What is Koolmoves?

[alex_w86]

What is Koolmoves? I'm an experienced SWiSH and Flash designer, but have never heard of Koolmoves

[johnie]

http://www.koolmoves.com

A description of the program and a trial can be downloaded from that site.

KoolMoves is an animating tool that exports to Flash. The interface is easy to use and surprisingly easy to learn. Animations can be created faster in Kool Moves than Flash becuase the program automorphs and tweens your shapes for you. The User only has to draw or import their shapes then move the shapes in later Frames. You end up with a comic strip like drawing then the program Fills in the animation for you. The result is a fast smooth optimized Flash animation.

Kool Moves, unlike Swish, works with many vector Formats. EPS, EMF, WMF, DFX can all be imported into Kool Moves. It also has a rich set of intuitive drawing tools. Oh and it supports changes in the alpha and these raster formats; JPG, PNG, BMP, and TIF.

Kool Moves is also reusable. Shapes and sequences can be drawn then saved to file and then imported into other projects, the same movie, etc. The import interface allows you to view the animation with the sequencve added before you import it.

Kool Moves can be used for text effects. It comes with over 60 effects and you can create your own and save them. In fact we have a competition going on right now for a package of text and special effects.

Kool Moves also allows some basic actionscripts and allows Javscripting from within created SWF's. Kool Moves is probably more suitable for web page creation than most WYSWIG editors like FrontPage becuase you can control exactly what web page vistors will see. Kool Moves is suitable for most web uses except for very advanced actionscripts.

There are many examples of webpages and animations throughout this forum.

Kool Moves doesn't come with a $300 price Tag. Flash comes with a large price tag that turns many webdesigners away. Kool Moves is very afordable.

Even though it is priced the same as Swish it should not be compared to Swish. The look and Feel of Kool Moves is actually closer to Live Motion, Morph Ink, EVA Animator, and to some extent Moho. The interface is an animators interface and to avid Flash and Swish users seems somewhat Foriegn but to any one use to graphic design aplications (Photoshop, Illustrator, Gimp, Meta File companion, Paint Shop Pro, ETC.) the interface will look very familure and will be easy to use. Many people can download the program and start working with it in les than 20 minutes.

[alex_w86]

How does it compare to WildForm SWFx?

[BradBradleySL]

They don't compare, WildForm is limited to text effect, while KoolMoves can basically do anything(other then actionscripts, though that is coming soon from what I hear)

this is an example of what KoolMoves can do-

BROADBAND WARNING
http://www14.brinkster.com/ameba2d/A...tionintro.html

Brad

[johnie]

Wild Form SWFX does not even compare. Widform is a text efect only app. Kool Moves is a WYSWIG Animation program. The Wildform SWFX program cannot manipulate drawings or images or text. With Wildform you can only type your text and then select a pre-made text effect to apply to your text. You cannot assign actions to Wildform SWFX SWF's nor can you import images or vector drawings.

Kool Moves is capable of creating complete webpages- See The Ameba 2D thread and the Websites done with Kool Moves thread.

You can Use Kool Moves and Wildform together by using the loade movie action.

Just in case you ask:

Flax is another Text effect only aplication. Kool Moves can be used with this also.

FlashTyper- Free Text Effects generator. Again you can use it with Kool Moves.

Swish is the same way except that you can add Images and manipulate them along a timeline. You cannot at this time import Vector drawings or create them within Swish. This leads to large Files for animations. No difference in Actions. Again using the Load Movie action you can either load Kool Moves generated SWF's into a Swish Movie or Load Swish generated SWF's into a Kool Move generated Movie. The Developement team for Swish has already stated that although Swish 2.0 will have some native Vector drawing tools in it that it would not really be suitable for character animations.

You would do better to compare Kool Moves to Livemotion, Morph Ink, and MOHO.

Live Motion- Steaper Learning curve and is very expensive (Costs almost the Same as Flash). Intergrates almost seamlessly with Adobe Products. Has the same scripting abilities as Kool Moves except Livemotion lacks the goto Frame Action. The only Advantages of Using Live Motion over Kool Moves is that Live Motion intergrates better with Adobe Products (You know those litle programs called Photoshop and Illustrator) and has a richer set of drawing tools and allows Photo Shop masks.

Morph Ink- Same pricing stratagy as Kool Moves. Only allows line drawings created within Morph Ink only(No Import). The tools are slightly confusing. No sound support. The program does auto tween like Kool Moves though. Exports as both SWF and their own Format (Which is 1/2 the size of Flash). No actions are supported.

MOHO- No sound support. More expensive than Kool Moves ($99.00). Has a skeletal Frame system known as boning. The sytem works great on a 2D level but does not work well on a 3D level or perspective change. Their implementation of Boning has some major Kinks in otherwords. Can Export directly to video or to SWF.

[johnie]

There is perhaps one other comparable product to Kool Moves and it is Corel R.A.V.E.

The link is here: http://www3.corel.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi...id=CC1KTIZE4FC

I have never used this program and cannot tell you how it compares to Kool Moves though.

[evolbeagle]

I would also add that MoHo, if you are using it for Flash animation as opposed to video, doesn't seem to do as good a job as KoolMoves. For instance, curves are less curvy, more pointed, in MoHo. At least, this is what I have found in using the demo product, and it does not hold true for avi files, just Flash.