Anybody using Animate CC to create 2D content?

Hi,

I'm a programmer making his efforts to get a bit into art. I have basic drawing and animation knoledge that think is enough to have some simple games rolling.

I have used several programs to create contect for unity like aseprite (pixel art), photoshop, spine, etc... but these last days I discovered Animate CC (aka old Flash) and it seems to be a really nice tool. The ability to animate + create vector graphics in the same program really attracts me.

The thing is, is anyone using Animate CC in his workflow? Is it easy to import assets into unity? I imagine I won't be able to import the svg animation but I think it is possible to build a sprite sheet from it and import it into unity.

Could anyone please explain a bit how you use it with Unity or on the other hand why you don't like it to be used with unity?

Thanks in advance.

 

I've used this package at work a couple times, not for games. Seems like an alright product.
I never liked flash much - just didn't work with my personal workflow.

I'd say - if you like the package use it and set up your own pipeline. I've used after effect for creating some simple particle effects for sprites, and also 3D renders of some simple animated shapes - as sprites, so I know software doesn't really matter as long as you can get the pipeline setup for your own purposes. As long as the software works for you, and can output to a sequence of images the sprite sheet can be created in Unity or other thru-put packer.

 

I used to use Toon Boom Studio, which is another vector based animation program, while it's big brother Animate is used in professional animation productions. It was at a reasonable price, though they switched to a subscription model recently, which turned me off. I'm planning to use OpenToonz on any future project that requires vector based animation. It looks promising, but I haven't had time to put it through its paces.

Also, there's an SVG importer on the asset store, though I don't know how feasible it is to use this for animation frames.

EDIT:
As far as importing into Unity, I'd recommend what @theANMATOR2b says and create pipeline tools to convert and import images or sprite sheets into Unity, as you'll eventually find out that you'll need to do some custom post processing. What I typically do is use Unity's Postprocessor with ImageMagick to do any image and sprite sheet conversions.

 

Thanks for the information.

Just another question, that is a bit offtopic. If I want to to improve my animation skills for example doing simple cuts of stickmans or oversimplistic bipeds animations could Animate be of use? I'm a bit lost here. The problem is that to do something like a cut of 5 seconds in asprite (just was trying pixel art) it take ages. I would like to draw myself with my tablet and create something like a little movie. ToonBoom seems really scaring for just learning or improving animation this is why I said Adobe Animate .

 

What do you mean by "cut"? Like an animation sequence? 5 seconds is quite a lot of time to animate. Most sequences are usually less than 1 second at most, and one factor in determining total production time (effort) is how many frames per second you are animating. 24 fps is quite a lot of work. 12-15 fps is a lot more reasonable, and typically what most animation productions use. A reasonable walk cycle can be anywhere between 5-10 frames, and punches and kicks can be 2-5 frames. Add on whether you are going to support 4 direction or 8 direction sprites, or just 2 directions for typical platformers, the work can multiply quickly.

Anyway, if you want to practice, any of the tools mentioned here are good for desktop. I also tried some animation apps on my Android tablet (Samsung Galaxy Note 2014). My favorite is FlipaClip. It's really fast when scrubbing through frames, and the drawing is pretty free flowing.

Also, if you have a Nintendo DS or 3DS, you can use Flipnote Studio for practice. It's free (well, the DS one is), and limits your color palette so as to force you to focus on your line drawing.

 

If this was a task I had to do I think I'd look into using any package that supported IK (inverse kinematics) and bones.
Not sure if Animate has bone and IK ability. Without these tools - straight hierarchy rigging (FK) would be torturous for animating - unless the animation was of something floaty - like a fish or flying cockatrice, even then IK would be a very helpful tool to accomplish quality animations.
I'm not up to speed on traditional (none bone based) sprite animations - so I can't make any suggestion on that style.

 

Just an fyi, Animate/flash has had bone rigging and ik for a long time (it briefly disappeared a few years back for some reason). There's a ton of advanced features like ik constraints, paths, guides, ghosting, deforming, etc, etc for animating. You won't be left wanting for much if animating vector art. It's right up there with harmony. Although tailored for professional animations there's nothing stopping you exporting a character animation to unity as a sprite sheet.

On the flip side programs like spine and spriter are specifically focused on 2d animations for games. Saving poses, swapping out sprites, binding sprites to bones, reuse animations between characters, simplified tools, etc are more useful for games animations. They also have runtimes for unity so you can dynamically animate the various pieces within unity if you wanted to.

 

Currently my team is using GAF to convert SWF to Unity assets. Takes a bit of work to integrate GAF prefabs into your workflow but they work fine and save a lot of texture memory because it will recreate tweens procedurally instead of using a frame-by-frame animation.

 

Some things I've animated in flash, export as a movie, saving as a png sequence into a folder, then use TexturePacker to convert this into a sprite sheet. TexturePacker has a free tool in the Asset store which will then auto import this into Unity.

 

Also, you can try the Flash Animation Toolset asset for this. It allows convert and play animations in Unity.

 

I don't like the program myself, but there's a game dev I follow on youtube that uses it with really nice results: https://www.youtube.com/user/MegaStegz

He makes some really interesting videos too, so check him out if you like.