Has anyone heard of this? Microsoft's Silverlight is supposed to be the new rival to Flash.
Anyone used it? How is it compared to Flash?
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What is Silverlight?
By cartoonchaos | Wednesday, November 28, 2007 at 1:26pm
#1
What is Silverlight?
You may be thinking of "Blend"...MicroSofts rival to Flash.
They have a whole Expression suite, positioning it against Adobe CS3.
Anyhoo, you'll need to download the "Silverlight" player to your computer at home or office to get the user experience, just like you need the Flash player to view Flash on the web.
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/overview.aspx?key=blend
Check out the link...does this beat Flash?
I'm not quite sure how this'll all pan out...both MicroSoft and Adobe are located in Seattle! :o
Anyhoo, I'm sticking with Flash!:)
Cheers!
Splatman:D
SPLAT digital
Frankly, Adobe After Effects beats the hell out of Flash in terms of pure animation. With the use of animated masks, it even does wonderful character stuff. I think the "puppet pins" tool on CS3 is actually kind of limited, but can be very neat if not overdone. I'm very curious about the whole Creative Suite.
AE and Flash are two very different animation programs.
Bitmap vs. vector, for one...but I digress! ;)
Cheers,
Splatman:D
SPLAT digital
Okay, it's my turn to digress. First of all, I thought both Flash and AE were supposed to handle both bitmap and vector, though I know bitmap bogs Flash down terribly. As do most things, it seems.
I also know that Flash is very good for incorporating animation into interactive web sties, etc. What I can't figure out is why the heck studios use it. I get along with it okay, but it doesn't seem like the best tool for the job. The main problems for me are that you can't rig puppets, it's just crude in the way it operates, and it's buggy as hell.
You have to keep manually resetting pivot points, so nothing travels in natural arcs as with other programs-- AE, ToonBoom, Anime Studio Pro, etc. I like some of Flash's playback options, and don't mind using it for illustration. But when it comes to animation, I can't see the appeal outside of interactivity. And yet it's a standard among studios. That they would choose to use a program as time-consuming as Flash and then opt to outsource to other parts of the world plain old boggles my mind. Am I missing something?
Adobe may have offices in Seattle, but corporate headquarters is in downtown San Jose, CA.
Yeah, that's just an urban legend. Flash and Illustrator, vector. Photoshop and AE, bitmap.
That is an "Animated Ape" question I think. Here's what I think: Everyone already knows how to use it, and people like familiar things. Honestly, who wants to learn a brand new computer program, when you already know one that, for the most part, works just fine? With Cintiqs, you only have to use symbols sparingly (unless your production is ALL symbols. In that case, I hear ya.)
Let me put it this way (and feel free to disagree).... Everyone knows that a Toyota Corolla is a reliable, affordable little car that's good on gas and will run forever if you take care of it. Its been that way since, what, the 60's? Same way everyone knows that Adobe Flash is a reliable, affordable little animation program that's good with vectors and will export for just about every format you need. Just... not since the 60's, but a pretty long time in animation program dog years. I think you could say the same thing nowadays about Maya as well.
Now, I agree with you about the "BMW"s and "Mercedes" programs out there, but.... why switch? I dunno, someone else say something.
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So if you use Illustrator to build/draw something, and then use AE to animate it, it ceases to be Vector? I know animated masks in AE can start stair-stepping on you if you zoom in too much. But using an 'inner shadow' or 'stroke' tool gives you an outline that stretches really well without distortion, and behaves much like Vector.
I'm curious about the possibilities of importing Flash builds into AE for animation, and what happens when you stretch them. I'm looking at a Creative Suite 3 book for x-mas.
And AE has been around for a long time as a motion graphics tool. It's just the concept of using it for puppet animation that's new. It's been pretty good at it over the last few versions. Flash is more like a crank-start Model-T Ford that barely goes uphill, IMO.
http://forums.creativecow.net/forums.php
At Creative Cow they have more than a few forums on After effects...and tutorials, too!
Good reference for anyone.
Cheers!
Splatman:D
SPLAT digital
A few days ago I typed an answer (and then was logged-out) That was similar to Cartoon Chaos'.
In software, it isn't always the best that wins but the one that has its foot in the studio door.
The prblem alot of these alternatives face in spite of the features they tout, is that in the end their galleries look like Flash.....and export to swf..
Dangit, you're right DSB!
I was just over there a couple of months ago for a friends wedding, and from the top of our hotel you could see straight into the big crazy spinny-things on the side of the Adobe (HQ) building!
Cheers!
Splatman:D
SPLAT digital