Are you a 2D Artist and thought there has to be a better way to make an animation than drawing 30 frames individually so that your characters can complete one action?  Well the folks over at Smith Micro thought the same when they added bone-rigging to their powerful animation solution Anime Studio Pro.

Bone-Rigging and Animation

Bone-rigging was pioneered in 3D animation. It’s a wonderful tool which applies a skeleton to your animated character to display joints where movement occurs. It then can be used to control movements throughout your animations timeline.  In Anime Studio Pro you can rig your character with bones then position them to your liking. Once completed you can pick a point further down the timeline and position your character in a completed action. Then Anime Studio Pro does the rest by automatically creating the frames in-between your start and end points. This is a huge time saver in comparison to having to draw every frame in between. Check out this video about bone rigging in Anime Studio Pro

As amazing as this feature is in 2D animation, it still had a downside sometime causing unwanted distortion in your character through the automated process. This is why in Anime Studio Pro 9.5 Smith Micro have incorporated the new Smart Bones feature. The Smart bones allow for unique action controls. During these unique actions you can modify your vector art so that during the smart bone action the distortion does not occur. The smart bones can control your animation and child layers. This gives you the ability to control complex movements with only the selection of a bone and the ability to easily repeat those movements within your Animation. Here is a video that displays the smart bones feature.

These new features are pretty exciting and save animators a huge amount of time. If you are a student just learning 2D animation, you can receive education discounts on Smith Micro Products including Anime Studio Pro 9.5 over at Studica.