled
circle at one end, which represents the start color of the
gradient (green in our example). The empty circle at the
other end represents the end color of the gradient (brown
in our example). You can adjust this indicator to control the
blending and direction of the gradient.

Quick Start

Final result.

In our example, the gradient starts with brown on the

bottom (empty circle) and ends with green on the top of
the hill (filled circle). The angle tilts slightly toward the left as
shown below.
Choose the File > Save As... command from the menu and
save the project under the name Tutorial 1.2.
In Tutorial 1.3: Drawing Complex Shapes on
page 16 well continue working on this
scene by adding more complex shapes.

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Tutorial 1.3: Drawing Complex

Shapes
This tutorial follows on the previous one, and teaches
you how to draw more complex shapes. You can either
continue with the project you created in Tutorial 1.2, or
you can open a file provided for you named Tutorial 1.2.
This file can be found in the Tutorials/1 - Basics subfolder
within your custom content folder. The file youre starting
this tutorial with should look something like the following:

Creating a New Layer

Click the New Layer button in the Layer window to create
a new layer. In the popup menu that appears, choose
Vector.

Create a Vector layer.

Starting point.

Quick Start

You can assign the name Clouds to the new layer when
you create it, or double-click this new layer and rename it
Clouds in the Layer Settings dialog.

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Rename the layer Clouds.

Now select the Add Point tool.

Reset colors and set line width to 1.

Add Point

Click the Reset button in the Style panel to reset the colors
to their default. Set the line width to 1.

Quick Start

Click to set the start point for a new line segment. Without
releasing the mouse, drag the cursor and release the
mouse to create the end of the segment. The finished
segment is shown below.

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Add a line segment.

Next, click on the end of the new line segment and drag to
stretch the curve out like this:

Add another segment to the end of the curve.

Do this a few more times until you have the curve below:

Several more segments added.

Quick Start

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The key point to remember is in order to extend a curve,

you need to click on one of its endpoints and then drag
the mouse to where you want the new point to be.
Remember, if you make a mistake at any time, just choose
the Edit > Undo menu command.
Now were going to add a second puff to the cloud. Move
your mouse to the point just before the end of the previous
segment. The Auto Weld option for the Add Point tool
should be turned on by default. When turned on, the node
will turn green when you can automatically weld the new
segment to the existing one. When Auto Fill is turned on,
the cloud will automatically fill with color when the shape
is closed.

Click on the second to last point in the curve, and drag

down and to the right, as shown below. When you use
the Add Point tool on a point that is in the middle of a
curve, what happens is that you start a new curve that is
automatically welded to that point in the first curve. These
two curves are permanently joined at that point, which
becomes important when we get to filling the shape with
color. Heres what your project should look like after adding
the new curve segment:

A new segment welded to an existing curve.

Add a new curve at this point.

Quick Start

Add some points to the end of this new curve to get the
shape below. Remember, to add a point to the end of a
curve, click just on the last point of that curve.

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More new points.

Finally, add two or three more points at the beginning of

the original curve. When you add the last point, drag it
over to the right and line it up with the next to last point of
the second curve before letting go of the mouse. Anime
Studio will automatically weld those points together and fill
the cloud with color to get the final shape below:

Quick Start

Finished cloud.

Sometimes it can be hard to follow this sequence of

steps - lets take a moment to watch a movie of the cloud
being created in Anime Studio. Pay special attention to
where the mouse is clicked in order to weld the two curves
together.

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Click the video to watch how to draw the cloud.

We will add a line effect to make the cloud a bit softer. In

the Style window, check the Advanced button to display
the advanced style options. Select Soft Edge from the
Stroke Effect pop-up menu. Accept the default settings
and click OK.

Quick Start

Soft Edge effect.

Now would be a good time to select the File > Preview

command to see what your final result looks like:

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Transform Points

The rendered cloud.

A Second Cloud
Lets make another cloud. With the Clouds layer selected,
choose Edit > Select All from the menu. Now choose Edit
> Copy, followed by Edit > Paste. Next, pick the Transform
Points tool from the toolbar.

Quick Start

In the working area, click and drag to the right to move

the new cloud away from the original. (When you paste an
object from the clipboard, it is positioned directly on top of
the original.)

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Transform Points

Duplicated cloud.

Use the Transform Points tool to resize this new cloud,

making it smaller than the original.

Quick Start

The Transform Points tool can resize an object both

vertically and horizontally, and will scale whether or not
the object is selected beforehand. In this case, we dont
really want to change the clouds shape like that. With
the Transform Points tool active, click and drag inward on
one of the corner handles that appears around the cloud,
thus making it smaller without changing its overall shape.
Continue using the Transform Points tool until you get the
new cloud in a position you like.

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and there so that the two clouds dont look exactly the
same.

Second cloud scaled down and positioned.

Modify some points.

Next, use the Edit > Select None command (or press the
enter key) to de-select all the points in the new cloud.
Now you can use the Transform Points tool to click and
drag individual points to reshape the second cloud.

Plant a Tree

In this case, since only one point is selected at a time, the

Transform Points tool is used to re-shape the cloud, not
move the entire object. Just re-shape a few points here

Good - were moving right along, but this scene needs

some plant life. Add a new layer to the project by clicking
the new layer button in the Layer window. Again, choose
Vector from the popup menu. Name it Tree.

Quick Start

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Rename the layer to Tree

Select a brown fill color from the Style panel.

Select a brown fill color.

Using the Add Point tool, along with the welding feature,
draw a shape that resembles the trunk of a tree.

Quick Start

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Add Point

Here are a few things to remember as you go: First, you

can always use the Edit > Undo command to back up if
you make a mistake.
Second, you can switch to using the Transform Points tool
to reshape part of the object, even if you havent finished
drawing the whole thing yet.

Quick Start

Transform Points

Third, the Transform Points tool lets you pick individual points
by clicking on them - if you want to get rid of a point, but
its too far back to use undo, select it with the Transform
Points tool and press the backspace or delete key on your
keyboard.
Feel free to be creative with your tree trunk, you dont
really have to stick to the sample below.

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Pan Workspace Tool

Zoom Workspace Tool

Draw a tree trunk

There are a few tools that may be useful when building

your tree that havent been introduced yet. The Pan
Workspace and Zoom Workspace tools can be used to
move around the workspace.

Quick Start

Note that these tools are not used to manipulate your

drawing - they just let you move your view so that you can
focus in on a particular area of interest. To reset your view
to its original position, select the View > Reset command
from the menu bar.
Another useful tool is the Curvature tool. Using this tool,
you can click and drag on a point to adjust how round or
pointy the curve is as it passes through that point.

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ready to move it back into position, use the Transform

Points tool and click to select one point on the treetop.
Then use the Edit > Select Connected command to
select the rest of the treetop. Finally, drag the treetop
into place, and use the Transform Points tool to resize it
if necessary.

Curvature

The last thing well add in this tutorial is some greenery to

the top of the tree. The shape for the treetop will be similar
to the clouds, so follow similar steps to create it, but there is
one tricky part. Because the treetop overlaps the trunk of
the tree, it can be easy to click on the wrong part and add
a new point to the trunk instead of the treetop.
There are two ways to avoid this problem.
One, use the Pan and Zoom tools to move in close to the
top of the tree so that its easier to avoid clicking on the
wrong thing.

The second approach is to draw the treetop off to the

side where theres plenty of empty space. Then, when
the treetop is finished, drag it back into position at the
top of the tree. For the second approach, when youre

Quick Start

Select a nice leafy green fill color in the Style panel. Set
the line width to 4, youll see why later.

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The treetop.

Select a green fill color and set line width to 4.

Use the Add Point tool to draw your treetop. Heres the kind
of look were going for:

Choose File > Preview to see how the treetop looks. Notice
how the ends of line segments look kind of squared off
and blocky. Well fix that using Anime Studios variable line
width feature.
Exit the render window and press Enter to de-select all
points in the treetop.
Now, using the Line Width tool, click on each of the points
in the treetop that is at the end of a line segment. The area

Quick Start

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that the Line Width tool affects is indicated by a semitransparent red circle. The default width is .5, which is quite
large. Decrease the width to around .1 or less to obtain
finer control over the area that you want to affect.

Line Width Tool

Changing line width.

Choose File > Preview again, and notice how the

endpoints are now nicely tapered. This feature isnt limited
to endpoints - experiment with using it on other points
along a curve. Also, try dragging the Line Width tool back
and forth to make lines thinner or thicker.

Quick Start

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Tutorial 1.4: Bone Setup

This tutorial builds on the results of the previous two,
teaching you how to add bones to a character. You can
either continue with the project you created in Tutorial 1.3,
or you can open a file provided for you named Tutorial
1.3. This file can be found in the Tutorials/1 - Basics
subfolder within your custom content folder.
Bones are an important tool you can use in Anime Studio
to help make animation easier. If you think of drawings in
Anime Studio (like the ones you made in previous tutorials)
as soft rubber, then bones can be thought of as stiff wires
inside the rubber that help you move and position objects.
Bones are never displayed in a final rendering, theyre just
used as tools during the animation process.
The completed background.
Tutorial 1.4: Bone Setup on page 31 will
move into using bones to control a character,
and youll learn how to set up some animation
controls to make things move.

Bones are not absolutely necessary for animation. They

are very helpful for animating certain types of motion as
well show in this and the next tutorial, but there are other
ways to animate in Anime Studio as well. As you gain
experience using Anime Studio, youll learn when bones
are appropriate and when theyre not.

Importing an Object
Launch Anime Studio and open the project from the last
tutorial.

Quick Start

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From your custom content folder, locate the Tutorials/1

Basics folder and open the file Tutorial Extras. A dialog will
open asking you which object you want to use from this
project:

Starting point for this tutorial.

As you build a Anime Studio project, there are times you

may want to re-use objects you created before. Theres
an easy way to do this, and well use it now to add a
character to the project.
Select the File > Import > Anime Studio Object... command.
In the file dialog that appears, navigate to your Anime
Studio installation folder.
Quick Start

Insert Object dialog.

Select the layer named Frank on the left side of the

dialog. On the right side, youll see a preview of Frank. Click
OK. A new layer will be added to your project. This layer is
a copy of the layer Frank from the Tutorial Extras project.
Frank is fully drawn and filled in - you can see what the
scene really looks like now by selecting File > Preview.

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Drag the Frank layer upwards into the Skeleton layer. This
step is very important - you will know that youre dragging
the Frank layer to the correct place when the Skeleton
layer becomes highlighted. Finally, click the Skeleton layer
to make sure its active. When this is done, the Layer panel
should look like this:

Frank added to the project.

Adding Bones
Lets give Frank some bones to make him easier to animate.
In the Layers window, click the new layer button. In the
popup menu that appears, choose Bone. Rename this
new layer Skeleton.

Quick Start

Frank inside a bone layer.

Make sure the layer Skeleton is selected in the Layer

panel. While holding down the Alt key, click the eyeballs
icon on the left side of the Skeleton layer to temporarily
hide the other layers.

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Select the Skeleton layer and hide the other layers.

Finally, use the Pan and Zoom tools to zoom in on the

contents of this layer. Your window should now show
something like this:
Zoomed in on Frank.

Add a bone to Frank by selecting the Add Bone tool and

clicking and dragging upwards as shown below:

Quick Start

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Add Bone Tool

This will be the main control bone - you could think of it as

Franks spine. It should look like this:

First bone added.

Click and drag out three more bones as shown below. Its
important that you draw these three bones in order from
top to bottom: thigh, shin, and foot.

Quick Start

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bones means that the child can move around without

affecting the parent, but if the parent moves, the child
will move with it. This is why it was important to draw the
previous three bones in order: the thigh bones connected
to the spine bone, the shin bones connected to the thigh
bone, and the foot bones connected to the shin bone (at
least in Franks body).
When a bone is selected, its displayed in red. Its parent
also gets displayed differently: in blue. The parent is
highlighted like this for your information - sometimes you
may connect bones in the wrong order and looking for the
blue parent bone can help determine where things went
wrong.

Right leg bones.

When a bone is selected, it is drawn in the highlighted

color, red.
When you add a new bone, it becomes the child of the
currently selected bone. The parent-child relationship for
Quick Start

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Select Bone Tool

Next, use the Add Bone tool to add three bones to the
other leg as shown below:

A current bone and its parent.

OK, lets add bones to the other leg. But first, we need to
select the spine again so that the second leg will also be
attached to it. Use the Select Bone tool and click on the
spine to select it.

Quick Start

Add Bone Tool

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Testing Bones
Theres a bone tool that lets you test how your skeleton
structure is working. Lets try that now. Select the
Manipulate Bones tool and click and drag any of the
bones you created. Try dragging several of the bones
around to see what happens.

Manipulate Bones Tool

Left leg bones.

Quick Start

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The Manipulate Bones tool doesnt permanently move

the bones. Click the Select Bone tool and all the bones will
snap back into their original places.

Select Bone Tool

Adjusting Bone Strength

Moving Franks legs.

Notice that Frank automatically moves with the bones. You

may have also noticed that Franks looks quite squishy when you move either of his legs, his head changes shape
as well. The next step is to clean this up a bit by telling
Anime Studio which parts of Frank should move with which
bones.

When you use a bone layer to control a character, every

bone in the skeleton has some influence on every part of
the character. We saw that in Frank - when you move one
of the legs, even the head moves a bit. This influence is
strongest closest to each bone, so the head only moves a
little bit, not as much as the leg itself.
We dont really want to see Franks head move much at
all when his legs move. Luckily, theres a way to control
this: bone strength. Each bone has a strength value that
controls how large its region of influence is. What well do
next is adjust the strength of the bones that control Frank.
Select the Bone Strength tool and take a look at the bones.

Quick Start

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Bone Strength Tool

Each bone has a semi-transparent region highlighted

around it. (You also saw these regions when using the
Manipulate Bones tool.) These regions show you the
influence of each bone in the skeleton. A bone has the
most influence inside its shaded region.

Regions of influence.

With the Bone Strength tool active, click and drag side-toside on each of the bones in Franks skeleton to adjust its
strength. The goal here is to adjust the region of each bone
so that it just encloses the corresponding section of Franks
body. For example, the region around the shin bone should
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just enclose the shin, and not much more. Dont worry
about being too precise - pretty close is good enough. For
Franks head, dont make the bone region enclose the
entire head - that would make the bone too strong. Adjust
the bone strengths so that they look approximately like the
following:

Testing Bones (Again)

Once you adjust bone strengths, its a good idea to test
the skeleton again to make sure everything works correctly.
Pick the Manipulate Bones tool from the toolbar and click
and drag on Franks shin bones just above the ankle.

Manipulate Bones Tool

If everything was set up correctly, Frank should be able to

move like this:

Adjusted bone strengths.

Quick Start

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Tutorial 1.5: Animation

This tutorial continues on from the previous three, moving
into the animation features of Anime Studio. You can either
continue on with your project from the previous tutorial,
or you can use a file that has been created for you - its
named Tutorial 1.4 and its located in the Tutorials/1 Basics subfolder within your custom content folder.
There are three basic ways to animate objects in Anime
Studio:

Bones in action.

Play around - move Franks bones around into various

positions and get a feel for manipulating the skeleton.
Tutorial 1.5: Animation on page 42 will cover
animation, and youll learn how to make objects move
around over time.

Quick Start

animating an entire layer,

using bones to animate parts of an object,

animating the individual points on an object

These three types can be combined to make very complex

animations. This tutorial will walk you through all three types
of animation.
Open your previous project (or the Tutorial 1.4 file) in
Anime Studio. Make sure all the layers are visible by clicking
to turn on each layer in the Layers window.

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Starting point for this tutorial.

Layer Animation
Turn on all layers.

Your window should look something like this:

Layer animation is the most simple way to make objects

move around in a Anime Studio animation. Its limited in the
way you can move the objects, but in some cases its all
you need. Layer animation moves an entire layer around
as if it were painted on a pane of glass.
Click the Clouds layer in the Layers window to activate it.
Next, set the current time to frame 72. This is done in the
Timeline window. To set the time, scroll the timeline panel
sideways (if necessary) until you see the number 72 in

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the ruler at the top. Click on the number 72 and the time
marker will jump to that frame, as shown below:

to draw objects at other frames, but for now its best only
to create new objects when the time is set to frame zero.
You can switch back to frame zero at any time by pressing
the rewind button, or by clicking on the number 0 in the
timeline. For now, leave the time at frame 72.
Select the Transform Layer tool from the toolbar.

Time set to frame 72.

NOTE: If you do not see multiple channels in the
timeline, you may have Anime Studio set to collapse
them. Choose Edit > Preferences, and uncheck
the Consolidate timeline channels option in the
Options tab. This displays all animation channels in
the timeline.

In Anime Studio, an important concept is to learn the

importance of frame zero. At the far left end of the timeline
is a frame marked zero. When the time is set to zero, you
are in Anime Studios creation mode. For now, you should
only draw, add bones, or create other objects at frame
zero. When Anime Studio is at any other frame, you are
animating the objects you have created. As you get
more comfortable with Anime Studio, you can choose
Quick Start

Transform Layer

Click and drag to the right in the working area to move

the cloud layer to the right. You can press the Shift key, if
desired, to constrain the movement to a straight line.:

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The new keyframe.

Try out the animation so far: press the play button at the
bottom-left of the main window. The animation loops when
it reaches the end (in this case frame 240). When youve
seen enough, press the stop button.
Moving the cloud layer.

Notice that a marker appeared in the timeline at frame

72. (You may have to scroll downwards to see the marker.)
This marker represents a keyframe - a point in time at which
the layer has been given a position. There are several
animation channels displayed in the Timeline panel. This
keyframe appeared in the Layer Translation channel,
because thats what type of action you just performed you translated (moved) a layer.

Quick Start

If you prefer, you can shorten the length of the animation

to 72 frames, so that it will loop back to the beginning
once it reaches the last keyframe. Simply change the total
number of frames to 72 as shown below.

Shorten the length of the animation to 72 frames, if desired.

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Activate the Skeleton layer.

Playback controls.

Bone Animation
Bone animation uses skeleton structures to move an object
around. You got a good feel for how bones work in the
previous tutorial when you used the Manipulate Bones tool.
When animating bones you use very similar tools.
Activate the Skeleton layer by clicking its entry in the Layer
panel.
Quick Start

Set the time to frame 12 by clicking the number 12 in the

Timeline window. (You may have to scroll the Timeline
window before you can see the number 12.)

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Set current frame to 12.

Now, pick the Manipulate Bones tool in the toolbar.

Manipulate Bones Tool

Click and drag the bones in Franks legs until they are
positioned as shown below:
Quick Start

Move Franks legs.

Note that the Manipulate Bones tool works differently at

frame 12 than it did at frame 0 in the previous tutorial. At
frame 0, this tool is used to test a bone system, and doesnt
permanently modify the bones. However, when you are
animating bones (at any frame other than 0), the bones do
hold their new position.
Next, pick the Transform Bone tool. Click on Franks spine
bone and drag it downwards a bit:

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To transform the bone, drag from the bottom
control point on the bone. For more
information about the control points in the Transform
Bone tool, see Transform Bone on page 80 in
your Anime Studio Users Manual.

Transform Bone Tool

Lower Franks entire body.

Next, set the time to frame 24 and choose the Bone > Reset
All Bones menu command. Press the play button to watch
your animation, and press stop when youre done.
When you played back the animation, you probably
noticed that after frame 24, Frank doesnt move any more.
You could add more keyframes by setting the time to some
later frame and moving Franks bones some more, but lets
try out Anime Studios animation looping feature.
In the timeline, you should see a group of keyframes at
frame 24. These keys represent bone movement (the
spine bone moving up and down) and bone rotation
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(the bending legs). Drag a rectangle around these four

keyframes to select them:

Select bone keyframes at frame 24.

Next, right-click on one of these selected keys. A popup

menu will appear. Select Cycle... from the popup menu.

Select Cycle

What youre telling Anime Studio is that you want these

keys to cycle back to an earlier point in the timeline. A
dialog will appear asking you what frame to cycle back
to - enter the settings shown below. Youre telling Anime
Studio that on this keyframe, the bone movement should
cycle back to frame 0.

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Cycling indicated in the timeline.

Cycle settings.

Click OK and press the play button to see the difference.

An animation channel with cycling turned on will repeat its
animation over and over indefinitely. Typically this would
be used for some kind of background element, not a
foreground character like Frank, but its a great time saver.
In the timeline you can see an indication of the cycling in
the bone channels:

Quick Start

Point Animation
Using point animation, you drag around individual points
(or groups of points) on an object. In theory, you could
animate the same types of motion as with bone animation
- bones just save you a lot of work. Point animation is more
typically used when you want to change the shape of
some object.
Click the Clouds layer in the Layer panel to activate it.

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Press the enter key on your keyboard to make sure no

points are selected. Finally, click the Jump to End button to
jump to the end of the animation.

Activate the Clouds layer.

Pick the Transform Points tool from the toolbar.

Transform Points
Quick Start

Jump to End button.

Click and drag individual points on the clouds in small

amounts, just to reshape the clouds a bit. This will cause the
clouds to change their shapes slightly from the beginning
of the animation to frame 72.

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Return to frame 0.

Point animation.

Use the play and stop buttons to see the result.

Importing Animation
Remember how the Frank layer was imported into the
project in the previous tutorial? Well, imported layers can
also contain animation.
First, return to Frame 0 in your animation.

Quick Start

Select File > Import > Anime Studio Object.... When

prompted, locate the/Tutorials/1-Basics folder (in your
custom content folder), and open the file Tutorial Extras.In
the dialog that pops up, select the Beach Ball layer and
click OK.

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Transform Layer

Import the beach ball.

A bouncing beach ball will appear in your project. Press

the play button to watch it go. It bounces all right, but its
not really in the right position.
Switch back to frame zero (press the rewind button in the
timeline) to set the balls initial position.
Using the Transform Layer tool, drag the beach ball to a
better location.

Repositioned beach ball.

You can also use the Transform Layer tool to resize the ball.
(Drag one of the corner handles of the scale control box
to resize the beach ball the same amount in width and
height.) Press the Play button to view the final animation.
Quick Start

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Transform Layer

Play the final animation.

You now have a pretty good grasp of how to draw, fill, set
up bones, and animate in Anime Studio. Feel free to jump
right in and start working with Anime Studio. Or, you can
read more tutorials that dig deeper into specific topics.
Quick Start

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Drawing
Tutorial 2.1: Welding
As you learned in the Quick Start tutorials, Anime Studio
features an Auto Weld feature that automatically welds
shapes and segments together when your cursor reaches
a point that you can weld to. However, there are cases
where you may want to manually weld points together.
When drawing in Anime Studios vector layers, the concept
of welding points is very important. These tutorials will
show you examples of how (and why) points can be
welded, and will go on to show you some examples of
good and bad welds you can do in Anime Studio.
When you weld two points together in Anime Studio, Anime
Studio really is combining those two points into one. There
are a couple reasons to do this: First, welding the two
endpoints of a curve together creates a closed curve.
Second, if two shapes join up at a particular point, and
you want them to remain joined during an animation, then
welding those points together will guarantee that those
two shapes will remain joined.

Drawing

How to Weld Points

There are two ways to weld points in Anime Studio:
manually and automatically.
To manually weld two points together with the Transform
Points tool, first uncheck the Auto-weld option for the tool.

Transform Points

Auto-weld option unchecked

Drag one point on top of the other and press the

spacebar. Heres an example of this method. Although you
cant see the keyboard in the example, keep in mind that

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the spacebar was pressed at the moment when the two

points overlap. After welding, notice how the two points
move as one.

Before spacebar is pressed (left). After spacebar is pressed

(right)

The second method of welding is automatic. For automatic

welding to work, be sure that the Auto-weld checkbox
is turned on in the tool options area when the Transform
Points tool is active:
Welding Example 1. (Click to play movie)

Make sure Auto-weld is on

Using this method, when you drag a curve endpoint

on top of another point , the point turns green when it
can be welded automatically. Let go of the mouse to
automatically weld the points together.
Drawing

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Heres an example of automatic welding. In this case, the

spacebar was not pressed to initiate the weld - as soon
as the mouse is released, the two overlapping points are
automatically welded together.

Automatic welding

Heres another example of automatic welding. Remember

that only a curve endpoint can be automatically welded.
However, the point that it is welded to does not need to be
an endpoint:

Welding Example 2. (Click to play movie)

Drawing

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Add Point

Welding Example 3. (Click to play movie)

Automatic welding also works with the Add Point tool.

Drawing

When you add a new point, you can drag it around as

if you were using the Transform Points tool. As long as
the new point you added is a curve endpoint, it can be
automatically welded to another point. If the new point
is not an endpoint, you can still weld it to another point
manually by pressing the spacebar when it overlaps
another point.

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Welding Example 4. (Click to play movie)

Add Point tool with Auto-weld option on

Besides welding two points together, Anime Studio can

weld a point to the middle of a curve segment. This can
be done with either the automatic or manual welding
methods. Heres an example:

Welding to a curve segment

Drawing

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Why to Weld Points

OK, so that covers welding points, but why do you want
to weld points again? The main reason is to create fillable
shapes. In order to fill a shape with color, that shape should
be completely closed, either by overlapping lines or by
shapes that are welded together so that there are no gaps
in the shape that you want to fill.

A closed shape that can be filled

Examples of Good Welding

A non-closed shape

By welding the two endpoints together, we can create a

closed shape that can then be filled:

Drawing

Lets look at some examples of good welding choices.

First, the following two points could be welded to create a
single, continuous curve:

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Joining two curves

The next case shows the classic case of welding a curve

closed to create a fillable shape:

Drawing

Closing a curve

Next, we show a shape made up of several curves. Notice

that a closed, fillable shape does not need to be made up
of a single curve. The shape below, after welding, is made
up of three curve segments, but is still closed and can be
filled with color:

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Joining multiple curves into a single closed shape

The welded and filled shape

Finally, the example below shows two circles lined up

side-by-side. The two side points of the circles have been
welded together so that when they move around during
an animation they remain joined. If those points were not
welded, moving them in sync like this would require a lot of
extra work.
To maintain the separate colors in the two
circles, Auto Fill is turned off before welding
the two circles together at a common point.

Drawing

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two shapes and you were considering welding the pairs of

circled points:

Joined Circles. (Click to play movie)

Examples of Bad Welding

Typically, when you weld together two points, one of them
should be a curve endpoint. This isnt always true, but
most often it is. If you find yourself welding together two
points and neither is an endpoint, take a moment to think
whether the weld is appropriate. Heres an example of a
bad choice of welding. Suppose you had the following

Drawing

Before welding the marked points

Although Anime Studio will let you perform those welds, it

isnt really a good idea. What you would end up creating
is a shape with lots of little holes in it. Along the section of
curves that you welded together are little bubbles that
make it impossible to fill the two main shapes:

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Bad welding

Fill the shapes without welding them together

Instead, a better approach is to just move the two shapes

closer together without any welding at all. In this case,
welding the two shapes together doesnt have any benefit.

Delete Edge

Drawing

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Another approach in this situation would be to cut the top

shape apart with the Delete Edge tool and then weld the
remaining endpoints to the lower shape. First, cut the top
shape apart:

Weld the new endpoints

Cut the redundant curve away

Then, weld the newly-created endpoints onto the lower

shape. With this approach you dont end up with a double
curve all welded together. The resulting shape is much
cleaner and easier to work with:

Drawing

Tutorial 2.2: Drawing Shapes with

Holes
Drawing shapes with holes is very easy in Anime Studio, but
many new users dont realize that this can be done. Theres
really no trick at all - just follow the basic rules for creating
a fill.

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Reminder of Fill Rules

Create Shape Tool

As a reminder, lets consider the rules for creating a fill

shape: A fill must be composed of closed curves that
define the border of the shape. So, as an example, below
is a valid fill shape.
A basic fill shape

Creating Holes
So a fill shape is defined by the curves on its border. If we
want to create a hole, then all we need to do is create
curves that outline the shape of the desired hole(s). Below
weve added some extra curves before creating a fill
shape:

Drawing

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in the shape. Theres nothing in particular you have to do,

just draw the holes and Anime Studio will know what to do
with them. When youve selected all the correct points,
press the spacebar to finalize the shape.

New curves added

Selected points for filling

Create Shape Tool

Once youve set up curves to define the shape of the

hole, all you need to do is select the outline and the hole(s)
using the Create Shape tool. Notice that Anime Studio
automatically identifies the inner curves as borders of holes
Drawing

Finally, here is the resulting shape. (The Line Width tool

was used to narrow the width of the outline at the corner
points.)

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The finished shape

Heres another example of a shape with a hole:

Another shape with a hole

Tutorial 2.3: Hidden Edges

When drawing more complex objects like faces, you will
often run into situations where you want an outline to
only go partway around a shape. Theres an easy way to
accomplish this in Anime Studio.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 2.3 and its located in the
Drawing

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Tutorials > 2 - Draw subfolder within your custom content

folder. Open this file in Anime Studio and you should see
something like this:

shape looks OK, but where the separate parts join up

we dont want to have lines separating them. To fix this,
activate the Hide Edge tool.

Hide Edge Tool

There are two edges we want to eliminate from this

drawing. Click on these two edges as shown below. If you
dont see an immediate result, try dragging the mouse
across the lines in question to make sure you hit them.

Starting point for this tutorial

Hidden Edges
The drawing were working with could be the beginning
of a characters face. In this face, the nose and ear are
separate shapes from the main head outline. The general
Drawing

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Edges to click on

After clicking on these edges, they should disappear from

view, and the result should be as follows:

After hiding the edges

The Hide Edge tool works by simply hiding the selected

edges of an outline. It does not affect the underlying
curve - the curve is still there, you just cant see the outline
on that particular section of the curve. Because it works
on the outline, and not the curve itself, be sure you only
use the Hide Edge tool after youve created the outlines.
Otherwise, with no outline, you would not see the result of
hiding some edges.
The other thing to know about the Hide Edge tool is that
you can also un-hide edges. If you change your mind,
or hide the wrong edges, just click on a hidden edge to
re-show it.

Drawing

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Finishing Touches
If you hide the edges of a thicker line, youll often end up
with abrupt ends to the outline. You can see this below:

A nice way to finish off these endpoints is to use the Line

Width tool. With this tool, click on the endpoints to set their
width to 0. You can also click and drag to adjust the width
of any other points you choose. After cleaning up the
endpoints, you should get a result like this:

Blocky curve ends

Tapered endpoints

Tutorial 2.4: Varying Line Widths

Line Width Tool

Drawing

Anime Studio allows you to change the width of a stroke at

any point along the curve. Line width information is stored
as a percentage value, rather than as an absolute value.

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You can use varying line widths to create outlined shapes

that maintain consistency when they are bent and
animated.

Start With a New Project

Create a new project. In the Style window, select a color
that you want to use for the outline color. Set the width of
the stroke to around 100. Use the Add Point tool to draw a
three-point curve. Bend the curve slightly, like an arm.

A simple three-point curve bent like an arm

Then use the Variable Line Width tool to increase or

decrease the width at the points until you have a shape
resembling an arm. Your arm should look similar to the
figure shown below.
Add Point

Line Width Tool

Drawing

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The curve reshaped to look like an arm

Select the curve and copy it into your clipboard

(Command/Ctrl+C). Then paste another copy directly on
top of the existing curve (Command/Ctrl+V).
Now you have two strokes that are superimposed directly
on top of each other. You can use the top stroke as a
fill, but youll need to make some adjustments. With the
second stroke selected, change the stroke color for the
second stroke to the color that you want to use for the fill of
the arm (such as yellow, shown here).

Drawing

Change the color of the top stroke

Reduce the width of the top stroke to a value between 90

and 95 (depending on how thick you want your outline
to be). Your project should now look similar to the figure
shown below.

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The curve reshaped to look like an arm

Remember that in this method, you are not working with a

stroke and a fill. Instead, you are working with two strokes of
different colors that are controlled by the same curve.
Now you can use the variable line width tool to adjust
the width of both strokes at the same time, or make other
transformations with the Transform Points tool to reshape or
animate both curves at the same time. This allows you to
quickly create character elements, such as arms or legs,
which are easier to animate because they have fewer
points to manipulate.

Drawing

Line width and transformation changes made on the points or

curves affect both strokes at the same time.

Tutorial 2.5: Shape Ordering

In an Anime Studio vector layer, shapes are ordered from
back to front. This ordering determines which shapes will
appear in front of or behind others. This tutorial will show
you how to work with shape ordering.

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Start With a Sample File

Raising and Lowering Shapes

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 2.4 and its located in the
Tutorials > 2 - Draw subfolder within your custom content
folder. Open this file in Anime Studio, and you should see
something like this:
Select Shape Tool

If you want to change the order of some shapes, the first

thing you need to do is select a shape to work with. Using
the Select Shape tool, click anywhere on the red shape. It
will become highlighted with a checkerboard to indicate
that it is selected. Notice that you can also see it faintly
beneath the other shapes - this is so that you can see the
entire selected shape, even if it is normally obscured by
other shapes.
Starting point for this tutorial

As you can see, there are four shapes in this file. By the way
they overlap one another, you can also tell their ordering.
From back to front, there is a red shape, a green shape, a
blue shape, and a yellow circle.

Drawing

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Selected shape highlighted

To raise the shape, press the Up arrow key on your

keyboard. Notice that the red shape has now moved one
step up in the layer order, above the green shape:

Drawing

Raised shape

Right now, press the enter key to de-select all objects in the
layer. The red shape will switch back to normal to indicate
that it is not selected:

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De-select the shape

Next, use the Select Shape tool and click on the blue
shape to select it.

Select Shape Tool

Press the Down-arrow key twice to lower the blue shape

below the red shape, and then below the green shape:
Drawing

Lowered blue shape

You can also raise a shape to the top (above all others in
that layer) or lower it to the bottom (behind all others in
that layer). Select the green shape and hold down the Shift
key while pressing the Up-arrow key. With a single key press,
the green shape moves all the way to the top of the layers
shape order.

Selecting Hidden Shapes

If you now press the enter key, the green shape will be deselected. Notice that at this point the yellow circle is behind
the green shape, and cant be seen. You can still see the

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curves that make up the yellow circle, but the shape itself,
being behind the green shape, is not visible:

As you may have expected, the green shape gets

selected because it is in front:

Hidden yellow circle

Selected green shape

Now we want to bring the yellow circle back to the front.

Using the Select Shape tool, click on the yellow circle, even
though its hidden.

Now comes the trick for selecting shapes lower in the

ordering. Hold down the Ctrl key (Windows) or Cmd key
(Mac) while pressing the down-arrow key. This tells Anime
Studio to pick the next deeper shape in the layer ordering
at the same point you just clicked. The yellow circle will
now be selected. It will be kind of faint to remind you that it
is actually behind other shapes in the layer:

Select Shape Tool

Drawing

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Selected yellow circle

Finally, hold down the Shift key while pressing the up-arrow
to bring the yellow circle all the way to the top of the layer
ordering, making it fully visible once again:

Raised yellow circle

Tutorial 2.6: Brushes

Anime Studio allows you to apply brush effects to outlines if
you choose. Its really easy to use brushes, and this tutorial
will show you how.

Drawing

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Draw Some Freehand Curves

Freehand

Start with a new, blank file in Anime Studio. In the Style

window, set the line width value to 16. Next, activate the
Freehand tool. In the tool options area at the top of the
main Anime Studio window, adjust the settings for the
Freehand tool to match those shown below:

Variable Line Width: Use Pen Pressure

Width Variation: 75%

Taper Start: Checked

Taper End: Checked

Drawing

Freehand settings

Draw two or three curvy lines using the Freehand tool in the
editing view:

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Freehand curves

Rendered curves

Because of the line width set in the Style window, these

curves should be rather thick. The tapering settings in the
Freehand options should make the ends of these lines
taper down to narrow points. If you select File > Preview
now, the result should look pretty much like what you see in
the editing view:

Close the rendering window, and use the Select Shape tool
to select one of the curves:

Select Shape Tool

Drawing

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In the brush dialog that appears, select one of the brush

shapes that interests you - youll see a preview of the brush
at the bottom of the dialog:

Selected curve

In the Style window, click on the box that currently says No

Brush.

Brush Dialog

Click OK to close the brush dialog, and select File > Preview
again. In the rendered result you can see the applied brush
shape:

No Brush
Drawing

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Rendered curves

Try applying other brush shapes and Stroke colors to the

other curves:

Drawing

Different brush shapes

If you notice that your brush effects are not
visible until you render or export your
animation (brush shapes are not possible when
exporting to SWF format), you can change the
display quality to show the effects during editing. In
the lower-right corner of the main Anime Studio
window is the Display Quality popup box. Click this
box to open it. Turn on the Brushes checkbox. This will
turn on brushes in Anime Studios editing view:

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Brushes in editing view

Turn on Brushes preview option

Displaying brushes while editing requires a lot of

computation and can slow Anime Studio down, so its best
to use this as a kind of preview, but not to leave it on all
the time. When youve got the brushes how you like them,
switch this display option back off.

Tutorial 2.7: Layer Masking

This tutorial is more of a show & tell than a hands-on
creation of an animation. We will demonstrate some
examples of a powerful feature of Anime Studio - layer
Drawing

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masking. Layer masking can be used for all kinds of effects

such as shadows, compositing, depth effects, transitions,
and to simplify certain modeling and animation tasks.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 2.6 and its located in the
Tutorials > 2 - Drawing subfolder within your custom content
folder. Open this file in Anime Studio, expand the Masking
Group layer in the Layers window, and you should see
something like this:

Spotlights shining across the hole

Starting point for this tutorial

This is a simple scene of a wall with a hole broken through

it (a jailbreak maybe?). Set the current time to frame 24,
and choose the File > Preview menu command. Notice
how the spotlights spread across the hole as if it were a flat
object as shown below:
Drawing

To make the spotlights more realistic, we can use Anime

Studios masking feature. Double-click the Masking Group
layer. In the Layer Settings dialog that appears, go to the
Masking tab and set the Group Mask setting to Hide all as
shown below and click OK.

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Mask setting for the Masking Group layer

In the editing view, youll notice that the light no longer

appears over the hole. This is because the masking mode
we just set hides the areas of the light that fall within the
area of the hole:
Everything in the group is hidden

The setting that controls how the mask reacts is found in the
next section of the Masking tab. Double-click the Wall layer
to bring up the Layer Settings dialog. In the Masking tab,
notice that the Layer masking value is set to + Add to mask
as shown below. Click OK to exit the Layer Masking tab:

Drawing

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Mask setting for the Wall layer

What weve done is tell Anime Studio to add the contents

of the Wall layer to the visible region of all objects in the
group. No other layers in the same group will be allowed
to draw outside this visible region (the mask). If you
temporarily turn off the Background layer, youll see that
there is an actual hole in the wall. Because the wall acts as
a mask, the spotlights cannot draw themselves in this area.
Youre welcome to render out the entire animation as a
QuickTime movie to see the full, animated effect.
Drawing

The wall acting as a mask

Another Example - Simplified Modeling

Now open the file Tutorial 2.6_2. Take a look at the masking
group in this project (in this case, the masking function is
already turned on). In this example, the eyes are used as a
mask, and the eyelids are forced to render themselves only
inside the eyes. This makes it much easier to construct and

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animate the eyelids, without having to worry about them

spreading outside the eye region - with a mask layer, they
cant.

to be visible. In this case, the mask is a rectangle that

gradually exposes the text, but we dont really want to see
the rectangle. To use an invisible mask, the Mask layer uses
the + Add to mask, but keep invisible option in the Masking
tab.

Eyes used as a mask

Another Example - Transition Effect

Finally, open the file Tutorial 2.6_3. This project uses a mask
layer to cause a text object to fade into existence. Play
back the animation, or export it as a QuickTime movie,
then play back the movie. In this example, a variation of
the masking feature is used: the mask itself doesnt have
Drawing

Masking text.

Tutorial 2.8: Styles

In this tutorial well introduce Anime Studios Style feature. A
style in Anime Studio is a set of shape properties, including

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fill and line color, line width, fill effects, etc. Once youve
defined a style, you can apply it to as many shapes as
you wish. The benefit to this is that later on you can easily
change the color and appearance of those shapes just by
changing a single style.

Start With a Sample File

To start off, well take a look at an Anime Studio file that
already contains some styles. Its named Tutorial 2.7 and its
located in the Tutorials > 2 - Drawing subfolder within your
custom content folder. Open this file in Anime Studio, and
you should see something like this:

Starting point for this tutorial

(Dont worry that the character is all split apart. This is part
of the bone setup described in another tutorial. If you want
to try switching to frame 1, youll see that the character
snaps back together. Just be sure to go back to frame 0
before continuing.)
Lets see what a style is all about. In the Style window,
display the Advanced settings by clicking the Advanced
option.
Drawing

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Click the Advanced checkbox to display more style options.

Select Skin from the Styles popup menu. The Skin style will
become selected in the Style window:

The skin style selected

Click the Fill color selector to change the Skin fill color.
Pick any color you wish. Notice that the skin color updates
instantly on all the body parts of the character, even
though they are separate shapes and in several separate
Drawing

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layers. Styles can be used throughout an entire Anime

Studio project, and are not limited to the shapes in a single
layer.

Modified skin color

If we look at the Style window, there are three things to

notice about the Skin style:
1: The Skin style defines a fill color. 2: The Skin style does not
define a line color. 3: The Skin style does not define a line
width. Because the Skin style does not define a line color
Drawing

or width, changing these parameters will not affect the

shapes that use this style.

Skin style settings

Lets try a style that does control the properties of a line.

Select the Outline style from the Styles popup menu in the
Style window. Notice that this style does define a line color
and width, but does not define a fill color. Change the Line
Color to green and Line Width to 8 as shown below, and
assign a brush to the line:

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Modified Outline style

Notice that the Outline style has been applied to all the
shapes in the entire character. Regardless of their other
settings (like fill color), all the shapes use the Outline style to
draw their outlines:

Drawing

New Outline style

How Styles Are Applied

Now lets take a look at how styles are created and
applied. Create a new Anime Studio project file. In the
Style window, select New from the Styles popup menu.

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The Style window will now be editing the values for that
style. Give the style a name (any name), and choose
a fill and line color. Finally, set the line width to 8 or so. If
you want to, you can also assign a brush and fill and line
effects.

Drawing

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Creating a new style

Next, create a simple shape in the main window - a circle,
rectangle, or text object would be fine. Make sure that the
shape is filled.

The new style in the Styles menu.

Create a simple shape

Select Shape Tool

Drawing

If you want to apply a style to any other shape, use the

Select Shape tool to click on your shape to select it. The
Style window will update itself to show you the properties of
the selected shape.
Select your style from either the Style 1 or Style 2 popup
menu. This tells Anime Studio to apply that style to the
currently selected shape - you should see the properties
of your style applied immediately in Anime Studios editing
view.

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Thats it! As youve seen, its quite easy to create and apply
styles in Anime Studio.

Tutorial 2.9: Simple 3D

Construction
Anime Studio is primarily a 2D program, although it does
have some 3D tools for positioning the camera and
individual layers. Still, even if you position layers in a 3D
landscape and fly around them with the camera, each
vector layer is really just a 2D plane in a 3D space.
While you cant create 3D objects in the same way
that you can in a dedicated 3D modeling program,
Anime Studio does allow you to position and rotate twodimensional planes in 3D space and then fly around them.
If you need a more complex 3D shape you can import a
3D object as described in Tutorial 6.9: Using 3D Models
on page 260. You can also create 3D objects using a
2D vector shape, as described in Tutorial 2.10: 3D Shape
Design on page 101.
This tutorial will show you how to build a simple cube in
Anime Studio. If you need a more complex 3D shape,
you can import a 3D object file created in a separate 3D
modeling program (described in another tutorial).

Drawing

Start With a Blank File

For this tutorial, start with a new, blank project in Anime
Studio. The completed file is also available for you to
examine if you wish. Its named Tutorial 2.8 and its located
in the Tutorials > 2 - Draw subfolder within your custom
content folder.

Creating The Faces

The first step is to create the faces of the cube. In the initial,
empty layer of your new project, use the Draw Shape tool
to draw a square.

Draw Shape

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Its important that the square be precise. Choose the View

> Enable Grid command to turn on the grid. This will help
you draw this square.
The square must be centered at the layer origin, must be
truly square (not a rectangle), and should touch the top
and bottom of the viewable area exactly. To draw the
square, press the Alt and Shift keys concurrently, and click
at the layer origin point. The Alt key will draw the square
outward from the point at which you clicked, and the Shift
key will constrain the rectangle to create a square with four
equal sides.
Whats important for this square is that the corners are at
(-1, 1), (1, 1), (1, -1), and (-1, -1) as shown in the following
figure.
Dont worry too much about the coordinates - if you use
the grid, center the square at the origin, and make sure the
top and bottom touch the top and bottom of the viewable
area, the corners will be correct.

Drawing

Start with a square

You can select the Transform Points tool and optionally

enter the coordinates for each point manually in the tool
options area.

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You can manually enter coordinates in the Tool Options area

Select the shape with the Select Shape tool. Then fill the
square with a color of your choice and set its line width to
2.
In the Layers window, click the New Layer button. Create
a Group layer, name it Cube, and put the layer with the
square inside it. Duplicate the square layer five times and
you should have a setup that looks like this:

Drawing

Arranging the layers

Positioning Faces
Select the lowest layer in the group, Layer 1, and make the
Transform Layer tool active.

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Layer 2 depth setting

Transform Layer

Were not going to actually use the Transform Layer

tool, but making it active allows us to position a layer
numerically. At the top of the main Anime Studio window,
in the tool options area, set the value of Z to 1. This changes
the depth of the layer, bringing it forward toward the
camera.

The settings get a little more complex from here on out.

Select Layer 3, and set its X value to 1. Y and Z remain at 0.

Layer 3 depth setting

Next, activate the Rotate Layer XY tool.

Layer 1 depth setting

Now select Layer 2, and set its Z value to -1. Youve just
positioned the front and back faces of the cube.

Rotate Layer XY

The tool area will reflect the rotation of the layer around
the Y axis. Set this value to 90:
Drawing

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Layer 3 rotated

Layer 5 Depth Setting

Next up is Layer 4 - adjust it similarly to Layer 3. With the

Transform Layer tool, set X to -1 and Y and Z to 0, and use
the Rotate Layer XY tool to set the layer Y rotation to 90.
Layer 5 Rotate Layer XY Setting

Layer 4 Depth Setting

Finally, the last layer, Layer 6 - adjust it similarly to Layer 5.

Use the Transform Layer tool to set X and Z to 0, and Y to -1.
Then choose the Rotate Layer XY tool and set X Rotation
to 90.

Layer 4 Rotation Setting

Layer 6 Depth Setting

Layer 5 is next - use the Transform Layer tool to set its Y

position to 1 and the X and Z positions to 0. Next, choose
the Rotate Layer XY tool and set X Rotation to 90 degrees.

Drawing

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Layer 6 Rotation Setting

At this point the cube is basically finished, but its a little

too big to see in the workspace. Use the Transform Layer
tool on the Cube group layer to make the entire thing a bit
smaller.

The finished cube

Transform Layer

It should look something like this:

Drawing

Depth Sorting
The final step required to finish the cube is to turn on
depth sorting. Double-click the Cube layer to bring up the
Layer Settings dialog. In the Depth Sort tab, turn on the
checkboxes marked Sort layers by depth and Sort by true
distance and click OK. The first checkbox tells Anime Studio
to draw the back faces of the cube first, then the front
ones. The second checkbox is a different way of sorting the
layers that is mostly used for 3D constructions like this cube.

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Try using the Orbit Workspace tool to view the cube from
different angles. It should appear as a true 3D object.

The finished cube, with depth sorting

Tutorial 2.10: 3D Shape Design

Orbit Workspace Tool

You could now use the cube in a scene - using the

Transform Layer and Rotate Layer XY tools to position it
at an interesting angle, or to move it around during the
animation.

Drawing

Anime Studios 3D Shape Design feature allows you to

convert a 2D vector layer into a 3D object. To demonstrate
this, begin with a new project.
Use the Add Point Tool or the Draw Shape tool to create
one or more vector shapes in the layer. Your objects can
also include holes. All of the shapes that you create in the
layer will be converted to 3D. Therefore, if you want some
of the objects in your scene to remain two-dimensional, or

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if you want them to have different 3D properties, you will

need to put them in separate layers.

Options for 3D conversion

Start with two 2D shapes in the same layer.

After you create your 2D artwork, open the Layer Settings

dialog for that layer. Choose the 3D Options tab. You will
find some options that allow you choose a 3D Conversion
type. The choices are Extrude, Lathe, and Inflate, which are
detailed in the following sections.

Drawing

There are several settings that are common to each of the

3D conversion types. These options are similar to regular
3D layers, and they affect how the edges and shading
appear in the 3D objects.

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Edges: Controls which edges should be shown, and

whether you want to show them on Silhouettes,
Materials, or Creases. By default, edges are shown for
all three. Uncheck the edges that you do not want
to display. When displaying creases, you can adjust
the Threshold setting to control the number of creases
that are displayed. The Edge Extension setting controls
how far beyond the edge of the object that edges will
be drawn. Increase the Extension setting to make the
objects it look like they have been sketched.

Edges options

Options for Extrude conversion

Drawing

Shading: Choose between None (which gives the

object a flat appearance), Smooth (which gives a

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smooth, more three-dimensional shaded look), Toon

(which has stepped shading), or Hatched (which
shades with a sketched line effect).

Shading Color: To change the shading color of your 3D

object, select Hatched from the Shading drop down
menu, double click on the existing shading color and
choose a different color from the color picker.

Shading Density: To change the shading density of

your 3D object, select Hatched from the Shading drop
down menu, the input field for the shading density will
be editable, enter a number from 0 to 100. Zero will be
less dense whereas 100 will be more dense.

Extrude Conversions
When you choose the Extrude conversion, the 2D object
is given a dimension of thickness: You can observe the
thickness by using the Transform Layer tool in the Layer
section of the tool box. You can increase or decrease the
thickness of the 3D shape by adjusting the Thickness setting
in the Style window.

Drawing

Extrude 3D Conversion

When paths are displayed, you can still edit the path to
change the shape of the 3D object, and change its color.
You can also add bones to the 3D layer as well.

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You can still edit the path to modify the 3D shape.

Lathe Conversions
The Lathe conversion allows you to create a threedimensional path by drawing a two-dimensional profile
shape that is then projected in a 360 degree circular
fashion. The rotation occurs around the origin point of the
shape (represented by the crosshairs in the workspace
area).
The following conditions apply when using lathe
conversions:

Drawing

If the vector shape only has a stroke, the stroke color

will be used for the lathe object, and the outline will be
black.

If the vector shape has a fill color, the fill color will be
used for the lathe object. The stroke color will be used
for the outline of the lathe object. An example is shown
in the following figure.

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Inflate Conversions
Inflate is similar to Extrude, except that the edges are
rounded, like a pillow. It also involves more computations
than the Extrude option, so you will tend to see better
results after you render it than you will during the preview.

Two inflated shapes on the same layer.

Original filled shape (top); resulting lathed object (bottom)

Drawing

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Bones
Tutorial 3.1: Bone Binding
The purpose of bones in Anime Studio is to provide highlevel objects that are easy to manipulate in place of
moving around lots of individual points. In order for bones
to do their job, vector control points and other objects
must first be bound to the bones. There are three ways to
bind objects to bones: automatic binding, manual binding,
and layer binding. This tutorial will show you the difference
between the three.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file that contains
some artwork to get started with. Its named Tutorial 3.1
and its located in the Tutorials > 3 - Bones subfolder within
your custom content folder. Open this file in Anime Studio,
and you should see something like this:

Bones

Starting point for this tutorial

Automatic Binding
The most common method of binding objects to bones is
also the easiest - automatic bone binding. Whenever you
draw new artwork in Anime Studio (or import image files as
image layers), those objects are set up for automatic bone
binding. All you need to do is add the bones.

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1. In the Layers window, click the New Layer button, and

select Bone from the popup menu.

Arm layer placed inside a bone layer

Make sure the bone layer is selected, then activate the

Add Bone tool.

Create a new Bone layer

2. Double-click the new bone layer to bring up the Layer

Settings dialog. Name the new layer Arm Bones and
click OK. Finally, drag the Arm vector layer upward to
move it into the bone layer:

Bones

Add Bone Tool

In the main editing view, create two bones: the first one
starting at the shoulder and ending at the elbow, and the
second starting where the first left off and ending in the
hand. And thats all it takes for automatic bone binding.

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Create two new bones

Use the Manipulate Bones tool to try moving the bones

around. The arm will move with the bones automatically,
since it was, well, automatically bound to them.
Test moving the bones

This arm setup works pretty well as it is, but lets try to refine
it a bit. Double-click the bone layer to bring up the Layer
Settings dialog. Go to the Bones tab, set the binding mode
to Region binding, and click OK:
Manipulate Bones Tool

Bones

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Bone Strength Tool

Turn on region binding

Flexible binding (the default for new bone layers) uses a

method of bone binding where every bone has some
influence over every point in a vector layer. The farther
away a point is from a bone, the less influence that bone
has over the point. However, you can still experience some
rubbery movement where a moving arm can cause a toe
to twitch a little bit.
With region binding, on the other hand, every bone has
a cutoff radius, outside of which it will not affect the
movement of vector points. This can be used for cleaner
movement, but requires a little extra setup. Now that region
binding is in effect, activate the Bone Strength tool.

Bones

Around each bone you will see its region of influence.

Vector points are controlled by the bone(s) whose regions
overlap them. If a vector point is not within any region of
influence, it will move with the closest bone. Using the Bone
Strength tool, click and drag on each of the bones to resize
its region of influence. The idea is to make the regions just
large enough to contain the body part that the bone is
meant to control:

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Manual Binding
Manually binding points to bones is a process that exists
mostly for compatibility with older versions of Anime
Studio. Automatic binding, combined with bone regions
of influence is the easiest way to work with bones in Anime
Studio. However, there may be some times where you
want more control over exactly which bones control which
points.
To manually bind the arm points to bones:
Resized regions of influence

1. Select the Arm vector layer.

Dont worry about the parts of the forearm that are outside
the forearm bones region of influence - they will just move
with the closest bone, which is in fact the forearm.
Use the Manipulate Bones tool again to try moving the arm.
The movement should be a little cleaner than it was with
flexible binding.

Arm Vector Layer

2. Use the Select Bone tool to select the upper arm bone:

Manipulate Bones Tool

Bones

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4. Drag a rectangle around all the points in the arm

to select them, and press the spacebar to bind the
selected points to the selected bone:

Select Bone Tool

Bind all points to the upper arm

5. With the Bind Points tool still active, hold down the Alt
key and click on the lower arm bone to select it. Notice
the following:
Select the upper arm

When you select the lower arm bone, notice that

no points are selected.

When you select a bone with the Bind Points tool,

the points that are bound to that bone are also
selected. Because there are currently no points
bound to the lower arm bone, no points are
selected.

3. Activate the Bind Points tool.

Bind Points Tool

Bones

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6. Drag a selection rectangle around the points in the

lower part of the arm, as shown below. Press the
spacebar to bind the selected points to the selected
bone:

Select the lower arm bones

Youre done - you have manually bound points to both

bones in the arm. Now test it out with the Manipulate Bones
tool.

Although this method does work for binding points to

bones, we dont really recommend it unless you have a
special need to bind specific points to specific bones. You
may have noticed that the arm doesnt move so smoothly
with manual point binding. This is because the points
around the elbow only move with one bone or the other,
and so stretch apart and get distorted. With automatic
binding, on the other hand, the points around the elbow
move under the influence of both bones, and so move
more smoothly.
Manual point binding can also be very labor-intensive,
especially when your artwork has lots of control points.
Finally, automatic bone binding can be used to warp
image layers, while manual binding cant - another reason
to stick with automatic bone binding (using either flexible or
region binding mode).

Layer Binding
The last way to bind an object to a bone is to bind an
entire layer to a single arm.
Make sure the Arm vector layer is still selected and activate
the Bind Layer tool.

Manipulate Bones Tool

Bones

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8. Select the Arm Bone layer and use the Manipulate

Bones tool to try moving the bones around. Notice that
the entire arm moves rigidly with the lower arm bone the entire layer is bound to that one bone.
Bind Layer Tool

7. Click on the lower arm bone to bind the entire Arm

layer to the lower arm bone.
Manipulate Bones Tool

This isnt very useful for this particular arm, but binding
a layer to a bone is useful when you want to attach
an object to a character. For example, a switch group
containing multiple mouth shapes can be attached to a
bone in the head. Or, if you want to make a character
hold an object in its hand, you might bind that object to
the characters hand bone.

Go Back to Automatic Mode

Lets undo all of this extra binding and go back to
automatic mode.
Bind the Arm layer to the lower arm bone
Bones

1. Reselect the Arm layer in the Layers window.

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2. With the Bind Layer tool, click on some empty space in

the editing view - this tells Anime Studio to not bind the
layer to any bone.

6. Reselect the Arm Bone layer, and use the Manipulate

Bones tool if you wish to confirm that the points are
automatically bound again.

Bind Layer Tool

3. Select the Edit > Select All menu command to select all
the vector points.
4. Choose the Bone > Flexi-Bind Points menu command
to flexibly bind the points, as they were at the very
beginning.
The arm under bone control.

5.

Chose Bone > Flexi-Bind Points to flexibly bind points as

originally set in the beginning.

Bones

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Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 3.2 and its located in the
Tutorials > 3 - Bones subfolder within your custom content
folder. Open this file in Anime Studio, and you should see
something like this:

Tutorial 3.1 Result. (Click to play movie)

Tutorial 3.2: Bone Constraints

This tutorial demonstrates Anime Studios bone constraint
features. Bone constraints allow you to define limits on the
way bones can move, simplifying your animation work.
When used carefully, bone constraints can let the bone
structures do some of the work for you.

Bones

Starting point for this tutorial

This file contains two skeleton layers that have no

constraints set up. Were going to add constraints to these
skeletons to show how useful they can be.

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Angle Constraints
The first type of bone constraint is angle limits. By limiting the
angle that a bone can rotate, you can prevent arms and
legs from bending backwards.
Make sure the Arm layer is selected.

Select the Arm bone

7. Use the Select Bone tool to select the bone in the Arm
as shown below:

Select the lower arm bone.

8. When the Select Bone tool is active and a bone is

selected, the Bone Constraints popup box will be
available in the tool options area of the main Anime
Studio window. Click the Bone Constraints popup to
open it.

Select Bone Tool

Bones

9. Adjust the settings as shown below. Specifically, turn on

the Angle constraints checkbox, and set the min/max
angle fields to -10 and 100.

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Name this bone Forearm

12. Once youve set up angle constraints, you can see

them in the working area as two lines around the bone
that indicate the minimum and maximum angles
the bone is allowed to rotate between. Try using the
Manipulate Bones tool and move the forearm - notice
how Anime Studio doesnt allow you to move the bone
beyond the minimum and maximum angles you set up.

Set angle constraints

10. Click the Close button to close the constraints popup

box.
11. Set the bones name to Forearm in the toolbar options.

Bones

Manipulate Bones Tool

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Control Bones
The next type of bone constraint allows one bone to
control the motion of another. This is a way to set up simple
automatic animation.
Use the Select Bone tool to elect the small bone above the
upper arm:

Visual display of angle constraints

Heres a handy little trick. Often, it can be
hard to judge the correct numerical angles
for bone constraints. Theres an easy way to adjust
them if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel. Hold
the mouse over the angle constraint you wish to
change (in the Bone Constraints popup), and roll the
mouse wheel up and down. The angle will change,
and the display in the editing view will update to
match. With this method, you can watch the display
in the editing view and not worry so much about the
actual numerical value.
Bones

Upper forearm bone selected.

13. Bring up the Bone Constraints popup again, and select

Forearm from the Angle control bone popup menu
(this is why we named it earlier), and enter the value
0.5 in the angle control field as shown below:

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Lower forearm bone selected.

Angle control setup

14. Well do something similar for the small bone below the
upper arm. Select that bone, and set Forearm as the
angle control bone, but this time set the angle control
value to -0.5.
Bones

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Manipulate Bones Tool

15. Finally, use the Manipulate Bones tool again to move

the forearm. Notice that now the muscles in the upper
arm move automatically - this is what the Angle Control
Bone does - it tells other bones to move automatically
when it moves.

Bones

Upper Arm bones move automatically

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Bone Locking
The third category of bone constraint is bone locking.
When you lock a bone, youre telling Anime Studio that
you dont want it to move. Anime Studio will try to keep
the bone still by moving its parents as necessary to keep
the bone in place. This isnt always possible (depending
on what else is happening in the animation), but it is still an
extremely useful feature.
Bone locking is often used to keep a characters feet from
moving around on the ground. To do this, Anime Studio
needs to move the characters legs automatically. Thus,
it helps to use angle constraints to keep the knees from
bending backwards.
Anime Studio Pro 10 offers some new target
bone features that help keep a characters
feet in place while moving bones above it. For more
information about using target bones, see Tutorial
3.6: New Bone Features on page 147.

1. Select the Frank w/Skeleton layer in the Layers window.

Bones

Select the Frank w/Skeleton layer.

2. Use the Select Bone tool to select Franks left shin bone
as shown:

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Angle constraints for left shin

4. Now select the right shin, and set its angle constraints
to -120 and 10.

Select the left shin

3. Now set up angle constraints for this bone. The

minimum angle should be -10, and the maximum
should be 120:
Bones

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Transform Bone Tool

6. Choose the Select Bone tool again. Go back to frame

0 and select the left foot bone:

Angle constraints for right shin

5. Now that the legs are prepared, set the time to frame
24. Use the Transform Bone tool to drag Franks spine
bone around a small distance. Notice that his feet
move around and dont stay in place.

Bones

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7. In the tool options area, turn on the Lock bone

checkbox for this bone. Next, select the right foot bone
and turn on Lock bone for it as well.

Lock both foot bones

8. Now that the feet are locked, go back to frame 24,

and use the Transform Bone tool again to drag Franks
spine around.

Transform Bone Tool

Select the left foot

Bones

9. Notice that now Anime Studio tries to keep Franks feet

locked to the ground. If you lift Frank too high, his legs
will completely straighten out and his feet will lift from
the ground - theres really no helping that, the same
thing would happen to you if you were lifted off the

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ground. You can try rotating the spine bone too and
see how the skeleton reacts.

Bone locking is an animated parameter. You

can turn on and off bone locking as many
times as you want during an animation. This is
especially useful when making a character walk lock a bone as soon as a foot hits the ground, and
unlock it just before the foot is to leave the ground
for its next step.

Tutorial 3.3: Bone Dynamics

Anime Studios bone dynamics system can be used to
automatically move bones around in response to higherlevel movement. Anime Studio uses a physical simulation
of springs to calculate dynamic bone movement, making
it suitable for a wide range of movements, such as flabby
body parts, bouncy hair, waving arms, etc.

Locked feet

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 3.3 and its located in the
Tutorials > 3 - Bones subfolder within your custom content
folder.
1. Open the Tutorial 3.3 file in Anime Studio. You should
see something like this:

Bones

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3. Use the Select Bone tool to select the top-left bone in

the structure as shown below:

Select Bone Tool

Starting point for this tutorial

2. Play back the animation to see what were starting

with. The entire structure will tilt side to side and bounce
up and down, remaining rigid the whole time. Only the
vertical bone in the center of the skeleton is animated
- all the others move with it because they are its
descendants. Rewind the animation to frame 0 when
youve seen enough.

Bones

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Select this bone

4. In the tool options area at the top of the main Anime

Studio window, click the Bone constraints popup box to
open it. In the popup box, turn on the Bone dynamics
check box. This tells Anime Studio to move the selected
bone automatically according to the spring simulation.

Bones

Turn on bone dynamics

5. Select seven more bones (two in each of the arms),

and turn on bone dynamics for each one.

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Heres a tip: you can leave the Bone
constraints popup box open the whole time,
just click on each bone in turn, then turn on bone
dynamics for each one. If the Bone constraints
popup box covers up some of the bones, you can
pan the editing view by dragging with the right
mouse button to expose the hidden bones. At this
point, you should have turned on bone dynamics for
every bone in the structure except the vertical
center bone.

All eight leg bones set

Play back the animation to see the difference. Now as the

structure tilts side to side, the arms will bounce around in
response to the movement of the center bone.

Bones

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Adjusting Spring Parameters

So that shows the basics of how to use bone dynamics.
Now lets take a look at how you can make adjustments to
the bounciness of the springs.
Select the top-left bone again, and re-open the Bone
constraints popup box.
1. Below the Bone dynamics checkbox are three
parameters that allow you to fine-tune the effect. Set
as follows:

Torque force to 4,

Spring force to 2

Damping force to 2

Adjusting dynamics parameters for both bones in the top left

arm

2. Select the bones immediate parent (the second bone

in the top-left arm), and apply the same dynamics
parameters.
Bones

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A higher Torque force means that a bone
moves more in response to its parents
movement, Spring force determines how quickly it
bounces back, and Damping force controls how
quickly a dynamic bone stops moving (you can
think of damping like friction). In this case, a high
torque force means that the bone will move more
strongly.

3. Next, select the two bones of the top-right arm (one at

a time), and set the bone dynamics parameters to 2,
2, 5 (Torque, Spring, Damping). These settings will cause
these bones to slow down their dynamic movement
quickly - a high damping value is like making the bone
move through a thick fluid.

Set a high damping force on these bones

4. Finally, select the two bones of the bottom-left

arm (one at a time), and set the bone dynamics
parameters to 2, 4, 1 (Torque, Spring, Damping). The
high spring force will cause this arm to bounce back
very quickly.

Bones

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the four arms. The top-left arm swings in a wide arc

because it has a strong response to the parent bones
movement. The top-right arms movement is subdued
because the damping force causes it to slow down
more quickly. The bottom-left arm is very springy, and
the bottom-right arm moves in accordance with the
default bone dynamics settings.

Set a high spring force on these bones

5. Try playing back the animation again. As you watch

the final animation, note the differences between
Bones

Tutorial 3.3 Result. (Click to play movie)

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Tutorial 3.4: Character Setup

In this tutorial, you will learn how to set up the bone
system for a complex character. This will involve splitting a
character apart, creating bones, adjusting bone strength,
and putting the character back together.

Start With a Sample File and Split Apart

the Character
For this tutorial, well start with a project file that already
has the artwork for the character drawn - youll just set up
the bones. Its named Tutorial 3.4 and its located in the
Tutorials > 3 - Bones subfolder within your custom content
folder.
To begin:
1. Open the Tutorials > 3 - Bones > Tutorial 3.4 file in
Anime Studio. There are six vector layers in this project,
containing the body parts for this character. Although
all the artwork could be drawn in one vector layer, it
is often easier to draw a character in multiple layers,
arranging the body parts from back to front, as shown
below:

Bones

Starting point for this tutorial

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Starting point for this tutorial

2. In order to make bone setup easier, the first thing to do

is split apart the character. Choose the Edit > Select All
menu command. All the points in the right arm (your
right, his left) should be selected.
3. Activate the Transform Points tool and drag the mouse
to move the arm off to the side and up a bit:

Bones

Transform Points

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The reason we split apart the character is so
that we can add bones to each part, while
keeping the bones independent of each other.
Later in the tutorial well put the character back
together again.

Arm moved off to the side

4. Select the Head layer, and select all of its points with
the Edit > Select All command. Move all of its points
upward.
5. Repeat the process for the R Leg, L Leg, and L Arm
layers of the character (skip the Torso layer). Select all
points on each of those layers, and move the body
parts away from the center, as shown below:
Bones

Body parts split apart

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Add Bones
The next step is to add bones.
Add a new Bone layer to the project. Name the new Bone
layer Skeleton. Move the new Bone layer to the top of the
list if necessary.

Move all of the body part layers into the Skeleton bone layer.

2. Double-click the Skeleton bone layer to open the Layer

Settings palette. Switch to the Bones tab, and choose
the Region Binding mode,
Create a new Skeleton bone layer and move it to the top.

3. Using the Add Bone tool, add two bones going up

through the torso, starting with the bottom one:

1. Move all the vector layers into the new Skeleton layer,
keeping the same order they are in now:

Add Bone Tool

Bones

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Two new bones

Arm bones added

4. Next, add two bones to one of the arms, starting at the

shoulder and going down.

6. Use the Select Bone tool to select the lower torso bone.
Then, select the Add Bone tool and add three bones to
one leg, starting at the hip and moving down through
the foot. Repeat the process for the other leg, making
sure to reselect the lower torso bone first. The upper leg
bones should be parented to the lower torso bone.

5. Before you add bones to the second arm, use the

Select Bone tool to reselect the upper torso bone. Then
switch back to the Add Bone tool to add two bones
to the other arm. This parents the second arm to the
upper torso bone instead of continuing from the first
arm.
Bones

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Leg bones added

7. Use the Select Bone tool to select the upper torso

bone, and then use the Add Bone tool to add one
bone to the head.

Bones

Head bone added

8. The next figure shows the parenting of all the bones.

The parenting arrows point from child bone to parent
bone, and can be seen by activating the Reparent
Bone tool:

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Reparent Bone Tool

Manipulate Bones Tool

Adjust Bone Influence

At this point, feel free to try using the Manipulate Bones tool
to see how the bone system works so far. The body parts
should mostly move how you would expect, but not totally
cleanly - the next step is to clean up the bones influence.
1. Double-click the Skeleton layer in the Layers window to
bring up the Layer Settings dialog.
2. Go to the Bones tab and set the binding mode to
Region binding:

All the bones added

Bones

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the Bone Strength tool to display the bones regions of

influence:

Turn on region binding

When region binding is used, bones only
move the points that lie in their region of
influence. If a point is overlapped by multiple regions
of influence, it will be affected by all the
corresponding bones. If a point is in no bones region
of influence, it will move with the nearest bone.
This is different from flexi-binding, where all bones
affect all points. Flexi-binding can be quicker to set
up, but leads to more rubbery motion, since moving
a hand will always cause a little bit of movement in
a foot. Region binding makes separate body parts
truly separate.

3. For region binding to work, you need to adjust the

region of influence for each bone. To do this, activate
Bones

Bone Strength Tool

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characters head, the region of influence isnt very

important - since theres just one bone, the points
outside the region of influence will still move with that
bone. Heres how you should adjust the regions of
influence (dont worry about matching this exactly, just
try to get kind of close):Adjusted regions of influence.

Initial regions of influence

4. Using the Bone Strength tool, click and drag on each

bone in turn to adjust its region of influence. The correct
adjustment for a region of influence it generally to
surround the points along that section of bone. The
most important regions are at the joints - the knees
and elbows and such. Those are the areas where the
regions of two bones overlap, and points will bend
under the control of both bones. For parts like this
Bones

Adjusted regions of influence

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5. Try using the Manipulate Bones tool again to test the

bone setup. The character should move much more
cleanly now - when moving an arm, for example, only
that arm should move, and you should see no extra
movement in other body parts.

6. Click and drag on the top bone of each body part to

move that part back into position. When each part is
moved back into place, the character should look as
shown in the following figure:

Move each arm by the upper arm bone

Move each leg by the thigh bone

Move the head by its single bone.

Manipulate Bones Tool

Put the Character Back Together

The final step is to reassemble the character.
Activate the Offset Bone tool.

Offset Bone Tool

Bones

Re-assembled character

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Frame 0 is considered the setup frame for
bones. When the time is set to frame 0, the
character will still appear split apart (unless youre
using the Offset Bone or Manipulate Bones tools).
However, at other frames in the animation, the
character will be re-assembled according to how
you used the Offset Bone tool.

7. Try moving the character around again with the

Manipulate Bones tool. The body parts will still move
independently, even though they now overlap.
Because the bones were set up on a split-apart
character, that character could be re-assembled while
still keeping the body parts independent.

Final character

Manipulate Bones Tool

Bones

If youre interested in taking a look at the final

Anime Studio file, its named Tutorial 3.4 Final
and its located in the Tutorials > 3 - Bones subfolder
within your custom content folder.

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Tutorial 3.5: Flexi-Binding

Flexi-Binding
Anime Studio 9.5 introduced a new binding
mode for bones, which is selected by default.
If you have changed the binding mode for any
reason, you can double-click the Bone group in the
Layers palette, and switch back to Flexible binding in
the Binding Mode section of the tab. Bones Tab on
page 214 in your Anime Studio Users Manual.

For any layer that is a child of a bone group, you can

select a subset of the bones in the bone group and then
choose Bone > Use Selected Bones for Flexi-Binding. This
allows you to isolate the influence of a set of bones from
the rest of the skeleton (such as a Right Arm bone affecting
only the right arm). This reduces the need for you to
separate artwork on Frame 0 and then put it back together
again with the Offset Bone tool.
To illustrate how this works, assume you have drawn a
character in 2D format. The various body parts appear in
separate layers in a layered Photoshop file that you have
imported into Anime Studio.

Bones

Next, you create a bone layer and drag the layers for the
character into the Bone layer. Then you use the bone tools
to create a skeleton for the character so that you can
animate it. An example for the character and skeleton are
shown in the following figure.

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If you try to animate this layered character using standard

flexi-binding, you find that the drawing distorts and
stretches all the artwork. In previous versions of Anime
Studio, you could break apart the bones and spread
the artwork and bones apart, and then use the Offset
Bone tool to put the parts together again, as described in
Tutorial 3.4: Character Setup on page 133. However,
sometimes it can be difficult to set up your character this
way and it may not end up looking the way you want it to
look.

A layered character and its bones.

The character distorts when the bones are manipulated.
Bones

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To set up the project so that the arm artwork is only

affected by the arm bones:

do the same for the Torso, Left Arm, Right Leg, and Left
Leg.

1. Select the Arm layer in the Layers palette.

2. Use the Select Bone tool to select the bones you want
to control the arm.
3. Choose Bone > Use Selected Bones for Flexi-Binding.

Assigning selected bones for Flexi-Binding.

4. Repeat the above steps for each of the layers in your

character. In other words, in this example we choose
the Head layer and flexi-bind selected bones to it, then

Bones

Assigning selected bones for Flexi-Binding.

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Tutorial 3.6: New Bone Features

This tutorial gives an overview of some of the new bone
features that you will find in Anime Studio Pro 10. You will
find a file named Mr. Bean Start in the
For this tutorial, well start with a project file that already
has the artwork for the character drawn and the skeleton
is already set up. Youll just focus on setting up these new
features. The project is located in the Tutorials > 3 - Bones
subfolder in your custom content folder, and its named
Tutorial 3.6.
Mr. Beans skeleton is contained in a bone layer named Mr.
Bean.psd. If you expand this layer youll see the artwork for
each of the body parts beneath it.
The bones in the skeleton are labeled with generic bone
labels. The table below shows which body parts each
bone belongs to. You can optionally rename the bones,
but renaming them will not be necessary for this tutorial. In
addition, the table will show the new features that you will
apply to the bone, where applicable.

Label

Body Part

Feature

B1

Hip

Smooth Joint

B2

Head

B3

RUpperArm

Bones

Smooth Joint

B4

RLowerArm

Smooth Joint

B5

RUpperLeg

Automatic Scaling,
Squash and Stretch

B6

RLowerLeg

Target Bones,
Automatic Scaling,
Squash and Stretch

B7

RFoot

Independent Angles

B8

LUpperLeg

Automatic Scaling,
Squash and Stretch

B9

LLowerLeg

Target Bones,
Automatic Scaling,
Squash and Stretch

B10

LFoot

Independent Angles

B11

LUpperArm

Smooth Joint

B12

LLowerArm

Smooth Joint

B13

Upper Torso

Smooth Joint

RFootTarget

--

Target Bones

LFootTarget

--

Target Bones

Target Bones
In our first example, youll notice that two additional bones
are created behind the characters feet. These bones are
named RFootTarget and LFootTarget, and they serve as
target bones. These bones are not parented to anything.
The purpose for these two target bones is to serve as a

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target point for each leg to point toward as the character

moves.

Two non-parented bones for the right and left leg targets.

If you press the Play button, youll notice that the target
bones are already animated for a walk cycle. All you need
to do is set up the legs so that they point to the targets
while your character walks from left to right.

Bones

The target bones are pre-animated for a walk cycle.

To attach the legs to the targets, follow these steps:

1. Select the bone layer (MrBean.psd) from the Layer
palette, and then choose the Select Bone tool from
the Bones tools. You dont have to return to Frame 0
to assign a bone target, this can be performed on any
frame.

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Select Bone Tool

2. Select bone B6 (the right shin bone) and click the Bone
Constraints button in the options toolbar to open the
Bone Constraints window.
3. From the Target dropdown menu, choose R Foot Target
as the target for the right shin bone. Youll notice that
the leg will snap in place to point to the selected
target. Leave the Bone Constraints dialog open for the
next step.

Assign the R Foot Target bone to the right shin (B6).

4. Now select bone B9 (the left shin bone) and repeat

the process, this time choosing L Foot Target from the
Target menu. The left leg will snap into place to follow
its target.
5. Youll return to the Bone Constraints dialog it later in the
next section, but for now, click Close so that you can
preview the results.
6. Press the Play button, and now youll see that the
characters legs animate to follow the target bones.

Bones

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Even if you move the body far away by translating the hip
bone (B1), the legs and feet follow. The shins will still point to
the targets even when the character is above the ground.
The targets will remain on the ground.

It is a good solution if you want a foot to remain parallel

to the ground as a character bends his thighs or shins. You
simply apply the Independent Angle setting to each foot.

The Manipulate Bones tool has been enhanced to work

with target bones. Normally, the Manipulate Bones tool
works with a chain of bones. When you transform one of
the bones, the other bones in the chain follow it.
If the chain has a target in it, the Manipulate Bones tool
can also move a target, making it easier to create walk
cycles. It can also be used to have characters hold on to
objects. If you click and drag the target it will move the
target.

Independent Angles
Youll notice when you preview the results of the targets
that the legs now follow those animated targets quite
nicely! However, pay attention to the feet. Normally, if
you move or rotate a parent bone, the child bone moves
or rotates with it. And what you see in your animation is
that sometimes the feet poke through the floor, while at
other times the stiffness of the foot makes the walk look
unnatural.
The Independent Angle constraint causes a bone to
maintain its original angle as its parent bones are moved.
Bones

The legs follow the targets, but the feet are angled unnaturally
for a walk.

To set up independent angles on Mr. Bean, proceed as

follows:

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1. Select bone B7 (the right foot bone) and click the Bone
Constraints button in the options toolbar to open the
Bone Constraints window.

other words, the same angle that the foot is in on

frame zero).
3. Now, select bone B10 (the left foot) and check the
Independent angle option for that foot as well.
4. Preview the results again to see how it looks.

After applying independent angles the feet are parallel to the

floor.

Check the Independent Angle option for both feet.

2. Check the Independent angle option. You should

notice the foot will now return to its default angle (in
Bones

Bones that have the independent angle

setting are not locked at that angle, they only
rotate independently of their parents. You can still
manually rotate bones that have independent
angles.

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Squash and Stretch Scaling and IK

Stretching
Normally, when you scale a bone, it scales in one direction.
For example, if you increase the length of a forearm, the
height or width of the arm is not affected.
With Squash and Stretch scaling, Anime Studio tries to
maintain some volume to the part that is affected by the
bone. If a bone is stretched (lengthened), the width or
height is decreased (squashed). Conversely, if a bone is
shortened (squashed), the width or height of the affected
object is increased (stretched).

Maximum IK Stretching has to do with bones that are

locked or attached to targets. When a bone chain tries to
reach for a target, if the target is too far away, the bones
just point to it in a straight line. But if Maximum IK stretching
has a value greater than 1, the bones can stretch that
extra amount to reach the target. So a value of 1.5 means
the bones can stretch 1.5 times their original length in order
to reach the target. The user can always scale bones
manually, but this stretching is automatic.
You can use these features quite effectively to create
cartoony limbs. In the case of Mr. Bean, well apply both of
these features to his legs. This way, if you raise him off the
ground, his legs will stretch to a certain point (#2 below),
and then when that point is exceeded the feet will raise off
the floor (#3 below).

Squash and Stretch scaling applied to an arm.

Squash and Stretch scaling applied to leg bones.
Bones

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To add Squash and Stretch scaling to Mr. Beans legs,

follow these steps:
1. Select bone B5 (the right upper leg) and click the Bone
Constraints button in the options toolbar to open the
Bone Constraints window.
2. Check the Squash and Stretch scaling option. Leave
the value in the text field set to 1. This will cause a
bone to squash in the opposite direction by the same
amount that an object is stretched.
3. Enter a value of 1.5 in the Maximum IK Stretching field.
This will allow his legs to stretch to one and a half times
their size before moving away from the targets.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 for the other bones in his legs: B6 (right
lower leg), B8 (left upper leg), and B9 (left lower leg).
Then click Close to exit the Bone Constraints dialog.

Squash and Stretch scaling and Maximum IK Stretching settings

for the upper and lower leg bones.

Smooth Joints
The Bones > Create Smooth Joint for Bone Pair command
allows you to select a pair of bones, and then creates
a smooth bend between the two joints. While originally
intended to improve bending on elbow and knee joints,
Bones

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you can also use it in other areas as well. We will use this on
Mr. Beans arms, legs, and torso.
To add smooth bending to those areas on Mr. Bean, follow
these steps:
1. With the Select Bone tool, click to select bone B5 (right
upper leg), then Shift-click to select bone B6 (right
lower leg). This is your first bone pair.
2. In the Layers palette, select the R Leg layer. This is the
part that will be linked to the two selected bones for
smooth bending.
3. Choose Bone > Create Smooth Joint for Bone Pair. This
completes the first smooth joint. You have four more
to go.
The first bone pair is connected to the RLeg layer.

4. For the remaining four smooth joints, repeat steps 1-3

as described previously, using the following bone pairs
and layers:

Bones

Select bones B8 (left upper leg) and B9 (left lower

leg) and connect them to the L Leg layer.

Select bones B3 (right upper arm) and B4 (right

lower arm) and connect them to the R Arm layer.

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Select bones B11 (left upper arm) and B12 (left

lower arm) and connect them to the L Arm layer.

Select bones B1 (hip) and B13 (upper torso) and

connect them to the Body layer.

5. With all the bone pairs connected to their layers, your

setup is complete. Play the project and watch how the
character responds to all the new settings. Feel free to
experiment further with the animation that you have
completed to learn more about how you can apply
these new features to other characters.

. (Click to play movie)

Bones

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Images
Tutorial 4.1: Image Layers
This tutorial introduces another type of layer in Anime
Studio: Image Layers. Image layers are a way of including
artwork created in other programs in a Anime Studio
project. Any application that can produce image files can
be used with Anime Studio: photo editors, 3D modeling
programs, natural media painting programs, the list goes
on...
An image layer in Anime Studio contains a single image
file that can be used as a background, or combined with
a bone layer to build a character. Although theyre called
Image layers, an Image layer can also make use of a
movie file as its source. Image layers and vector layers can
be mixed and matched in the same project.

Alpha Channels
Youll notice that the images used in this tutorial do not
appear rectangular. This is because they make use of
an alpha channel to mark some parts of the image as
transparent. We recommend using PNG images with
Images

Anime Studio because they support full alpha channel

transparency. Youll need to use an image editing
program (like Adobe Photoshop) to create images with
transparency.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 4.1 and its located in the
Tutorials > 4 - Images subfolder within your custom content
folder.
Open the Tutorials > 4 - Images > Tutorial 4.1 file in Anime
Studio. This project is almost complete as it is. The only thing
thats missing is the dancers left hand.
6. Expand the Hula Girl layer in the Layers window, and
you should see something like this:

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Starting point for this tutorial

7. Click on the layer named L Arm (we want the new

layer to be just above the left arm).
8. Click the New Layer button in the Layers window to
create a new layer. In the popup menu that appears,
choose Image.

Images

Create a new Image layer

9. Anime Studio will prompt you to select an image file.

Choose the Anime Studio/Tutorials > 4 - Images >
l_hand.png image in your custom content folder.
10. In the Layers window, double-click the new layer and
rename it L Hand. At this point, your Layers window
should look like this:

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Left hand added

The new hand

11. Youll notice that new image layers are centered in the
workspace, so the dancers hand is not yet properly
aligned: To position the arm properly, use the Transform
Layer tool to drag the left hand into position at the end
of the left arm. Allow for a little overlap between the
two parts at the elbow:

Images

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12. The last step is to attach the new part to the dancers
skeleton. Select the Bind Layer tool, and click on the
lower arm bone on the dancer, as shown below:

Transform Layer
Bind Layer Tool

Left hand in position

Bind the image layer to the forearm
Images

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Youre done! To see the animation in action, press the Play

button. Of course, we skipped over the process of building
and animating the skeleton, but the basics of working with
skeletons were covered in previous tutorials - all of that
information applies when using bones with image layers.

an image. In this way, you can animate photographs,

hand-drawn artwork, or anything you can get into an
image file in a flexible way.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 4.2 and its located in the
Tutorials > 4 - Images subfolder within your custom content
folder.
Open the Tutorials > 4 - Images > Tutorial 4.2 file in Anime
Studio.
1. Expand the Skeleton layer in the Layers window, and
you should see something like the following figure. The
Skeleton bone layer contains two sub-layers: an image
layer (statue.png) and a vector layer (vector sample).

Tutorial 4.1 Result. (Click to play movie)

Tutorial 4.2: Image Warping

This tutorial demonstrates Anime Studios image warping
feature. This feature allows you to use a skeleton to distort
Images

Starting point for this tutorial

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2. Click the Play button in the timeline to play back the

animation. Notice that only the vector layer moves
with the skeleton. The reason that the image layer isnt
moving is that it hasnt been connected to the bones
yet (as the vector layer has been).

Only the vector layer moves

Images

Using Image Warping

To warp the image layer with the skeleton, continue with
the project as follows:
1. Double-click the statue.png layer, and go to the Image
tab in the Layer Settings dialog. Turn on the checkbox
marked Warp using bones and click OK.

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Hide the vector sample layer

3. Play back the animation again, and you should now

see the image moving with the skeleton:

Turn on the Warp using bones option

2. In the Layers window, turn off the visibility for the vector
sample layer (it is only an example, and we dont want
it in the final animation).

Images

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Notice the horizontal bone at the base of the
statue. This bone doesnt move at all in the
animation, so why is it even there? When using
image warping, the image is distorted by all the
bones in the skeleton, and the nearest bone to any
part of the image has the most influence. We dont
really want the base of the statue to move, so an
easy way to prevent this is to add a bone in the area
we want to remain still, and not animate it. Another
trick you might use when warping images is to break
up an image into logical parts (for example, make
the arms and legs of a person separate images from
the main body). Then, use different skeletons to
control the various re-assembled parts. This way, a
leg bone cant have any influence over an arm.

Image warping

Tutorial 4.3: Image Textures

In this tutorial you will learn how to use images as textures to
add detail to a character.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 4.4 and its located in the
Images

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Tutorials > 4 - Images subfolder within your custom content

folder.
1. Open the Tutorials > 4 - Images > Tutorial 4.4 file in
Anime Studio, and you should see something like this:

4. Paint the Textures

What youre going to do is hand paint some texture details
to go on this character. The first step is to paint some
textures to go on this headless animals body.
1. Select the File > Preview menu command to create a
full-quality view of the animals current state.
2. In the popup menu at the bottom of the Render
window, select Copy To Clipboard.

Starting point for this tutorial

2. Play back the animation to see whats going on.

3. Be sure to rewind the animation to frame 0 before you
continue with the next section.
Images

Rendered animal

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3. Start up your favorite image editing program (we

recommend Adobe Photoshop) and create a new
document the same size as the Anime Studio project
(320x240 in this case). Paste the copied image into the
new document.

5. Paint whatever details you want. Heres an example of

something you might paint in your image editor. Dont
worry about painting outside the lines:

4. Create a new layer in your image editing program and

paint some kind of texture details onto the animals
body parts. Its very important that the texture be on
a layer of its own. If youre using Photoshop, the layer
arrangement would look something like this:

Painted on texture

Layers in Photoshop

Images

6. When your texture is finished, get rid of the background

layers so that only the texture is left with a transparent
background (youre still working in Photoshop or similar
program at this point):

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Save an image for the back legs. Name the file

back_tex.png.

Save an image for the torso. Name the file body_

tex.png.

Save an image for the front legs. Name the file

front_tex.png.

8. After you save your images, you can close the image
editor. Its time to bring the textures back into Anime
Studio.

Background removed

7. You need to save the texture as three separate files.

For each version of the texture, delete the parts of the
texture that are not attached to the corresponding
body parts. Save the images in PNG format, since PNG
properly stores the transparent background. Examples
of the three textures are shown in the figures that
follow.

Images

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Back legs texture. back_tex.png

Images

Body texture. body_tex.png

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Import Textures
To import your painted textures in Anime Studio, follow
these steps:
1. In the Layers window, highlight the Back Legs layer. The
image file that you import will be placed above this
layer.
2. Create a new Image layer and select back_tex.png as
the source image. The new image layer appears in the
layers list.
3. Select the Body layer as the current layer. Create
another image layer for body_tex.png . The new layer
should appear above the Body layer.

Front legs texture. front_tex.png

If youre having trouble creating the image
textures, we have provided some files for you
to examine. Look at the file Tutorial 4.4 Texture.psd,
located in the Tutorials > 4 - Images subfolder within
your custom content folder - this is the Photoshop
file. Also, look at the files back_tex.png, body_tex.
png, and front_tex.png, which are the finished
texture files.
Images

4. And finally, select the Front Legs layer, and create

a third image layer for front_tex.png. The new layer
appears above the Front Legs layer. Heres how the
new image layers should be arranged:

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Three new image layers

Textures applied in Anime Studio

Use Masking for Clean Edges

At this point, the textures are finished and in place, but they
are a little messy, and go outside the bounds of the actual
body parts. The final step is to clean up the texture edges
using layer masking.

Images

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1. Double-click the Skeleton layer in the Layers window to

bring up the Layer Settings dialog. Go to the Masking
tab, and set the group mask to Hide all:

Turn masking on for the group

2. Next, double-click the Back Legs vector layer to bring

up the Layer Properties dialog for that layer. Go to the
Masking tab, and set the masking mode to + Clear
the mask, then add this layer to it. What this masking
mode does is make all objects invisible, except where
this layer has solid areas. So, the back_tex.png image
layer will only be visible directly on top of the Back Legs
vector layer, preventing the texture from going outside
the lines of the back legs.

Images

Set the masking mode for the Body layer

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The Back Legs layer with mask

3. Repeat step 2 for the Body and Front Legs vector

layers. Set the masking mode to + Clear the mask, then
add this layer to it, just like you did for the back legs.
At this point, all the textures should be forced to stay
inside the lines:

Images

Textures cleaned up with masking

4. Play back the animation again and youll see the

image layers warp along with the vector layers in
response to bone movement.

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Tutorial 4.4: Animating a Talking

Head
This shows you an easy way to animate a photograph to
create a cheesy talking-head effect. The quality of the
result will depend a lot on the photograph you start with
and how the bone system is set up.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 4.3 and its located in the
Tutorials > 4 - Images subfolder within your custom content
folder.
1. Open the Tutorials > 4 - Images . Tutorial 4.3 file in
Anime Studio. The project contains an image layer
enclosed in a bone layer. Bones have already been set
up to control the mouth region, and extra bones have
been set up around the border of the image to hold
the rest of the head still. You should see this:

Starting point for this tutorial

2. In the Layers window, click to select the reagan.png

layer.
3. Select the Manipulate Bones tool and use it to drag
the bone at the lower right side of the mouth in the
reagan.png layer. Notice that the other mouth bones
move as well - they have been set up using bone
constraints to move in sync with the lower-right bone.

Images

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Adding Sound and Motion

Now well add a soundtrack to this animation.
In the Layers window, click the New Layer icon and create
a new Audio layer.
Manipulate Bones Tool

1. When prompted, pick the reagan.wav file from the

Anime Studio/Tutorials > 4 - Images folder.
2. Press the Play button in the timeline. The audio file will
now play back with the project - try playing it back if
you like.
3. The next step is to add some animation in sync with the
soundtrack. Select the Mouth Bones bone layer, and
activate the Select Bone tool. Make sure the bottomright bone in the mouth is selected (it probably already
is at this point).

Select Bone Tool

Moving the mouth
Images

4. In the timeline, set the current time to frame 1.

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5. Select the Scripts > Sound > Bone Audio Wiggle menu
command. This is a script that uses the volume of an
audio file to control the angle of a bone.

Bone Audio Wiggle dialog

Bone Audio Wiggle script

6. The Bone Audio Wiggle dialog allows you to choose

the sound file that you want to use. Select the same
reagan.wav file you used for the soundtrack. You can
only select one audio file if there are multiple sounds in
your scene.

Images

7. There are two additional settings in the Bone Audio

Wiggle dialog. Set the Max angle to 180, and keep the
Frame Step setting at 2. This creates keyframes at every
other frame. Click OK to exit the dialog. The script will
run and add keyframes to the timeline for the selected
bone. Because the other bones are controlled by the
selected one, the whole mouth will move.

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Keyframes for Bone Audio Wiggle

Images

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Animation
After all the preparation time drawing your objects,
assigning fill colors, and setting up bones, you move on to
animating them. This is where things actually start to move
around.
Animating in Anime Studio is based on the concept of
keyframes. A keyframe is a point in time where you position
some object (either a point, a bone, or an entire layer).
A keyframe tells Anime Studio exactly where that object
should be and when. Keyframes are set up at important
moments in time - typically where an object begins
moving, stops moving, or changes direction. Between
keyframes, Anime Studio automatically calculates how
to move an object so that it gets from one keyframe to
the next in the amount of time allowed between the
keyframes.
To create a keyframe, just set the current time to whenever
you want the keyframe to occur, then move the object
to the desired position. Controlling the current time and
working with keyframes after theyve been created is
discussed in Chapter 16: The Timeline Window on page
282 in your Anime Studio Users Manual.
You can animate several types of motion in an Anime
Studio project, and they can each be used alone or in
Animation

combination. The first type is point motion. Point motion

very basic - it just involves moving individual points around
in time. Point motion is good for small distortions to an
object where you want something to look soft and flexible
(turning up the corners of a mouth into a smile, bulging out
a belly, etc.). You can move a shape in any way you want
with point animation, but it might require manipulating a
lot of points - in many cases bone animation can simplify
the job.
Bone animation involves setting up a skeleton system for an
object and then moving the skeleton around. By carefully
constructing a skeleton, you can easily move a character
around like a puppet.
Layer animation is for very simple, large-scale motion.
When you move a layer, everything in it moves together.
This doesnt give you a lot of flexibility as far as what you
can animate this way, but its a good way to get certain
effects. If you want an entire group of objects to pan side
to side or zoom in or out, then layer animation is the tool to
use.
The keyframes you define are visible in the Timeline, starting
at frame 1. Frame 0 is a special frame in an Anime Studio
project - the original placement of all your objects is stored
at frame 0. If you want to modify an objects original shape
or position, or add new objects, this should be done at
frame 0. Whatever you do to an object in later frames can

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never affect an objects original shape and position, so

even if you think you really screwed something up, you can
always delete some keyframes and get back your original
drawings.
This chapter has a useful hands-on overview of how to
animate in Anime Studio, using each type of motion (point,
bone, and layer). Once youve mastered Anime Studios
animation tools, animating is a simple job of repeatedly
using the tools you already know, keyframe by keyframe.

Tutorials > 5 - Animation subfolder within your custom

content folder.
1. Open the Tutorials > 5 - Animation > Tutorial 5.1 file in
Anime Studio, expand the Mouth layer in the Layers
window, and you should see something like this:

Tutorial 5.1: Automatic Lip-Sync

This tutorial uses Anime Studios Switch layers to show you
how to perform instant, automatic lip-syncing. A switch
layer contains multiple sub-layers, but only one of the sublayers can be displayed at a time. This makes it very useful
for lip-sync animation: each sub-layer can be a mouth
shape for a different sound.
The method of lip-sync described in this tutorial is quick and
easy, though not always super-accurate (but give it a try it may be accurate enough for your animation).

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 5.1 and its located in the
Animation

Starting point for this tutorial

2. Examine the sub-layers in the Mouth layer. Notice that

from bottom to top they range from closed to wide
open. This is the basic setup for automatic lip-syncing.
The number and names of the sub-layers dont matter,
as long as the lowest one is closed and the highest one
is wide open.

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Layers in the Layers window

3. Next, add the audio file that will go along with the lipsyncing. Choose the File > Import > Audio File menu
command and select the Tutorials > 5 - Animation >
MaryLamb-Man.wav file in your custom content folder.
4.

Make sure that you select the File > Import >
Audio File command from the lower section of
the file menu. This differs from the File > Import > Audio
command in the upper section of the menu, which is
used to open files in the Anime Studio library.

Animation

File > Import > Audio File command

5. Play back the animation now to hear the result. Youll

notice that the mouth doesnt move yet. Stop the
playback before proceeding.
6. Double-click the Mouth layer. When the Layer Settings
dialog opens, click the Switch tab:

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in the audio file, it is important to use an audio file without

background noise or music.

Layer settings for the mouth

7. Click the Select audio sync source button to select the

file that will control the Switch layer. In the file dialog
that appears, select the file MaryLamb-Man.wav. Click
the dialogs OK button.
Thats it! The audio file was analyzed and keyframes
were attached to the Switch layer. When the audio is
quiet, Anime Studio activates the lowest layer (the closed
mouth), and when the audio is loudest, Anime Studio uses
the highest layer (the wide open mouth). In between,
Anime Studio switches on the in between mouths. Play
back the animation to see and hear the result. In general,
because automatic lip-sync is based on the actual sound
Animation

Tutorial 5.1 Result. (Click to play movie)

Tutorial 5.2: Phoneme Lip-Sync

This tutorial covers another method of animating lip-sync.
With this method, the lip-sync is based on phonemes.
Phonemes are the basic building block sounds that make
up words. When you do lip-sync based on phonemes, it

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requires you to break down the words of dialog into their

basic sound elements.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 5.2 and its located in the
Tutorials > 5 - Animation subfolder within your custom
content folder.

3. This project is almost complete. The only thing

apparently missing is the animation for the characters
mouth. Play back the animation. The mouth is there (its
a switch layer), but no animation data has yet been
assigned to it, so it doesnt move.
4. Double-click the Mouth layer. When the Layer Settings
dialog opens, click the Switch tab:

1. Open the Tutorials > 5 - Animation > Tutorial 5.2 file in

Anime Studio.
2. Expand the Head layer in the Layers window, and you
should see something like this:

Options in the Switch tab

5. Click the Select audio sync source button to select the

switch data file that will control this switch layer. In the
file dialog that appears, select the file vista.dat located
in the Tutorials > 5 - Animation subfolder within your
custom content folder.

Starting point for this tutorial

Animation

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The Mouth layer contains all the mouth
shapes needed to speak any phrase. You
can examine the Mouth layer to see the sub-layers it
contains. Each sub-layer is named after a different
phoneme. You can use any set of phonemes you
choose. The mouth shapes in this mouth are based
on the same default set used by a great (and free)
lip syncing program that we recommend:
Papagayo (http://www.lostmarble.com/
papagayo/) is a good place to get started. To
make the mouth speak a different phrase, just
create a different animation data file in Papagayo,
and select it into the mouth layer as we just did for
the vista.dat example.

If you plan to export your animations to Flash

(SWF) format, you will need to use MP3 audio
files instead of WAV audio files. In addition, if you
plan to render to SWF format, you can only use a
single audio file in the project.

6. To hear the sound along with the animation, choose

the File > Import > Audio File command from Anime
Studios menu and select the vista.wav file located in
the Tutorials > 5 - Animation folder.
7. Now, when you play back the animation in Anime
Studio you will hear the audio that goes with the lipsync. Also, if you export the animation as a QuickTime
or AVI movie, the audio will be included in the movie
file.

Animation

Tutorial 5.2 Result. (Click to play movie)

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Tutorial 5.3: Cycling

It is possible in Anime Studio to automatically cycle a
section of animation, repeating it over and over as many
times as you wish. Cycling is a special type of keyframe
interpolation, and this tutorial will show you how to set it up.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 5.5 and its located in the
Tutorials > 5 - Animation subfolder within your custom
content folder.
1. Open the Tutorials > 5 - Animation > Tutorial 5.5 file in
Anime Studio.
Starting point for this tutorial

2. In the timeline, you can see that the top layer, Red
Blinker, has two keyframes in the Layer Visibility
channel. The layer becomes invisible at frame 36, and
visible again at frame 48. This is also shown by the red
background in the timeline during the layers invisible
period:

Animation

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Starting point for this tutorial

3. You can play back the animation to see whats going

on. Basically, the red light starts off turned on, then it
shuts off for a while and finally turns back on.
4. Using cycling, you can make the light blink over and
over. Right-click on the second keyframe (the one
at frame 48), and in the popup menu that appears,
select Cycle.... Youre telling Anime Studio that after
this keyframe, you want the animation to cycle back to
an earlier point in the animation. A dialog will appear
asking you the specifics of the cycling. Enter 12 as
shown below:

Animation

Cycle settings

5. When you click OK in the cycle dialog, the timeline will

update to show the cycle. There are three changes
you will see:
6. The keyframe in question will change to a left-pointing
arrow to indicate that it cycles backwards.

A long red arrow will point back to the point in the

timeline that the visibility channel is cycling back to.

Later in the timeline you will see other sections

with red backgrounds to indicate that the layer is
invisible during those periods:

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Cycling reflected in the timeline

7. You can play back the animation again to see

the result. The Red Blinker layer will flash on and off
multiple times, even though you didnt add any more
keyframes - the Layer Visibility channel is just cycling
back and repeating a section of animation over and
over again.
8. Lets try adjusting the cycle duration. In the Timeline
window, hold down the Ctrl key (Windows) or Cmd
key (Mac) while you click and drag on the second
keyframe (the one that cycles). As you drag the mouse
side-to-side, youll see that the cycle duration changes,
as the arrow that points back from the cycling key gets
longer and shorter. Adjust the cycle duration so that
the keyframe cycles back to frame 24:

Animation

Adjusted cycle duration

9. If you play back the animation now, youll see that the
light blinks more quickly now, since the cycle duration
is shorter.
10. Finally, to break a cycle, all you have to do is add
another keyframe when you want the cycle to end.
Set the current frame to 102, right click in the Layer
Visibility channel, and select Add Keyframe from the
popup menu that appears. The new keyframe will
appear, and at that point the cycling will end. Play
back the animation to confirm this.

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Tutorial 5.4: Animation Curves

Introduction
This tutorial introduces the graph mode of Anime Studios
timeline. Graph mode allows you to inspect an animation
curve plotted as values on a graph. Looking at things this
way can help with evaluating acceleration, changes in
direction, and other properties of motion.

Start With a Sample File

New keyframe at frame 102

Conclusion
Cycling can be used in any animation channel in Anime
Studio. Any keyframe can be made to cycle back in time
by setting Cycle as the keys interpolation method. You
can cycle a channel all the way back to the beginning of
an animation, or just back a few frames. Cycling will repeat
itself forever or until a new keyframe is reached.

Animation

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 5.3 and its located in the
Tutorials > 5 - Animation subfolder within your custom
content folder.
1. Open the Tutorials > 5 - Animation > Tutorial 5.3 file in
Anime Studio.
2. Were interested in the Skeleton layer here - make sure
it is the active layer.
3.

The skeleton here is partially animated - go

ahead and play it back to see what youre
starting with. In case you were wondering, only the
lowest vertical bone in the skeleton is actually

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animated. The other bones are using bone constraints

to follow the motion of the lowest bone.

Motion Curves
Continue with your project as follows to work with the
motion curves:
1. Rewind the animation to frame zero, and use the
Select Bone tool to select the lowest vertical bone as
shown below:

Select the lowest bone

Select Bone Tool

Animation

2. In the Timeline window, click the Motion Graph tab.

Click the Selected Bone Angle channel icon - this is the
channel icon on the left side of the timeline, and looks
like this:

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channel. After all of these adjustments to the graph, it

should look like the following figure.

Click the Selected Bone Angle icon

3. A single click turns on the display of the channel in the

graph. A double-click makes the channel active for
editing.

5. In the graph you can see three keyframes. These are

just like keyframes in the normal timeline, but instead
of just being spread out along a horizontal line (time),
they are also spaced vertically (value). Between the
keyframes, a curve is drawn that represents the value
of the selected bones rotation angle. Looking at this
curve, you can tell that over the first second (frames
1 to 24), the bone rotates from an angle of 1.57 to an
angle of about 1.05 (we dont care about the exact
values). Then, in less than half a second it rotates back
again.

By default, not all channels are visible, since

this would just cause too much visual clutter in
graph mode. For similar reasons, only one channel
can be active for editing in graph mode. Doubleclicking a channels icon makes it active for editing.

4. Now, press the End key on your keyboard - this rescales

the graph to accommodate the currently active
channel, in this case the selected bone rotation
Animation

Graph mode

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In the timelines graph mode, angles are
displayed in radians so that theyll be closer in
magnitude to other values like translation and scale.
However, if you want to see curves displayed in
degrees you can tell the timeline to do that in Anime
Studios preferences dialog.

6. Now were going to edit the bones motion by

modifying the graph. First, set the current time to frame
48 and choose the Bone > Reset Bone command.
7. Press the Page Down key to give yourself some room in
the graph to work (you may need to turn off your Num
Lock key).
8. Next, click the keyframe at frame 33 and drag it
upwards slightly as shown below. If you hold the Alt
key while dragging a keyframe in graph mode, you
will only be able to drag it vertically. Hold the Ctrl
key (Windows) or Cmd key (Mac) to move it only
horizontally.

Animation

Move a keyframe

9. Next were going to add a new keyframe directly on

the graph. Right click on the graph around frame 37. In
the popup menu that appears, select Add Keyframe.
A new keyframe will appear on the graph - drag it to
the location shown:

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the bone rotation tool, but this gives you another

way to understand the motion youre creating.

Add a new keyframe

10. Lets add three more keyframes like the previous one.
Add these keys at frames 40, 43, and 46. You dont
need to set the time to the frame you want to add a
key to - just right-click at the correct frame and add
the new key. Dont worry if the key isnt exactly at the
frame you wanted, since you can easily drag it into
position. Move these new keys so that the curve looks
like this:
What this wiggling curve represents is sort of a
springy back-and-forth motion that decreases
over the span of just over half a second. You could
have animated this using the normal timeline and
Animation

The final graph

11. Play back the animation to see what it looks like.

Tutorial 5.5: Sorting Layers by

Depth
This tutorial shows you some of the 3D-related features
of Anime Studio. Anime Studio allows you to move layers
in three dimensions to create an accurate simulation of
depth. In addition, Anime Studio has the option of sorting

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layers by depth, allowing layers to move in front of and

behind each other during the course of an animation.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 5.4 and its located in the
Tutorials > 5 - Animation subfolder within your custom
content folder.

12. This file contains two layers and a simple animation of

a circle moving back and forth in front of a square. Try
playing back the animation to see what it looks like.

Creating Depth

Open the Tutorials > 5 - Animation > Tutorial 5.4 file in Anime
Studio. You should see something like this:
Transform Layer

Now were going to try moving a layer in 3D - towards and

away from the camera.
1. Set the current frame to 12 and activate the Transform
Layer tool.

Starting point for this tutorial.

Animation

2. Make sure the Circle layer is active. Now, while holding

down the Alt key, drag downwards in the editing
area. Youll see the circle get larger - this is because
it is moving closer to the virtual camera. The Alt key
modifies the Transform Layer tool to move a layer
forward and back. Drag the Circle layer until it looks
about like this:

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4. Next well try moving the circle away from the camera.
Set the current frame to 36. Again holding down the Alt
key, use the Transform Layer tool and drag upward in
the editing area. Keep going as the circle gets smaller
(farther away), until it looks like this:
5. The Z value in the tool options area should now be
close to -1.0. Try playing back the animation again
- the circle should now grow larger and smaller as it
moves towards and away from the camera. However,
it always appears in front of the square. As it moves
farther away, it should be going behind the square,
which brings us to the next section.

Circle moved forward

3. In the tool options area at the top of the main Anime

Studio window, notice the value of the Z field. It should
be somewhere around 1.0 (the exact value isnt
important here). Positive depth (or Z) values are closer
to the camera (in the direction out of your screen),
while negative values point away from the camera
(into the screen).
Animation

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Select the File > Project Settings menu command. In the

Project Settings dialog that appears, turn on the Sort layers
by depth checkbox and click OK. This tells Anime Studio to
ignore the layer ordering in the Layers window, and instead
draw layers in order from furthest to nearest.

Sort layers by depth option

Circle moved backward

Sorting Layers by Depth

If you do move layers forward and back, as in this tutorial,
you may also want layers to move behind and in front of
each other. Anime Studio can do this automatically - all
you need to do is to turn on a single checkbox.

Animation

1. Play the animation again, and youll see that the circle
is drawn behind the square during the time that it is
farther away.
2. To get a clear idea of whats going on, use the Orbit
Workspace tool to turn the scene to an oblique angle.
If you play back the animation from this point of view,
you can clearly see the circle moving forward and
back as it moves around the square.

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Orbit Workspace Tool

3. Once you have a good view, activate the Transform

Layer tool to display the path of the Circle layers
motion.

View from above

Animation

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A note about depth sorting: The checkbox
we turned on to sort the layers by depth only
sorts the top-level layers in an Anime Studio project.
If you want to sort the sub-layers in a group, doubleclick the group layer to bring up the Layer Settings
dialog. There you will find a tab labeled Depth Sort
- in this tab is a checkbox that you can turn on to
depth-sort the sub-layers of the group.

worry - the split-apart character is just part of the bone

setup process):

Tutorial 5.6: Actions

In Anime Studio Pro, actions are little clips of animation
that are associated with a layer (or group of layers). Using
actions, you can create reusable animation for movements
that you expect to use over and over again. In this tutorial
you will learn you how to use actions.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file that already has
some actions set up. Its named Tutorial 5.6 and its located
in the Tutorials > 5 - Animation subfolder within your custom
content folder.
1. Open the Tutorials > 5 - Animation > Tutorial 5.6 file in
Anime Studio. You should see something like this. (Dont
Animation

Starting point for this tutorial

2. Lets take a look at the actions for this character. Select

the Window > Actions menu command to bring up the
Actions window. It should appear as shown below:
Each item listed in the Actions window is a clip
of animation that this character can perform.
The first entry in the list, --- Mainline --- is kind of
special. Mainline is not an action - it represents the

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main timeline for the animation, the one that will

ultimately be exported as your final movie.

Also notice that the Timeline window has changed.

The background changed color to indicate
that youre working with an action, not the main
animation. Finally, some keyframes appeared in
the timeline - these are the keys for the Step action.

Actions for this character

3. To view or edit an animation, double-click it in the

Actions window. Lets do this now with the Step action.
After double-clicking Step, a little red arrow will appear
next to it in the Actions window. This indicates that Step
is the currently active action.

Animation

Activate the Step action

4. Press the playback button to watch this action, and

stop it when youve seen enough.

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5. Try playing back the other actions as well. For each

one in turn (Wave, Squat, and Bend), double-click the
actions name to activate it. Then, play back its motion
to see the result.
6. When youve watched them all, double-click Mainline
to go back to the main animations timeline.

Using Actions
Now that weve seen which actions the character can
perform, lets try using them in an animation.
Make sure that Mainline is active in the Actions window.
1. Set the current frame to 3, and click once on the Wave
action. Be sure to just click once - Mainline should still
be active with an arrow next to it, and Wave should be
highlighted:

Animation

Click once on Wave

2. Now that Wave is selected, we can insert it into the

main timeline. Click the Insert Reference button at the
top of the Actions window.

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Wave action inserted into the timeline

3. Actions can also be overlapped. Set the current time

to frame 12.
4. Click once to select the Squat action in the Actions
window.
Inserting a reference to the Wave layer

When you insert an action by reference, Anime

Studio will use that actions motion in the timeline.
If you later modify the action, those changes will
be reflected in the main timeline. As you can see,
the timeline has been updated to indicate that the
Wave action was inserted, plus it shows how long
the Wave action lasts:

Animation

5. Finally, click the Insert Reference button to insert the

Squat action. Notice that the timeline now shows both
actions (with the Squat action adding four channels
in the timeline). Play back the animation to see how
these two actions overlap.

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6. Lets overlap three actions now. Go to frame 40, and

insert references to three actions: Wave, Squat, and
Bend. One after another, click once on the action
then click the Insert Reference button . Play back the
animation now and see how the character performs
the three actions together, starting at frame 40.

Inserting a reference to the Squat layer

Wave, Squat, and Bend Overlapped

7. Lets try repeating an action a few times. Go to frame

66, and insert the Step action.
8. Then go to frame 78 (at the end of the first step action)
and insert the step action again.
Wave and Squat actions overlapping
Animation

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9. Do this once more at frame 90. The step action should

now appear three times in sequence in the timeline:

Add a new Layer Translation keyframe

Step repeated three times

10. The last thing well do is move the character off screen.
Set the current frame to 66. Then select the Transform
Layer tool and click inside the scene to set a keyframe.

Transform Layer
Animation

11. Finally, set the current frame to 102, and the total
number of frames to 102, then use the Transform Layer
tool to move the character to the left off screen:

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the object around (using either bone or point motion), and

then Anime Studio fills in all the in-between frames.
However, there is a way to do some frame-by-frame
animation in Anime Studio, and this tutorial will show you
a simple example of how you can do this. Keep in mind
that this isnt what Anime Studio was designed for - if youre
looking for a frame-by-frame animation program, Anime
Studio isnt the best tool for the job. But, if you just need to
do a little bit of frame-by-frame animation, this technique
might work for you.

Start With a Blank File

1. Start out with a new, blank Anime Studio project - it
should just have one layer, Layer 1.
Character translated off screen

Tutorial 5.7: Frame by Frame

Animation
Traditionally, animation was created by drawing frames
one after another, each one slightly different from the last.
Anime Studio does not work this way - in Anime Studio, you
create artwork and then use keyframing to move parts of
Animation

2. Add a new Switch layer and name it Inchworm. Move

Layer 1 into the switch layer. Next, right-click on the
switch layer and select Layer 1 from the popup menu
to make that layer active in the switch group. Finally,
select the Layer 1 layer as were about to draw in it.
Heres what the layout should look like:

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The starting layout

3. Now, select a fill color and a line color in the Style

window for the inchworm youre about to draw.
Increase the line width if desired. Activate the
Freehand tool and draw a little worm in the editing
view.
4. When drawing the body, make sure that the Freehand
tools Auto close, Auto fill, and Auto-stroke options are
turned on.

When drawing details, make sure that only Auto

stroke is checked.

You might end up with something like this (feel free

to put more work into it for a prettier result):

Animation

Freehand
If you find it difficult to draw your worm in one
stroke, you can create it with shorter strokes
that overlap each other where you want them to
connect. The shape will automatically be welded
where the lines cross. You can then use the Delete
Edge tool to delete the unwanted hanging edges.
Refer to examples shown in the Freehand tool..

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If you are unable to add a vector layer at
Frame 3, choose Edit > Preferences to open
the Preferences dialog. Uncheck the Enable Drawing
Tools Only on Frame 0 option in the General tab
(which is on by default to prevent accidental
changes to the timeline).

The first inchworm frame

5. Next, advance the time to frame 3. Create a new

vector layer - it should be automatically named Layer
2 and should appear just above Layer 1. When you
create this new layer, it becomes the active layer in
the switch group:

Animation

New layer added

6. In the timeline, turn on an onionskin at frame 2. To do

this:

Move to Frame 2.

Click the Onionskins button in the Timeline toolbar.

Check Enable onion skins and turn the Relative
Frames option on.

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Onion skins can be displayed in one of two ways.

Check Outlines Only if you want them to appear
as outlines as shown in these examples. If you want
the onion skins to appear as partially transparent
layers, uncheck Outlines Only.

Finally, click in the area just below the frame

numbers to add an onionskin marker at frame 2.
Heres what the timeline should look like:

Onionskin setup in timeline

7. Now lets get back to drawing. In the editing view, you

should see an outline of the first drawing you made. On
top of this outline, using the Freehand tool, draw a new
inchworm, slightly advanced ahead of the previous
version:

Onionskin setup in timeline

Animation

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Advanced inchworm (frame 3)

8. Next, move forward two frames to frame 5.

Create a new vector layer (it will appear above

the previous two). You should see the onionskin
outline of the previous worm.

Draw a new one on top of it:

Animation

Advanced inchworm (frame 5)

9. Continue this process to add six new frames (on

frames 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, and 17), causing the inchworm
to scrunch up and then stretch out again as it moves
forward over the course of the 17 frames. At the end of
the animation you will have a total of nine layers:
10. Advance two frames.

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Create a new vector layer

Draw a new inchworm.

Play it Back

11. Before you pay the animation back, select the

Inchworm switch layer. Then play back your animation,
and you should see each drawing appear for two
frames before moving on to the next drawing.
Thats all it takes to do frame-by-frame animation in Anime
Studio. The key is that when you create a new layer in a
switch group, that layer becomes the active layer at that
frame. So, by adding a layer, drawing a figure, advancing
the current time, and repeating the process, you can
create frame-by-frame animation in Anime Studio.
If you want to see a finished example of this,
open the file Tutorial 5.7, located in the
Tutorials > 5 - Animation subfolder within your custom
content folder.

Tutorial 5.7 Result. (Click to play movie)

Tutorial 5.8: Creating a 3D Scene

This tutorial will show you how to build and move around
in a 3D scene in Anime Studio. Anime Studio isnt a full 3D
program - layers in Anime Studio are 2D planes that exist
in a 3D space. However, by positioning these 2D layers
carefully, and moving around them using the 3D camera,
you can create a convincing 3D environment.

Animation

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For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 5.8 and its located in the
Tutorials > 5 - Animation subfolder within your custom
content folder.
1. Open the Tutorials > 5 - Animation > Tutorial 5.8 file in
Anime Studio.
This file has some simple artwork that well use to
build a 3D scene. The layers in this file are set up as
shown:

Starting point for this tutorial

Starting point for this tutorial

The editing view should look like this to begin with:

Creating a Ground Plane

The first step in creating our 3D scene is to set up the
ground plane.
Select the Background layer - this layer has already had
a simple terrain drawn onto it, we just need to position it
correctly.

Animation

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1. Activate the Rotate Layer XY tool, and in the tool

options area at the top of the main Anime Studio
window, enter an X rotation angle of -90. Even though
the Background layer is just a flat 2D object, it can still
be rotated and positioned in true 3D space:
Transform Layer

Rotate Layer XY

Adjusting position

3. Finally, with the Transform Layer tool, enter 5, 5, 5 in the

tool options area as the layers scale values:
Adjusting X rotation

2. Next, activate the Transform Layer tool, and in the tool

options area, enter -0.25 as the Y value:
Transform Layer

Animation

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Adjusting scale

What these settings do is to rotate the Background

layer so that it lies down horizontally, lower it a
bit, and spread it out wide to cover a large area.
Perfect settings for a ground plane. The scene
should now look like this:

Ground in position

Arranging Foreground Objects

The next step is to create and position foreground objects.
A simple tree has already been created for you - lets set it
up in 3D.
Often, positioning objects in 3D can be easier done from
an overhead view. Use the Orbit Workspace tool to rotate
Animation

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the view of the scene so that it looks something like this

(partial view shown).
1. (Notice the little blue wedge in the scene - this
represents the camera.)

Orbit Workspace Tool

View from above

2. Now select the Tree layer, and make the Transform

Layer tool active. Double-click the Tree layer. The Layer
Settings dialog opens.
3. In the Options section of the General tab, select the
Rotate to face camera popup and choose Pivot Y Axis
(youll see why this is important later).

Animation

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Layer Settings options

4. With the Transform Layer tool selected, in the tool

options area, set the Position X value to -3.25, and the Z
value to -2.25. The tree will be moved to the far corner
of the scene:

Moving the tree

5. OK, thats one tree - now add several more. In the

Layers window, click the Duplicate layer button to
duplicate the Tree layer, and set new values for the X
Position and Z Position. Any values for X and Z Position
will do, as long as theyre roughly in the range between
-3 and 3.
Transform Layer

Animation

6. Repeat the process several more times, just scattering

trees across the landscape. Keep going until youve
created about 12 more trees. Position them all over the

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place - close to the camera, far away, behind it, etc.

When youre done you should have a small forest:
Now the reason for the Rotate to face camera
checkbox may be clear. The Tree layer (and
all of its duplicates) automatically turns to face
the camera - notice how each tree is turned in
a slightly different direction. This makes sure the
camera always has a full view of that layer. This
may not always be what you want, but for scenery
objects, it can be a good trick, especially when the
camera starts moving.

Heres a trick: if you have a mouse with a

scroll wheel, instead of typing in numbers for
the X and Z values, try holding the mouse over those
text fields and turning the wheel. The value in the
field will change, and you can watch the layer
move - just keep turning the wheel until the layer is
where you want it.

7. The last step to finish off the forest is depth sorting.

Double-click the Foreground group layer. In the Layer
Settings dialog, click the Depth Sort tab. Turn on the Sort
layers by depth checkbox and click OK. Now all the
tree layers in this group will be sorted according to their
distance from the camera.

Moving the Camera

Now that weve got a filled-in scene, lets take a tour.
Select the View > Reset menu command. You are now
looking at the scene from the cameras point of view:

A forest
Animation

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8. Set the current frame to 48 and activate the Track

Camera tool. While holding down the Alt key, click and
drag downward in the editing area. (The Alt key tells
the Track Camera tool to move the camera forward
and back.). Keep dragging downward until youve
moved forward almost to the edge of the ground
layer.

Camera view

Track Camera Tool

Animation

Forward movement

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9. Now activate the Pan/Tilt Camera tool. Hold down

the Shift key and drag to the side to turn the camera
around. (The Shift key prevents you from rotating
the camera up and down.) It doesnt matter where
you turn to - just point the camera in an interesting
direction:

10. Set the current frame to 96, and use the Track Camera
tool to move forward again (be sure to hold down the
Alt key to move forward).
11. After moving forward, turn the camera in a new
direction with the Pan/Tilt camera tool (be sure to hold
down the Shift key). Continue this process (advance
the current time, move forward, and turn the camera)
as much as you want, taking a little tour of your 3D
scene.

Orbit Workspace Tool

12. When youve moved around as much as you want, try

playing back the animation. While playing back the
animation, use the Orbit Workspace tool to view the
scene from above.
13. There are two things to notice here:
Pan/Tilt Camera Tool Turn the camera

Animation

First, if you activate the Track Camera tool again,

the path of the camera is visible when viewing the
scene from above. If the path is not visible, check
the Show Path option in the Track Camera tool

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status bar. This can be useful when planning out

camera moves.

Feel free to experiment with more camera moves, or to

add objects of your own to the scene.

Second, watch how the trees turn during the

animation to always face the camera. That way,
the camera never catches an edge-on view of
any tree, which would kind of spoil the 3D effect.

Tutorial 5.9: Basic Physics

Anime Studio features a physics engine that allows objects
to collide with and bounce off of each other.
Physics will only work with objects that are
filled.

Creating the Objects

An Anime Studio project can contain objects that are not
affected by physics, as well as objects that are affected
by physics. The deciding factor between the two types of
objects is a group layer that holds the objects that physics
are applied to. Any objects not contained within this group
are unaffected by the physics properties.
In the first steps in this tutorial, youll create a base object
Group layer that holds three objects, on three different
layers.
View from above

To create a physics simulation,

1. Create a new project. Add a new Group layer in the
Layers window. The new layer will be named Layer 2.

Animation

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Create a new Group layer (Layer 2)

2. Drag the existing Layer 1 into the new group layer. On

this layer, use the Add Point tool with the Sharp Corners
option checked to create a base shape that the
physics objects will collide with.

Create a Base object in Layer 1 and drag it into Layer 2

3. With layer 1 selected, add another vector layer (which

will be named Layer 2 by default - name it Layer 3). It
will automatically be added to the Group layer. Use
the Draw Shape tool to draw a circle on this layer. This
will be one of the shapes that collide with Layer 1.
4. Add another vector layer (Layer 4) to the Group layer,
and create a rectangle with the Draw Shape tool on
this layer.

Animation

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Enable physics for the Group layer

Enable physics: Check this option to turn the

physics simulator on.

Gravity direction: Use the directional slider to point

to the direction from which gravity is originated.
By default, the direction is straight down (270
degrees). 0/360 degrees is at the 3:00 position of
the dial.

Gravity magnitude: Controls the strength of the

gravity. Lower values make the gravity less forceful
(objects are lighter) and higher values make the
gravity more forceful (objects are heavier).

Three objects in the Group layer

Enabling Physics
You now have a scene with a group that contains three
objects: a base object, and two additional objects that will
bounce against it. The first thing you need to do is enable
physics in the Group layer that holds these objects.
Select the Group layer (Layer 2) and open the Layer
Settings dialog. Click the Physics tab to display the
following settings:

Animation

5. Click OK to close the Layer Settings dialog. Your group

layer is now configured to use physics

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Creating a Collision Base

After you enable physics in the Group layer as described
in the previous section, your next step is to assign one of
the objects as a stationary collision base for the others to
collide against. Otherwise, the gravity in the Physics engine
will cause all of the objects to drop off the screen.
Select the base layer (Layer 1) in the Group layer. This is the
object that the other objects will collide against. Open the
Layer Settings window to the Physics tab. You will see the
following settings:

Enable Physics: This option should automatically

be turned on if it is in a Group layer that has Physics
enabled. If you uncheck the option, physics will not
work on the current layer.
Non-moving object: Check this option to make
the current layer stationary. When this option is
checked all of the other options in the Physics tab
become disabled

6. Click OK to return to the scene

Animation

Check the Non-Moving Object option to create a stationary

base object

Configuring Physics Objects

After you create one or more stationary objects, you
then configure the properties for the other objects that
will bounce against them. In the case of the scene that
we have created, these objects are the circle and the
rectangle. Start with the circle first, and then the rectangle,
and proceed as follows
1. Select the circle layer (Layer 3) inside the Group layer.
Open the Layer Settings window to the Physics tab. You
will see the following settings:

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Non-moving object: Leave this option unchecked

for the circle and rectangle layers.

Leave the remainder of the settings at their

default values for the circle and rectangle
layers. The functions of the additional settings follow.

Physics Settings for Non-Stationary objects

Enable Physics: This option should automatically be

turned on as described in the previous section.

Animation

Start asleep: Check this option if you want an

object to stay still until something else bumps into
it. To demonstrate how this works, compare two
versions of the project.

Lifetime (frames): A physics object will fall, bounce

around, etc. for the duration of its lifetime (number
of frames). After that time, it will be sent back to its
initial starting position, where it will start bouncing
around again. A lifetime of zero means the object
will never be sent back to its starting point. The
Lifetime setting is useful for something like a hillside
of falling boulders. Instead of creating hundreds
of boulders, you can create a dozen or so and
set the lifetime to the length of time it takes for
the boulders to fall from the top of the hill to the
bottom. If the top and bottom of the hill are
offscreen, this will look like an endless number of
boulders falling down the hill.

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Initial direction: Works in conjunction with the Initial

Speed setting below. If given an initial speed of
something more than zero, a physics object will
start flying out in the designated direction at the
specified speed.

Initial speed: Controls the speed at which physics

objects move in the designated direction. Faster
speeds allow you to create objects like bullets,
rockets, etc.

Density: The default Density setting is 1. Decrease

this setting to make objects more responsive to
collisions. Increase the setting to make objects less
responsive to collisions.

Friction: A contact force between two surfaces

that controls how much they slow each other
down when they touch. High friction objects (like a
brick sliding on concrete) will generally slow down
faster than low friction objects (blocks of ice).

Springiness: When two objects collide, their

springiness values define how much they will
bounce apart. A basketball bouncing on a floor
would have a high springiness value, while a stick
of butter would have a low springiness value.

Pivot on origin: This option sets an axle around the

objects origin point. When another object collides

Animation

with an object that is set to pivot, the object will

spin around its origin rather than topple over.

Motor speed: Works in conjunction with motor

torque, which follows. The motor speed is the
number of degrees per second the object will
rotate (it can be negative to rotate backwards).
Depending if the object bumps into obstacles
or there are other influences, it may not actually
rotate at that speed, but in a zero gravity setup
with no collisions, that will be the speed of rotation.

Motor torque: Motor torque controls the strength

of the motor. With low torque, when a motorized
object bumps into other objects it may come to
a stop, depending on the size and density of the
obstacles. With a high torque, it will tend to push
obstacles out of its way. Even with no obstacles, if
a motorized object is unbalanced (off center of its
origin), a low torque setting may mean that it can
even lift itself up.

2. Press Play to see what happens. The circle falls straight

down and stops at the ground.
3. Rewind the project to frame zero, and use the
Transform Layer tool to move the circle so that it is just
above the left pillar of the collision base, as shown in
the following figure.

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Additional Comments
You can also apply physics to bone layers. The physics are
applied to the region of influence of the bone. See Bone
Physics on page 88 in your Anime Studio Users Manual.

4. Press the Play button again to observe how the circle

moves. This time, it should collide with the rectangle,
and the rectangle will respond to the collision.
5. Experiment with additional settings to learn more about
how they affect your objects.

Animation

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Effects
Tutorial 6.1: Shadow Tricks
This tutorial shows you how the layer shadow options can
be used to create visual effects other than shadows. Glows
and outlines are the two possibilities well look at.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 6.6 and its located in the
Tutorials > 6 - Effects subfolder within your custom content
folder.
Open the Tutorials > 6 - Effects > Tutorial 6.6 file in Anime
Studio. Render this file to see what it looks like to start with:

Starting point for this tutorial

Basic Layer Shadow

Before we try any tricks, lets take a look at a basic layer
shadow.
Double-click the only layer in this file, Layer 1, to bring up
the Layer Settings dialog.
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1. Go to the Shadows tab, and leaving all the other

settings alone, turn on the Shadow on checkbox. Click
OK to dismiss the dialog.

Layer shadow

Layer Glow
Default shadow settings

2. Try rendering the scene again, just to be sure that you

have an idea what a regular layer shadow looks like in
Anime Studio:
Effects

Now well change the shadow settings to create a glow

effect.
Double-click Layer 1 again to bring up the Layer Settings
dialog. Change the Layer Shadow settings to match the
values below:

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The expansion parameter tells Anime Studio to

expand the shadow, making it bigger than the
layer itself. Without expansion, the glow would just
barely extend beyond the edge of the layer.

The exact color you choose is not important - just

be sure to make the color opaque (Alpha = 255). A
transparent glow may be too faint to see.

Render the scene again, and it should look like this:

Glow settings

An offset of 0 means the shadow will be centered

under the layer that is casting it. With an offset of 0,
the shadow direction has no significance.

A high blur value of 16 gives the glow a nice soft

edge.
Layer glow.

Effects

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Layer Outline
Lets change the shadow options once again to create
an outline effect. Some styles of animation use a heavier
outline around the outside of objects than for interior lines.
Adjusting the layer shadow values in the right way can
make this style very easy to accomplish.
Double-click Layer 1 again to bring up the Layer Settings
dialog.
1. Change the Layer Shadow settings to match the
values below:

Again, we use an offset of 0 to keep the shadow

centered under the layer.

A blur value of 0 is used to keep a hard edge on

the shadow.

The expansion parameter is used in this case to set

the width of the outline effect.

For this effect, its important to make the color

totally black and totally opaque (Alpha = 255) to
match the interior lines.

Effects

Outline settings.

2. Render the scene again, and it should look like this:

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Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 6.7 and its located in the
Tutorials > 6 - Effects subfolder within your custom content
folder.
1. Open the Tutorials > 6 - Effects > Tutorial 6.1 file in
Anime Studio, and you should see something like this:

Starting point for this tutorial

Layer outline

Tutorial 6.2: Camera and Depth

Effects
This tutorial demonstrates Anime Studios camera tools.
These tools allow you to move an entire scene around as if
you were pointing a camera at it. With a little setup work,
you can even create different layers of depth in the scene.
Effects

2. This file contains a few layers of simple scenery that

we will move the camera across. To do this, select the
Track Camera tool and drag the mouse around in the
main editing area.

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2. In the tool options area at the top of the main Anime

Studio window, change the Z value to -1 and press
Enter. Below you can see where to set the Z value for
the layer.
Track Camera Tool

3. Notice how all the layers move together, even though

they arent grouped. When you move the camera
around, it affects all the layers in a project. In the tool
options area at the top of the main Anime Studio
window, click the Reset button to reset the camera.

Creating Depth
Now well introduce some depth into the scene.
1. Activate the Transform Layer tool and select the layer
called Right Hill.

Transform Layer
Effects

Setting a layers Z value

3. Now select the Left Hill layer, and set its Z value to
-2. Finally, select Sky, and set its Z value to -20. When
youre finished, your scene should look similar to the
following figure.

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Track Camera Tool

6. Now try dragging the Orbit Workspace tool around the

workspace. This tool allows you to examine your scene
in 3D, from outside the view of the virtual camera. In
this case, notice how the different layers are spaced
apart in the Z direction - this is what creates the sense
of depth from the cameras point of view. The camera
itself appears as a small blue wedge pointing in the
direction of view.
Right Hill, Left Hill, and Sky layers moved on the Z plane

4. Try dragging the Track Camera tool around again and

notice the difference. Its like driving in a car - nearby
objects go by quickly, while distant objects seem to
move slowly.
5. In the tool options area at the top of the main Anime
Studio window, click the Reset button to reset the
camera.
Effects

Orbit Workspace Tool

7. When youve seen enough, select the View > Reset

menu command to go back to the default camera
view.

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Animating Camera Movement

Now well try animating the camera.
1. Make sure the current frame is set to 0, and select the
Track Camera tool.

Track Camera Tool

2. Drag to the left in the main editing area until you set up
a view that looks about like this:

Camera view at frame 0

3. Next, set the current frame to 72, and drag to the right.
This will pan the camera to the left - keep going until
you have a view that looks like this:

Effects

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Tutorial 6.2 Result. (Click to play movie)

Track to the left

4. Press the Play button in the timeline to play back this

simple camera animation. Notice how the layers of the
project seem to pass in front of and behind each other.
This is a simple way in Anime Studio to create a sense
of depth.

Effects

Tutorial 6.3: Moon and Clouds

Effect
This tutorial shows you how to create the effect of clouds
moving in front of a moon. Layer masking and blurring is
used to create an effect that is not only good for a moon
and clouds, but may inspire you to think of new ways to use
layer masking.

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Examine a Finished Animation

For this tutorial, were going to examine an animation that
is completely finished.
1. Open the Tutorials > 6 - Effects > Tutorial 6.9 file in
Anime Studio. The layers in this file are arranged as
shown below:

Starting point for this tutorial

2. This animation relies on masking and blurring effects

that arent apparent in Anime Studios editing view. To
see what the final effect is, either export the animation
as an AVI or QuickTime movie. (Because blurring is a
key part of this effect, exporting to SWF is not an option
- SWF export does not support blurs.)

Effects

The final result

Notice that the moon appears sharp until the cloud moves
in front of it. Then, the parts of the moon obscured by the
cloud become blurry. This effect is easy to achieve using
layer masking.

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How Its Done

There are two parts to this effect. First, there are actually
two moons in the animation:

The Moon layer is the regular, sharp version of the

moon you see in Anime Studios editing view.

Two layers up is the Blurry Moon layer - this is a

duplicate of the Moon layer, with some layer blur
applied.

clouds, the effect looks like the moon shining from behind
the clouds.
Heres another example of the same technique. In this
case, we see a character who appears to be blurred by
the smoke passing in front of him. The exact same blurring
and masking trick is used as in the case of the moon:

The trick is to control which moon is visible at which point

in time in the final exported movie. To do this, we use layer
masking.
Try double-clicking each of the layers in turn to bring up the
Layer Settings dialog - then, go to the Masking tab. Youll
find that the Sky group has masking turned on - by default,
all objects are invisible. The Moon layer is set to be immune
to masking, while the Cloud layer adds to the layer mask.
The result of these mask settings is that first the Moon layer is
drawn - this is the regular, sharp moon - and is not affected
by any masking. Next, the Cloud layer is drawn on top of
that. When the cloud moves in front of the moon, it covers
up the moon. Finally, the Blurry Moon layer is drawn on top
of the cloud. Because of the mask, the blurry moon only
appears on top of the cloud, it is not visible outside of the
cloud object. Even though the blurry moon is in front of the
Effects

Another example of blurring and masking

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Tutorial 6.4: Particles

This tutorial demonstrates Anime Studios particle layers
feature. Particle layers are used to create effects made up
of many small objects flying around. This includes effects
like water, smoke, and swarms of insects.

2. There are four layers in this file, each containing a small

gray blob-shaped object. You can zoom in to look
more closely at these objects.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats already
started. Its named Tutorial 6.1 and its located in the
Tutorials > 6 - Effects subfolder within your custom content
folder.
1. Open the Tutorials > 6 - Effects > Tutorial 6.1 file in
Anime Studio, and you should see something like this:

A smoke particle
Starting point for this tutorial

Effects

3. These blobs will be used to create a smoke effect,

using a particle layer. If you examine these blobs,
youll see that they are all semi-transparent, and have
the soft edges fill effect applied to them. In addition,
the blobs all have a simple animation applied to

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them - over the course of 48 frames, they spread

out horizontally. Play back the animation to see this
happen.

Using A Particle Layer

1. In the Layers window, create a new Particle layer.
Particle layers are kind of like Group layers - they can
contain sub-layers.
2. Drag all four of the original layers into the particle layer,
and your project should look like this:

New particle layer

3. Play back the animation and see what weve got

so far. The particles should be flowing, although they
dont look much like smoke at this point.
Effects

4. Next, double-click the particle layer to bring up the

Layer Settings dialog. Click the tab marked Particles. In
this area, set the following values and click OK:

Particle lifetime: 48

Orient particles: unchecked

Velocity: 0.3

Velocity spread: 0.05

Acceleration: Turn knob to point to the right, or

enter 0.5

Rate: 0.5

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velocity is moderately slow, and there is a gentle

acceleration to the right (a soft breeze).
5. Play back the animation now, the motion of the
particles should look more like the flow of smoke from a
smokestack.
6. Export the animation as a QuickTime or AVI file to see
how the blur and semi-transparent effects combine to
create a smoky appearance. The reason four different
particle types were used is that each has a different
gray level, and combining them leads to a mottled,
dirty effect.

Particle settings

These settings tell the particle system that each

particle should last for 48 frames after being
created, and that the particles should not rotate to
follow the direction they are moving in. Their initial
Effects

A rendered example

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7. Save the tutorial under a new filename so that you can

use it in the next tutorial.

2. In the Layers palette, create a new vector layer. Here,

we call the new layer New Generator.

Tutorial 6.4.2: Custom Particle

Generators
Normally, Anime Studio starts with a simple circle as a
particle generator. As you learned in the previous tutorial,
you control the particles in the Particle Options dialog. The
source width, height, and depth settings control the area
where particles are generated.
In Anime Studio 10 you can add a shape beneath the
particle layer and drag that shape into the particle layer.
This can be used for a wide variety of effects ... grass
blowing in the wind, fire coming from a log in the fireplace.
Basically, any shape that appears in the bottom-most layer
in the particle stack can be used as a particle generator.
In this tutorial youll modify the file that you saved at the
end of the previous tutorial. Youll learn about how you can
use custom shapes as particle generators.
1. If you have not saved the project after completing the
previous tutorial, you will find a completed version in
your Anime Studio Content folder. Open the Tutorial
6.4_2 file located in the Tutorials > 6 - Effects subfolder.
Effects

Create a new layer for your particle generator shape.

3. Draw any shape that you desire in the new layer. Here
well keep it simple, and will add a star shape with the
Draw Shape tool.

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Drag the generator shape into the Particle group and place it
at the bottom.

A shape added to the new layer.

4. Drag the new layer into the Particle group, positioning

it at the bottom of the layers within that group.

Effects

5. Now, select Layer 5 in the Layers palette. Initially,

youll notice that this new shape becomes part of the
particle mixture, which isnt what you want to happen.

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7.
Initially the new shape becomes part of the particle mixture.

6. To fix this, double-click the Particle group layer and

switch to the Particles tab in the Layer Settings dialog.
Check the Use base layer as source option.

Effects

The Use base layer as source option turns the bottommost layer into a particle generator.

8. Now the particle layer will look at the lowest layer in the
stack and use that shape to generate the particles.

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the correct settings, particle layers can also be used to

produce clusters of many objects, but without making
them fly around like particles usually do. Fields of grass and
crowds of people are just two possibilities that well explore.

Start With a Sample File

To get started quickly with this tutorial, start by opening the
project file named Tutorial 6.2, located in the Tutorials > 6 Effects subfolder within your custom content folder.
Open the Tutorials > 6 - Effects > Tutorial 6.2 file in Anime
Studio. This file has a particle layer that well modify to
simulate a field of grass. The layers in this file are set up as
shown:
The particles are emitting from the star.

Later you can modify the shape, and the particles will
automatically follow the new shape.

Tutorial 6.5: Particle Tricks - Grass

and Crowds
This tutorial shows how to use particle layers for something
other than swarming insects, smoke, or fireworks. Using
Effects

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Starting point for this tutorial

The editing view should look like this to begin with:

Starting point in editing view

9. The particle layer Grass in this file is currently set up with

the default settings for a particle layer. The sub-layers
(Layer 1 - Layer 6) are each a single blade of grass.
Each one has a slightly different color and shape to
create variety.
10. If you play back the animation, youll see that the
default particle layer settings arent very good for a
Effects

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field of grass - the grass particles fly up in the air and

then sink downwards. All we have to do is make a few
small changes to get the grass to look right.

Changing Particle Settings

1. Double-click the Grass layer to bring up the Layer
Settings dialog. Click the Particles tab to access the
settings for the particle layer.
2. Below we describe why each of the settings is set the
way it is. Any settings that arent mentioned below
dont matter for this situation (for example, orient
particles doesnt matter since the particles have no
velocity).
3. Change the settings to match the ones below and
click OK.

Particle Count: 500. We need a lot of particles for a

field of grass

Preview Particles: 20. In the working view, only show

a few particles in order not to slow down Anime
Studio

Lifetime (frames): 0. A lifetime of zero means that

particles will never die out (disappear).

Effects

Source width: 3. Make the source nice and wide to

cover the width of the screen

Source height: 0. Its a flat field of grass, so the

height is zero

Source depth: 1. Spread the particles out in the Z

direction for a feeling of depth

Besides scattering particles in the Z direction,

when source depth is set to a non-zero
number, the particle layer will sort particles
according to depth - this is very important for the
kinds of animations were working with in this tutorial.
We wouldnt want far away blades of grass to
appear in front of closer ones.
Velocity: 0. Set to zero to prevent the grass blades
from flying around

Velocity Spread: 0. Set to zero to prevent the grass

blades from flying around.

Acceleration: 0. Zero acceleration, again to

prevent the grass blades from flying around

Rate: 0. Again to prevent the grass blades from

flying around

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Randomize playback: Checked. Plays back the

blades animations randomly, otherwise they
would be in sync.

Randomize playback makes the grass look

better than if all the blades were moving in
sync, but it can be even more important when
working with a crowd of people, as well see later in
this tutorial.

Grass particle settings

4. OK, the grass is almost finished. All we need to do is

use the Transform Layer tool to move the Grass layer
downwards so that it sits on the ground:

Effects

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In preview mode, it doesnt look like much, so you may

want to try playing back the result and rendering it out as
a movie file:

Transform Layer

Final render

Grass lowered into place

Effects

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Tutorial 6:5.2: Crowds, Particles,

and Depth of Field
Now well show how to use the same general techniques
to simulate a crowd of people. Also in this tutorial youll
learn how to set up depth of field using some of the new
enhancements that have been introduced in Anime Studio
Pro 10.
1. Open the file named Tutorial 6.2_2, located in the
Tutorials > 6 - Effects subfolder within your custom
content folder. Theres nothing you need to change
in this file in regards to the particle effects, it just shows
another example of using particle layers.
The default size of this project is 320 x 240
pixels. If you want a larger sized preview
image when working on this tutorial, choose File >
Project Settings and select another preset that
renders a larger preview (such as NTSC D1).

1. The Crowd layer has the same basic settings we used

for the field of grass, only using fewer particles. Note
the following:

Effects

Each of the sub-layers in the crowd was created

from one layer with a simple cycling animation.

This one layer was duplicated and had some colors

changed just for variety.

The Randomize playback setting for the particle

layer is really important for this crowd - if it was
turned off, then each character in the crowd
would move in sync with all the others (you can
try this yourself). This may be desirable in some
cases, but here we want each character to move
independently, even though they all have the
same basic movement.

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of Field more easily. To continue with the tutorial, follow

these steps:
2. Use the Pan and Orbit workspace tools to view the
scene at an angle, similar to that shown below. Youll
notice a box in the middle of the scene.

A crowd as particles

Depth of field is enabled in the Project Settings dialog

- thats why some of the closer or farther characters
appear a bit blurry. But well use some Anime Studio 10
enhancements to fine tune the depth of field effect.
In previous versions of Anime Studio you had to tweak
Depth of Field settings by number. Anime Studio 10
provides a visual indication that can help you set up Depth
Effects

Use the Orbit Workspace tool to view your scene in 3D view

3. Choose File > Project Settings to open the Project

Settings dialog. You can quickly adjust the settings if

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you click in the text field and use your mouse scroll
wheel to increase or decrease the values. As you
adjust the Focus Distance and Focus Range settings in
the dialog, youll notice the box indicator changing in
the scene:

Focus range: This is the range of the scene that will

go from sharp to blurry when viewed through the
camera. The deeper the box gets, the more slowly
the scene will get out of focus. Higher settings will
make the box deeper.

4. Choose View > Reset View to return the scene to the

default camera view.
5. Choose File > Preview to generate a preview image.
After you complete your project, you can render an
animation to see how it all comes together.

Increase or decrease the depth of field settings as you observe

the position and size of the box indicator.

Focus distance: This is the area that you want to

focus on. Its represented by the center line in
the box. Decrease the setting to bring the focus
distance closer, and increase the setting to move it
farther from the camera.
A preview of your settings.

Effects

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Tutorial 6.6: Using Pre-made

Particle Effects
This tutorial shows how you can use the included scripting
commands to make use of pre-made particle effects like
smoke or explosions.
Starting point for this tutorial.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 6.3 and its located in the
Tutorials > 6 - Effects subfolder within your custom content
folder.

7. Try playing back the animation to see what were

starting with - its just a simple animation of a rocket
flying around the screen for a little while. When youve
seen enough, rewind the animation back to frame 0.

Open the Tutorials > 6 - Effects > Tutorial 6.3 file in Anime
Studio.

Add the Smoke Effect

6. Expand the Rocket Group layer in the Layers window,

and you should see something like this:

Now well add a smoke trail behind the rocket.

Effects

Select the Scripts > Particle Effects > Smoke... menu

command. A dialog will appear asking you to customize
the smoke effect. Use the settings shown below for the
smoke and click OK:

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Smoke layer added to group

9. The final step is to move the smoke into place. Activate

the Transform Layer tool and move the Smoke layer so
that it sits just behind the rocket. The smoke itself wont
immediately move until the animation is updated,
so watch the origin of the Smoke layer and line it up
behind the rocket. Feel free to zoom in close to get a
better view:

Smoke settings

8. The smoke script will then generate a bunch of layers

that make up the smoke effect. The combined layers
will end up grouped together in a group layer called
Smoke. Move this new Smoke layer into the Rocket
Group layer, just below the Rocket layer. The Smoke
layer should end up positioned like this:
Effects

Transform Layer

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Smoke layer moved into position

Thats it! You can now export the animation as a movie file
to see the fully rendered result. Some of the particle effects
in the script menu, including smoke, can take a long time
to render. In Tutorial 6.7: Speeding Up Particle Effects
on page 249 well show you a way to speed up complex
particle effects.

Effects

The final result

Another Effect - Sparkles

Heres an example of another particle effect - the Sparkles
script. A great use of this effect is for magic wands. The fully
finished file can be opened in Anime Studio if you wish. Its
called Tutorial 6.3_2. Heres what the rendered result looks
like:

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can take a very long time to render. In this tutorial, well

show you a way to speed up the exporting of complex
particle effects.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start by taking a look at a finished
animation of an explosion effect.
This tutorial requires that you export an
animation in MOV format, which includes
alpha channel information. If you are using a 64-bit
version of Windows, you will need to complete this
tutorial using the 32-bit version of Anime Studio Pro in
order to export to MOV format.

The Sparkles effect

Tutorial 6.7: Speeding Up Particle

Effects
In Tutorial 6.6: Using Pre-made Particle Effects on page
246 we showed how you can use Anime Studios included
particle effect scripts to easily add effects like smoke and
explosions. The only drawback to these effects is that they
Effects

1. Open the Tutorials > 6 - Effects > Tutorial 6.4 file in

Anime Studio and play back the animation. To see the
full effect, you would need to export the animation as
a movie file. You can try this now, but trust us, itll take
a while to export this file. Heres what the final movie
would look like:

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Export the project animation as a QuickTime movie, using

the following options:
The key here is the Do not premultiply alpha
option. This prepares the alpha channel in the
exported movie for further compositing.

The exported explosion

Preparing a Movie for Re-use

Our goal is to re-use this explosion in another Anime Studio
animation, but make it a lot faster for rendering. To do this,
well export the explosion animation as a movie file, using
some special settings.

Effects

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Compression options

Export options

2. When the QuickTime compression dialog appears,

select the PNG codec, and Millions of Colors+ as
shown below. The + is QuickTimes notation to include
an alpha channel in the exported movie.
Effects

3. When the movie is finished exporting, you can try

playing it back. You can also open the file that is
provided called explosion.mov, located in the Tutorials
> 6 - Effects subfolder within your custom content
folder. Youll see that it looks pretty strange - this is
because we didnt premultiply the alpha channel. But
dont worry, once the explosion is composited back in,
itll look just right.

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Using Movies in Image Layers

To work with the explosion movie, follow these steps:
1. Start a new Anime Studio project file.
2. Drag the explosion.mov file from the folder in which
you saved it into the main Anime Studio window. A
new Image layer will be created.
3. Use the Transform Layer tool to move the explosion off
to the side a bit:

New explosion layer

Transform Layer

Effects

4. Next, advance the current time to frame 12, and drag

the explosion.mov file into the main Anime Studio
window again. Another image layer will be created move this layer off to the other side:

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A second explosion layer

5. Repeat this process a few more times - advance the

time a little bit, drag in another explosion, and position
the explosion in the frame. Do this until the view is just
full of explosions:

Effects

Lots of explosions

6. When youve got as many explosions as you want,

export the animation as a QuickTime movie.
Notice that even though the single explosion
took a long time to render, this combined set
of explosions renders fairly quickly. This is because
the explosion effect has already been created - for
the combined effect, Anime Studio just needs to
composite several explosions together. Using this
technique, you can greatly speed up the time it
takes to export an animation that uses one or many
complex particle effects.

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Tutorials

Tutorial 6.8: Perspective Shadows

In this tutorial youll learn a little trick to create perspective
shadows. This trick depends on Anime Studios layer
masking feature, and uses it in a creative way.

Start With a Sample File

For this tutorial, well start with a project file thats almost
finished. Its named Tutorial 6.5 and its located in the
Tutorials > 6 - Effects subfolder within your custom content
folder.
1. Open the Tutorials > 6 - Effects > Tutorial 6.5 file in
Anime Studio, and you should see something like this:

Starting point for this tutorial

2. Play back the animation to get an idea of what youre

starting with.
Effects

3. When youve seen enough, rewind the animation back

to frame 0. What were going to do in this tutorial is give
Lenny a shadow.

Moving a Layer Into Perspective

Were going to create a shadow that matches Lenny
exactly.
1. At Frame 0, start off by duplicating the Lenny Skeleton
layer, using the Duplicate Layer button.
2. Move this new copy below the original Lenny Skeleton,
name it Lenny Shadow.
3. Add a new vector layer inside it as shown below.
Make this new layer active, and name the new layer
Shadow.

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New Lenny Shadow with Shadow layer

Rectangle in Shadow layer

4. In the new Shadow layer, draw a simple rectangle that

takes up about 2/3 of the left side of the visible area,
as shown below. Choose Black for the Fill and Stroke
colors if they arent selected already. The idea is to
completely surround Lenny, with enough extra space
for when he moves.
Shear Layer

Effects

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5. Were going to temporarily hide the black shadow

layer so that you can use the copy of Lenny to shear
and reposition him for the shadow. To hide the black
rectangle, click the Visibility icon to hide the Shadow
layer as shown below.

Temporarily hide the Shadow layer

6. Next, select the Lenny Shadow bone layer and use

the Shear Layer tool to shear the lower copy of Lenny
so that he leans to the right as shown below: You can
also enter an X value of .60 or thereabouts in the Shear
Layer tool options in the status bar.

Effects

Shear the lower copy of Lenny

7. Now use the Transform Layer tool to scale the Lenny

Shadow layer down vertically. Be sure to leave it the
same size horizontally - we just want it shorter vertically,
as shown below:

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8. Next, use the Transform Layer tool to move the Lenny

Shadow layer into position so that the back heels of the
two Lennys line up like this:

Transform Layer

Transform Layer

Scale down the shadow layer

Effects

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2. To turn on masking, double-click the Lenny Shadow

layer and in the Masking tab, set the Group Mask
setting to Hide all.

Mask settings for the Lenny Shadow layer

Position the shadow layer

The Trick
So far we have two copies of Lenny, with the lower one
shifted into perspective. Here comes the trick with layer
masking.
1. First, click the Visibility icon in the Shadow layer to make
the sheared black rectangle visible again.
Effects

3. Next, double-click the Lenny layer and in the Masking

tab, set the Layer Masking setting to + Add to mask,
but keep invisible. The result of these settings is that the
big black rectangle will now be masked against the
shape of Lenny himself:

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Mask settings for the Lenny layer

The shadow mask effect

4. The final touch is to refine the appearance of the

shadow. Double-click the Lenny Shadow layer. In
the Layer Settings dialog, set the Blur radius to 8 and
Opacity to 50. That finishes the shadow effect - you
can now export the animation as a movie file.

Effects

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Tutorial 6.9: Using 3D Models

Although Anime Studio is primarily a 2D program, it is
possible to import 3D models and use them in an Anime
Studio animation. This tutorial will show you some of the
things you can do with 3D models in Anime Studio.

Import a Basic 3D Model

First, well try importing a basic 3D model.
1. Start Anime Studio and create a new, empty project.

The adjusted shadow, rendered

The final result is also included as an Anime Studio project

file. Its called Tutorial 6.5 Final - take a look at it if you have
any trouble following the directions above. Its important
when using this trick to animate your subject first before
you add the shadow - that way the shadow will also be
animated, leading to a more realistic effect.

Effects

2. Next, select the File > Import > OBJ 3D Model menu
command. Anime Studio will prompt you to select a
file - choose the file named 3dmodel.obj located in
the Tutorials > 6 - Effects subfolder within your custom
content folder. Anime Studio will import the model into
a new 3D layer, and you should see something like this:

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This object was created in a program called
Wings 3D (http://www.wings3d.com).
Whether you choose create models in Wings 3D or
another 3D program, be sure to export them as OBJ
files. OBJ is a common 3D file format that most 3D
programs support, and is currently the only 3D
format that Anime Studio can import.

Imported 3D model

3. Use the Orbit Workspace tool to rotate around the

scene. As you rotate around the object, notice that it
never appears flat from any side (like a vector layer) - it
is a true three-dimensional object.

Orbit Workspace Tool

Effects

The colors of this model have been defined in

the file 3dmodel.mtl - this is a material file that
Wings 3D created along with the model itself. You
cannot change the colors of a 3D model within
Anime Studio. However, you can change the color
and width of the outline in the Layer Settings dialog,
under the 3D Options tab, discussed in 3D Options
on page 210 in your Anime Studio Users Manual.

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rotate a head in 3D space. Using a 3D model can solve this

problem.
1. Open the file Tutorial 6.8 located in the Tutorials > 6 Effects subfolder within your custom content folder. This
is a completely finished animation - play it back to see
whats going on.

Side view of 3D model

Using 3D Models in a Face

Next, well show an example of how you can use a 3D
model in the construction of a characters face. One of the
limitations of Anime Studios 2D nature is that it is difficult to
Effects

Face pointing up and right

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that the main 3D head shape and the ears are

grouped together. This is so that those three shapes
can be depth-sorted. As the head turns from side to
side, one of the ears often needs to go behind the
head layer and then come back in front, depending
on the heads angle. Depth sorting is used to easily
accomplish this reordering.

Textures and Scenery

Anime Studio can also make use of textures on 3D models.
You cant create the texturing within Anime Studio itself,
but if your imported 3D model uses texture maps, Anime
Studio will use them when it imports the model.
Now pointing down and left

2. Notice that unlike most faces in Anime Studio, this one

can freely turn from side to side. This is because the
head and nose (the major 3D structures in a face) are
built as actual 3D models. The mouth, eyes, and ears
are all 2D vector layers that have been arranged in 3D
space around the head.
3. The only other trick involved in getting this characters
head to work was sorting the head and ears. Notice
Effects

Now open the file Tutorial 6.8_2 located in the Tutorials >
6 - Effects subfolder within your custom content folder. This
scene makes use of the 3D model simple_scene.obj, which
in turn uses a texture map file:

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positioned in true 3D space, so it is quite easy to integrate it

into the 3D scene.

Conclusion
Weve looked at just a couple possible uses for 3D layers with a little thought you can probably come up with many
more. Keep in mind that Anime Studio is still primarily a
2D program, so dont expect Anime Studio to replace a
true 3D modeling and animation program. However, for
limited uses, like background scenery or a few parts of a
character, 3D layers in Anime Studio can be very useful.
A textured 3D scene

One of the things you may notice in this scene is that the
scenery has detailed shadows and shading on it. Anime
Studio does not provide lighting and shading for 3D models.
Instead, these effects are part of the texture map for this
3D model. In this case, a separate 3D program was used
to calculate the lighting effects and bake them into the
texture map.
Of course, the other element in the scene is a regular
Anime Studio 2D animated character. Although this
character is composed of 2D vector layers, it can be

Effects

For further information on importing 3D objects within

Anime Studio Pro please visit http://my.smithmicro.com/
tutorials/.